House Republican seeks to expel Bouchat for absences

A Republican who has walked away from many of his duties as a state delegate could face an expulsion resolution offered by a member of his own party.

Del. Lauren Arikan (R-Harford) has drawn up a resolution of expulsion against Del. Christopher Eric Bouchat (R-Carroll and Frederick), who has refused since late February to participate in floor debates or votes and no longer attends committee sessions. That resolution could be introduced as early as Friday.

“I’ve long said that it is a responsibility of both the Democrats and the Republicans to keep their own house clean,” said Arikan, lead sponsor of the resolution. “And when your members are behaving in outrageous or disrespectful ways, you got to call them out. And there’s just nothing more disrespectful than abandoning your post.”

Arikan’s two-page resolution accuses Bouchat of “willful and wanton absence from the duties that the people of Carroll County and Frederick County elected him to perform.”

Bouchat has talked openly about his decision to stop attending daily floor sessions and committee meetings. But as the 90-day session draws to a close, the work has increased. Arikan said the “last straw” was Bouchat’s chronic absence from the Judiciary Committee and its subcommittees.

“It’s absurd. We’ve had slight delays, because people are coming from all over the place, working hard on their bills. They’re legitimately in meetings, doing things that are still the people’s work,” she said. “He is at his personal business. He left the floor at 10:02, and is now at his personal business. That’s unacceptable. It’s just unacceptable.

“You don’t have to have this job,” Arikan said. “He didn’t have to run. He could have resigned when he realized it was becoming financially detrimental to his business. You can’t, however, continue to fill the space, not show up, take the paycheck, claim you’re going to donate it, and then wail about how you’re hurting financially.”

The two chambers by law set the rules governing membership.

The Maryland Constitution provides some of the justifications for removing a lawmaker. Among those is a provision known as “failure to act.” Only one lawmaker — former Sen. Frank McCourt, in 1969 — ever came close to expulsion for failure to act.

“I think this is our responsibility,” Arikan said. “I don’t think it’s the responsibility, necessarily, of the Democrats to police people that are not in their party. I think as Republicans, we should take responsibility within reason for our members’ behavior if it goes so far outside the realm of what’s reasonable. Refusing to show up for work is unreasonable behavior.”

Last week, two delegates and the senator who represent the same district as Bouchat called for his resignation.

Calling on “a duly elected legislator to resign is not something we take lightly but Delegate Bouchat has apparently been engaging in this pattern since the end of February,” said Dels. April Rose and Chris Tomlinson and Sen. Justin Ready, all Republicans, in a joint statement

Few others have openly criticized Bouchat or called for sanctions.

House Republicans this week were said to be considering a rule change that would let the 39-member caucus expel members. The change would have let the group bar GOP lawmakers from caucus meetings and votes, but would not have resulted in the expulsion of s sitting lawmaker.

House Minority Leader Jason Buckel (R-Allegany) said earlier this week that it was ultimately not the responsibility of the Republican caucus to mete out discipline in a case like Bouchat’s.

“It’s the responsibility of the House of Delegates and the responsibility of their own voters,” he said. “Our caucus is not policing our own members. That’s between that member and their voters.”

Bouchat is drawing attention for what he is doing and not doing. If other delegates see it as negative attention, Bouchat does not.

In emails, he has thanked Maryland Matters for writing about his absences.

“This is exactly what I am lookiong (sic) for. Draw attention to the truth,” Bouchat wrote Maryland Matters after an initial story detailing his absences. He finished the email: “Merci Beaucoup.”

“This is all going exquisitely well,” he wrote in another.

Since late February, Bouchat has been driving to Annapolis from his district and registering his presence on the House floor each morning. He leaves soon after and goes to his business in Arbutus.

He has also skipped meetings of the House Judiciary Committee during that period, after being told he could not resign from the committee.

In an email to Republican leaders, Bouchat urge his GOP colleagues to follow suit.

“None of our votes matter in the committee or on the floor and it is due time we show this to the public,” Bouchat wrote in the email obtained by Maryland Matters. “Let this General Assembly be a ship wreck and watch it happen without us having any blame symbolically.”

The delegate in emails acknowledged his lack of attendance is intentional. He sees it as a sort of a protest or statement of principle.

“Republican votes are completely worthless” in Annapolis, Bouchat said in a previous interview.

“Since my term started, you can remove every Republican vote taken on every bill both in committee and on the floor and nothing would change,” he wrote to Maryland Matters. “Which means we are useless.”

Arikan acknowledged that Republicans are outnumbered in the legislature, but that it does not mean the voices of the minority party are useless.

“You can have many different types of success down here. Perhaps for some people, success is only if they get a bill passed with their name on it,” Arikan said. “But for many of us, success is reining in bad policy. It’s killing bills like ‘tampons for Timmy’ and like ‘condoms for kiddies’ last year. Those things are also successes. You’re still a lawmaker when you make sure bad laws don’t go into effect.”

Bouchat his absence is also about his business. The first-term delegate estimates that he lost “around a half million” in income at his business since taking office in 2023.

“I can not afford to stay in office,” he wrote in on email. “There is no return on investment and I refuse to suck donations from constituents telling them I can achieve things for them, knowing the Republicans are useless.”

Arikan and others see it as a dereliction of duty.

When his District 5 colleagues called for his resignation, Bouchat praised the three and thanked them publicly for their statement. He said in an email he should take them out for lunch.

He also said he would make donations in their names to charities in an amount approximating part of his legislative salary for March. Instead, he left checks for $1,000 on their desks Monday.Ready said he was offended by the check and called it “bribe-like.”

All three lawmakers sought advice from the legislature’s ethics attorney. They voided the checks and returned them.

Privately, Bouchat used coarser language to describe Tomlinson as a dupe for Buckel, Ready and other Republican leaders. In a rare break of the norms of civility among lawmakers, Bouchat said that if Buckel, Ready and House Minority Whip Del. Jesse T. Pippy were imprisoned with Tomlinson, they would be “sexually abusing him.”