By Adam Pagnucco.
I have a long-time friend who votes in every election and sometimes asks me for advice when she does not know the candidates well. This year, she called to ask about the county council and state legislative races. I gave her a few opinions and she replied, “That’s fine, but I want to vote for more women. Who are the female candidates who aren’t nuts?” She had never said anything like that in the decades I have known her, but the repeal of Roe vs Wade and the menace of fascism on the right had changed things.
Days later, every open seat on the council was won by a woman. In Council Districts 4 (Bowtie), 5 (East County), 6 (Wheaton-Aspen Hill) and 7 (Eastern Upcounty), the top two finishers were women. Roughly 60% of the county’s Democratic primary voters are women, so this can’t be a coincidence. I wonder if Laurie-Anne Sayles was a beneficiary.
Sayles has a long resume in MoCo politics as she detailed in her Our Revolution questionnaire. She finished fifth in a 2014 run for district 17 delegate and was elected to the Gaithersburg City Council in 2017. She declined to run for a second term, instead running for council at-large. Her campaign fundraising of $184,512 ranked 7th of 8 council at-large candidates but was still good enough to get her in the mailboxes. Where she excelled was in endorsements, getting support from MCEA, the Sierra Club, MCGEO, LIUNA, the AFL-CIO, and all three SEIU locals who play in MoCo among others. She also picked up an endorsement from Casa in Action after they dumped scandal-plagued Brandy Brooks.
The chart below shows her vote percentage by local area and region. Bars in Kelly green show a ranking of 3rd, bars in light green show a ranking of 4th and bars in yellow show a ranking of 5th.
Sayles is the first Black woman to be elected to a council at-large seat, but she is also one of the first Upcounty residents to be elected at-large since 2002. (Incumbent Will Jawando, who moved to Ashton last year, is the other one.) Her path to office ran through Upcounty’s major population centers like Germantown, Clarksburg, Damascus, Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village and Olney. Normally, a candidate finishing outside the top four in Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Potomac does not get elected at-large but Sayles broke that pattern.
The chart below shows how Sayles did in the county’s racially concentrated precincts. (See my methodology post for definitions.) Bars in Kelly green show a ranking of 3rd, bars in light green show a ranking of 4th and bars in yellow show a ranking of 5th.
Sayles finished 3rd in heavily Black precincts, 4th in heavily Asian and Latino precincts and 5th in heavily White precincts. Her performance in the white precincts mirrors her performance in Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Leisure World and would normally be a problem for an at-large candidate. Sayles overcame that with good performances in Upcounty and also in Black and brown precincts. By past standards, this was an unusual path to success, but it worked for Laurie-Anne Sayles.