I didn’t know our numbers were ever that low in MD. Cripes. The current numbers are pathetic enough. Talk about entrenched.
4 year terms for the lower house probably isn’t helpful.
MD was always a politically peculiar state. I don’t feel like writing up a big history at this hour, though. It did behave more like a Deep South state after the Reconstruction era, but as it neared the turn-of-the-century, started to go more like its northern neighbors (albeit not heavily, but competitively). Baltimore itself, unlike nearby Philadelphia, was never a Republican city (occasionally electing a GOP Mayor). It remained competitive in the 1890s-1920s period, but clearly trended away back to the Dems, and almost overwhelmingly so by the 1930s (with a weird blip when in 1934 they elected a GOP Governor who was a strange fella named Harry Nice, only the 1st of the last 4 GOP Governors elected in the past 90+ years).
The Dems of that era, however, must be said that they contained a wide collection of across-the-board types, from the Baltimore Machine types (including Nancy Pelosi’s father, Tom D’Alesandro, Jr.) and execrable demogogue phonies like Millard Tydings and Conservative DINOs like the Byron family from Western MD.
The Republicans resurged at the federal level in the ‘50s (although not so well at the legislative level). Even in ‘58 with the near-bottoming out, they still had both U.S. Senate seats (occupied by Conservatives, IIRC), although the exiting Governor was the Baltimore ultraliberal RINO McKeldin (no surprise he left the state party in shambles). You had Agnew try to exploit the liberal Democrat vs. Conservative George Mahoney Democrat split to win the Governorship, and the GOP became more of the suburban party (although even when Nixon put Agnew on the ballot in ‘68, he did not carry MD). The GOP still did well in that all-too-brief period between 1966 to 1972 before Watergate smashed it.
Since then, of course, the Conservatives have drifted almost completely into the GOP, but have almost no presence in certain areas (Baltimore City, PG County), while a lot of the old liberal Republicans and suburbanites of DC have either drifted to the Democrats (or more Conservative elements moved away), and aside from race, vote scarcely differently than the inner-city types. Geographically, the GOP holds sway in more counties, but the sheer numbers of the gubmint worker parasites and welfare parasites in a handful of counties ensure that for the time being, the Dems will remain the majority party (and will never “realign” as it would’ve had it remained more Southern in character). Only if DC Blacks had remained there and MontCo & PG voted as they did during the Nixon era would MD have realigned.