—Sylvester Loving, B1Daily

Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who is of Jamaican descent vetoed a bill to study reparations for US Freedman. 

The bill to study reparations in Maryland was designed to address the damages from US facilitated chattel slavery and American apartheid also known as ‘Jim Crow’.

Moore insisted that he vetoed the legislation because he believed the topic had been “studied enough”, he went on to insist that entrepreneurship and home ownership among other things should be prioritized.

“In light of the many important studies that have taken place on this issue over nearly three decades, now is the time to focus on the work itself: Narrowing the racial wealth gap, expanding home ownership, uplifting entrepreneurs of color, and closing the foundational disparities that lead to inequality — from food insecurity to education,” Moore wrote.

However, Moore refused to name a specific piece of legislation dedicated towards US Freedmen, or legislation to address the cacophony of grievances that he himself listed.

Moore has copied the California Governor Gavin Newsome’s playbook. 

He’s gone out of his way to push for no changes at all to public policy despite his party’s super majority in the state assembly, he’s denied his own constituency (Black residents) implementation of their flagship issue, and he’s angering members of his own party right before the state’s primary season. 

Moore has copied the California Gov. Gavin Newsome’s playbook.

 Although the measure passed with overwhelming support in the General Assembly, with both chambers approving the measure with margins large enough to override a veto, meaning that Maryland’s Congressional Black Caucus (MCBC) has the potential to rally the needed votes in the senate and house to override Moore’s questionable decision. A special session would need to be called for the assembly to convene prior to January of this year. 

But, the most important issue at hand is who will replace Wes Moore for Maryland’s governorship?

Maryland is a majority Black state, with multiple Black mayors and assembly members to boot. Now that Moore has seemingly played his hand and isolated the populist portion of his base through an action as major as this, only shows that Moore has no long term plans to remain in politics, at least not at the state level.

The most important issue at hand is who will replace Wes Moore for Maryland’s governorship?

Denying reparations may be a Democratic party rule. Seeing as only Democratic governors have vetoed reparations and both in similar manners.

The infamous Wikileaks memo mentioned that the Democrats’ leadership regularly lower ranking members to acknowledge Black constituents but never provide anything for them. 

Denying reparations may be a Democratic party rule.

Moore clearly has national aspirations, but unlike Newsome who can hope (pretend) that there is a chance that white conservative voters will overlook his 20 year career as a Democrat, Moore is a Black man, and will have to go back to the same Black community he openly denied reparations too, and ask for their votes. 

To rebound from something like this will have to be herculean and as Kamala Harris saw, it will not be an easy task for any Black politician, especially one with foreign roots to accomplish that.

—Sylvester Loving, B1Daily