As a politically active, lifelong resident of Dundalk, I appreciated William Thompson asking whether Dundalk has "shed its Democratic Party tradition permanently" ("Has Dundalk gone to the GOP for good?" Dec. 10). However, I think there is a more complete answer than simply "time will tell."
As Mr. Thompson noted, the 6th district, which includes Dundalk, has been voting Republican for some time in presidential and gubernatorial races. And in the last election, Republicans won all five local races, too. However, before deciding that Dundalk Democrats can no longer win, we should look at a wider range of election results from November, comparing the 6th district to what happened in the other two districts on the east side of Baltimore County.
The 7th district has become a bastion for Republicans. In addition to an all-Republican state delegation, Republican candidates for comptroller, attorney general, Congress, county executive and clerk of the court also won. The 8th district, on the other hand, has had a split state delegation for several elections. And Democratic candidates won four of the five other races with only Attorney General-elect Brian Frosh losing this district but still garnering 47 percent of the vote.
And how did Democrats do in these other races in Dundalk's 6th district? They won three of the five: comptroller, Congress and clerk of the court. So at least in 2014, we can say that Dundalk looks more like the competitive 8th district than it does the completely Republican 7th.
The southeast corner of Baltimore County is certainly not the center of Democratic votes that it was 50 years ago. On the other hand, 2014 was an exceptionally good year to run as a Republican. Under these conditions, the fact that voters in Dundalk supported some Democratic candidates tells me that with the right candidates, issues and resources, Democrats can still be successful here.
Scott Holupka, Dundalk