By Adam Pagnucco.
In Montgomery County, the general election is often anti-climactic compared to the primary because Republicans have not won a partisan office in a district contained entirely within the county since 2002. (The last two GOP elected officials here, District 1 Council Member Howie Denis and District 15 Delegate Jean Cryor, were defeated in 2006.) Nevertheless, there are a few things in the county worth watching when the general election results come in. Here are six items that interest me.
What will be the partisan splits of turnout?
The table below shows the partisan split of actual votes cast in MoCo general elections since 1990. The county has long been blue, but the GOP share of the vote has fallen almost by half since 1994 while Democratic and other party/unaffiliated shares have risen. This is one reason why it’s so hard for Republicans to win here; there just aren’t enough Republican voters. (Money is another big reason.)
How will the GOP gubernatorial candidate do?
Maryland Republican gubernatorial candidates have been losing in MoCo for decades even when they win the state overall (as happened in 2002, 2014 and 2018). Larry Hogan set the recent high mark for GOP gubernatorial candidates in 2018, winning many parts of the county that year while still respectably losing MoCo to Ben Jealous. Dan Cox seems unlikely to get anywhere close to Hogan or Ellen Sauerbrey’s 1994 percentage against Parris Glendening.
How will the GOP county executive candidate do?
Reardon “Sully” Sullivan is the best county executive candidate that MoCo Republicans have fielded in decades. That said, this is a very low bar to hurdle and Sully does not have enough money to compete. I expect him to get between 30% and 35% of the vote, with any more than that accruing to his credit. I will be very interested to see how close he gets to incumbent Marc Elrich in local areas around the county, especially near the Frederick and Howard county borders.
How will the GOP state senate candidate in District 15 do?
While its borders have changed over the years, District 15 primarily includes Potomac, North Potomac, western Germantown, Clarksburg, Poolesville and nearby hamlets. It has many rural areas in the county’s agricultural reserve. Republican Jean Roesser defeated incumbent Democratic State Senator Laurence Levitan here in 1994 and was reelected once before falling to Democrat Rob Garagiola in 2002. The district has been safely in blue hands since. GOP challenger David Wilson could break 30% of the vote this year but his 2018 performance is not encouraging.
How will the GOP state senate candidate in District 39 do?
District 39 was once in Baltimore City but became a MoCo district in 1994. Its borders have shifted a lot since its creation but typically include portions of Montgomery Village, Germantown and Gaithersburg. Republican P.J. Hogan won two state senate races in the district before switching to the Democrats and winning two more. Current incumbent Nancy King has been coasting to victory in the general election since 2010.
Update: The GOP is not bothering to field a Senate candidate in the district this year, so this question has been answered.
What will happen in the school board races?
Here is a remarkable thing: school board members oversee MCPS’s nearly $3 billion budget, one of the biggest school budgets in the United States, but have little money for their elections. Their races are often proxy duels between the two biggest endorsements in MoCo politics: the Washington Post and the Apple Ballot. This year, the Post and the Apple parted ways in District 3 (Post-endorsed appointed incumbent Scott Joftus vs the Apple’s Julie Yang) and District 5 (Post-endorsed incumbent Brenda Wolff vs the Apple’s Valerie Coll). When the precinct results come in, I intend to study these two races to see the Post vs Apple splits, at least when it comes to the general electorate. In the meantime, I renew my call for public financing of school board races. It is desperately needed, folks!
It will take a while for the State Board of Elections to release official results in all of these races, including the always interesting geographic splits. Once they do, I will have updates.