Baltimore's Key bridge collapse, as tragic as it is, will provide a perfect storm for making political and partisan hay.
The mayor and city administration of Baltimore (which don't operate the port or bridges, not that it matters to the trolls throwing around DEI as an epithet), the governor of Maryland (whose name percolates around lists of future presidential contenders) and the president are all Democrats.
Expect to see the above photo of a smiling President Biden and Gov. Wes Moore flanking the young be-Afroed Mayor Brandon Scott in a GOP attack ad sometime soon.
Republican South Carolina U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace fired an early salvo on Newsmax accusing the federal government of wasting taxpayer money instead of using it for projects like the Baltimore bridge.
“We’re not spending it on roads and bridges. Look at the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was done a couple of years ago that the left hails as this massive success. But it was mostly Green New Deal, actually, in that bill,” Mace said, referring to the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden.
A few things are worth noting here. The first is that the nearly 50-year-old Key Bridge was most recently rated as being in fair condition before a massive container ship rammed into it.
Secondly, the immediate past governor was Republican Larry Hogan who called for bigger ships to be allowed into Baltimore's port.
The third is that Mace, along with dozens of other House Republicans voted against the infrastructure bill, Mace saying at the time, “If we’re going to do infrastructure, then let’s actually build something.”
Democrats think they have their own trump card. Since last summer, Biden and his surrogates have been roasting Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the floor of the House but brag about the cash infusion in their districts back home. The legislation also contains more than $100 million for repairs to the beleaguered water system in Jackson, Miss., and removing lead pipes in Chicago — both signals to Black voters that Biden is following through on promises to invest in African American communities.
Biden supporters might want to cover their ears for this part, but the White House likely won't get the credit it wants for kickstarting some 40,000 local public-works projects across the country. Even with funding in place, local infrastructure projects are rarely completed quickly and, in the meantime, cause traffic headaches that stokes resentment toward elected officials. Many people don't even know which governmental entities are responsible for repairs (e.g. cities, like Baltimore, generally aren't responsible for overseeing or maintaining ports and interstates).
Plus, with the presidential election coming up, some projects could be slow walked to await the outcome. Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans now serving as Biden's infrastructure czar said Republicans who opposed the infrastructure bill might want to roll back funding should Donald Trump win re-election
“This whole thing could get thrown out of the window if somebody else was sitting over there [in the White House] and decides, ‘We don’t want to do it,’” Landrieu told the AP last fall.
