By Adam Pagnucco.
The battle against a ballot question to reduce term limits for the county executive from three to two is not going well. Here are two problems.
Fundraising and Spending
Against Question A: Make Your Vote Count, the ballot issue committee created by term limits opponents, filed its second campaign finance report on Friday. Since the committee was formed on September 5, it has raised $3,650, spent $123 and recorded a cash balance of $3,527 as of October 20. There have also been $962 in in-kind contributions.
Consider those numbers against these. In the 2020 general election, 537,935 Montgomery County voters cast their ballots. As of Saturday evening, 57,411 MoCo voters had voted early and 86,311 MoCo voters had voted by mail.
It’s obvious that this committee does not have sufficient resources to communicate meaningfully with voters.
Here’s another stat: since term limits was certified for the ballot on July 24, the committee in favor of term limits has raised $89,660 and is now spending on TV ads.
Limited Distribution of the Democratic Sample Ballot
One of the main tactics of term limits opponents was to persuade the county Democratic Party to include opposition to term limits on its sample ballot and then to mail the sample ballot to voters. The party has indeed chosen to oppose term limits on its sample ballot, but mailing is another question.
The chief input required for mail is money. The party’s most recent federal campaign finance report shows a cash balance in its federal account of $88,882 as of October 16. The party’s most recent state campaign finance report shows cash balances of $20,931 in its state electoral account and $476 in its state administrative account as of October 20. The party did not list debts or bills due on either report. The combined total of $110,289 may not be enough to mail the ballot to all 403,843 county Democrats, but it could reach a big chunk of them.
I have twice asked Saman Qadeer Ahmad, the county Democratic Party chair, whether the party intended to mail sample ballots to voters. As of this writing, she has not responded. Other party sources have told me that the party is relying on digital distribution and physical distribution of the ballot at polling locations. The latter depends on volunteer availability. (I was given a copy of the sample ballot at Wheaton early vote.)
Yesterday, a handful of my sources told me that they had received the sample ballot in their mailboxes last week. These sources regularly vote and live in households with multiple Democrats. They come from both Congressional District 8, where Jamie Raskin is a lock for reelection, and Congressional District 6, where Democrat April McClain Delaney and Republican Neil Parrott are in a competitive open seat race.
This surprised my sources who are close to the central committee. One commented: “Saman has a hub and spokes style as chair, where she’s the hub and everyone else is a spoke. There’s no general strategy discussion or consultation, and we spokes aren’t kept informed what the other spokes are doing.”
In any event, the mailing has gone out after many people have already voted as described in the statistics above.
Term limits opponents have a little more going for them. The Apple Ballot lists opposition to term limits and I have seen it distributed at early vote. And while their fundraising is pitiful, the anti-term limits group has posted signs at voting locations and has run a digital ad in MoCo360 (shown below).
Term limits tend to be popular among voters, even including Democrats, so the effort to stop them is an uphill battle. In Montgomery County, voters rejected term limits in 2000 and 2004 but approved them in 2016. What will happen this year?