By Adam Pagnucco.
Let’s start with some disclosures. I have had ties to all three of this year’s candidates in the county executive primary. I was an enthusiastic supporter of Marc Elrich when he ran for county council. I gave him money and passed out his lit to every door in my old neighborhood. I did the same for Hans Riemer and I was his chief of staff in his first term at the council. And in this cycle, I worked for David Blair’s campaign as his strategist. If that isn’t enough, I was once treasurer of a slate headed by former State Senator Rich Madaleno, who is now Elrich’s chief administrative officer in county government.
That’s quite a list, yeah?
Elrich, Blair and Riemer would go on to wage a historic race. Each of them brought assets and liabilities to the campaign. Here are a few.
Elrich’s Assets
Where does one start? Elrich’s electoral history in the county goes back more than thirty years. He was first elected to the Takoma Park City Council when Ronald Reagan was president. He started running for county council in 1990, losing four straight races before winning an at-large seat in 2006. Elrich’s persistence, work ethic and knowledge of the county helped him meet more people, expand his network and grow stronger with each loss until he could no longer be denied county office. And he finished first in the at-large race in 2010 and 2014 despite always lagging in fundraising.
Elrich’s political base is a three-legged stool of progressives, unions and development opponents. That’s a potent combination but it goes further than that. Elrich’s supporters are fiercely loyal and some of them go back decades with him. They see Elrich as one of the few honest people in county politics, and maybe the only one. The rest of the politicians are owned by special interests – especially developers – and Elrich is the one who cannot get bought. I totally understand where his folks are coming from because I was an Elrich guy in 2006.
Elrich became stronger in 2018 when he won that year’s county executive race. Now he was the incumbent and MoCo incumbents win reelection 90% of the time. (With this year’s races, that figure will be higher.) But the Montgomery County executive is no ordinary incumbent. That person benefits from, directly and indirectly, a vast county government communications apparatus. The table below shows the FY22 budget for some of the county’s many communications functions. This is just a partial list because some communications people are embedded in other county departments and M-NCPPC and the college are not fully included.
That’s more than $12 million of communications spending and that’s not all of it. None of this spending instructs people how to vote. But it does contain a common message that the government is working hard for its residents, which is about as incumbent-friendly a message as it gets. Think about this – when is the last time you saw a government communication saying something negative about the government? When combined with the decline of private sector local press, the county government megaphone gets bigger and bigger and the incumbent county executive, whoever it is, is the biggest beneficiary.
Finally, Elrich got credit from many Democrats for his management of the pandemic. When he said, “We are following the science,” MoCo Dems – of whom MANY work in governmental and private scientific organizations – nodded their heads in agreement. It was even better for Elrich that some of those who fought his policies were anti-vaxxers, Trumpies and right-wing zealots. That is golden in a Democratic primary.
Elrich’s Liabilities
As smart as he is, Elrich can be his own worst enemy. One of former County Executive Ike Leggett’s greatest skills is knowing when to shut up. That is NOT one of Elrich’s strengths.
Again, where does one start? How about his telling Greater Greater Washington that he would “prefer to put jobs in Frederick.” Or maybe his thought that the Purple Line would lead to “ethnic cleansing.” Then there are his comments that African Americans living in cities “are mired in poverty, pretty much as much poverty as they ever were.”
Listen to what Elrich says about African Americans, cities and transit.
In 2015, restaurant owners began demanding freedom from the county’s liquor monopoly, which had forced them to accept poor service for decades. Elrich blasted them for rejecting tweaks to the monopoly, declaring, “They’re the ones that, given a solution to their whining, decided they were going to go ahead and steal everything. I’m not terribly sympathetic.” His remarks earned him a ban from one of the county’s most prominent restaurateurs and lasting enmity from the restaurant industry that only intensified during the pandemic.
Want more? How about his comment that he is “going to be dead-set opposed to anybody who proposes knocking down existing affordable housing to build housing for millennials. You know, people making sixty, $80,000.” Or his denial that the county has a problem in missing middle housing. Or his comment about his vote to raise property taxes by almost 9% in which he said, “There are no civilizations in history that are remembered for their tax rates, none.” Or his opposition to NPR’s potential move to Silver Spring and his participation in a lawsuit to block the Fillmore project. Or maybe his effort to get Hugo Chavez’s government to fund the county’s social programs.
Remember how I said I was an Elrich guy in 2006? This is why I stopped being an Elrich guy.
Elrich is a lone wolf in an enterprise – politics – that depends on relationships and teamwork. His relationship with Governor Larry Hogan is abysmal and did not help the county in its quest to get a mass vaccination site. No county council members endorsed him for reelection as they remembered – among many other things – the time Elrich said on a hot mic that they were “fact proof.”
In presiding over the county government, Elrich hired a chief administrative officer who resigned after a book scandal, botched a search for police chief, resisted an emergency communication system upgrade and saw a long line of senior officials head for the door. He promised to streamline county government to save money but his handpicked “cost efficiency study group” only recommended eliminating nine positions out of more than 10,000. He also proposed raising taxes even though he campaigned on not raising them. This was a lot of fodder for opponents.
Finally, Elrich is much stronger in the southeast part of the county, especially Downtown Silver Spring and Takoma Park, than he is elsewhere. In 2018, David Blair beat him in most parts of the county outside of his southeastern base. Those geographic liabilities never fully went away even though they should have given Elrich’s incumbency.
We will go over the other candidates in the next post.