By Adam Pagnucco.
Council Member Andrew Friedson, who currently represents Council District 1, is a top contender to become the next county executive. He faces stiff competition from his colleagues Evan Glass and Will Jawando. None of the three have a lock as all of them need to construct paths to victory. All of their paths have obstacles, and this column addresses an obstacle faced by Friedson.
Here’s a quick and dirty path for Friedson to win. First, blow away the opposition in fundraising. (This seems likely.) Second, get the Washington Post endorsement. (Who knows if they will endorse locally in this cycle?) Third, put together a coalition of voters who are moderate, dislike tax increases, concerned about the economy, want more housing, reside outside the geographic strongholds of Glass and Jawando and/or are Jewish.
That coalition must include voters in his district, which includes Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac, Cabin John and Glen Echo. This district has more regular Democratic voters than any other council district and regularly leads the county in Democratic primary turnout. It’s valuable real estate and no one dared to challenge Friedson there in 2022 as he ran unopposed in both the primary and general elections. He must win it by an overwhelming margin if he is to triumph in a countywide executive race.
That’s not automatic.
The reason is because of Friedson’s emergence as perhaps the primary champion of building more housing in MoCo politics. (Council Member Natali Fani-Gonzalez, who has frequently worked with Friedson on housing issues, also has a strong claim to that title but she is not running for county executive – at least not yet!) I raised this aspect of Friedson’s campaign in my post on his endorsement by former Council Member Hans Riemer, the number one housing guy of yesteryear. If Friedson can own this issue, it’s a plus because concerns about housing are a HUGE issue in this election.
But it does not come cost free.
Housing politics are complicated in Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Potomac. Home prices and rents are sky high there, putting an exclamation point on the county’s widespread housing shortage. But many residents there are wary of seeing their neighborhoods overbuilt. Some of them push back on initiatives like More Housing N.O.W., the multi-faceted housing package authored by Friedson and Fani-Gonzalez. I have been hearing from these people for months.
For the sake of illustration, I will reprint an excerpt from an email I recently received from a District 1 resident about Friedson’s housing record. Whether you agree with it or not, my purpose in presenting it is to facilitate contemplation of its political implications. My comments will follow.
*****
I have been part of a couple of loose coalitions of friends and neighbors from Council District 1 that have been very unhappy with the zoning changes which have been and are being foisted on us against our clearly-expressed will by the Montgomery County Council including:
1) The redevelopment of the Westbard shopping center which on one hand caused us to lose beloved retail merchants including the Anglo-Dutch Toy store, the dry cleaner, and the pet store among others, and on the other hand took away our convenient Giant with surface parking and replaced it with a terrible, crime-ridden parking garage. Who likes to ride an elevator to access a grocery store anyway?!
2) More Housing N.O.W. / ZTA 25-02 initiatives which will increase the density in our neighborhoods without increasing the roads, schools, emergency services, storm water management, tree canopy, etc. We have fought hard against this, organizing protests in our neighborhood including a walk with Council Member Friedson on April 21, 2025, we’ve testified at hearings, sent letters, signed petitions, etc. The worst parts of this initiative are a) that it is allegedly supposed to provide affordable housing for nurses, teachers, and firefighters, but duplexes are excluded from the requirement of providing any affordable housing, meaning they will just double the density in existing neighborhoods at market rates and b) up to 3 lots can be chained together so that apartment buildings can be built in single-family neighborhoods, bringing increased density and all its ills and fundamentally changing the character of our neighborhoods. The main beneficiary of this all is likely to be developers who now will have a freer hand to build more and bigger than ever before.
3) Reconfiguration of Little Falls Parkway (LFP) which has led to increased traffic and congestion in our neighborhoods. Instead of LFP being a convenient little car thoroughfare connecting the southern end of the county with shopping in Bethesda, going between neighborhoods rather than through them, the Council has now decided in its infinite wisdom to spend $1.7 million of taxpayer money to take away two of the car lanes to allegedly make it safer for bikes and pedestrians. This is completely unnecessary given that the Capital Crescent Trail provides a convenient, nearby, parallel route for bikes and pedestrians.
What has been most galling about all of this is that our elected Council District 1 representative, Andrew Friedson, has failed to respect the clearly-expressed views of many of his constituents on these issues. Instead of using his position as the Council representative on the Planning Board to stop these unwanted developments, he has promoted them. If nothing else, we feel that he has not honestly represented us and has betrayed us.
As one of my fellow activists Irv Lieberman says, “It’s a full-time job protecting ourselves from the unwanted initiatives of our elected officials”.
The only thing I can conclude from all this is that Andrew Friedson has a different agenda than what his constituents want.
*****
A factual comment. Friedson is not a “Council representative on the Planning Board.” There is no such thing. He does chair the council’s Planning, Housing & Parks (PHP) Committee, which gets first shot at planning and housing issues. That said, all council members ultimately get to play on those issues, which are among the key parts of the council’s portfolio.
Let’s set aside whether you or I agree with the sentiments in this email. To what extent is this a problem for Friedson’s ability to consolidate his district, a necessary task for his winning the county executive race?
It’s hard to measure. Part of it depends on how widespread this feeling is and how organized folks who feel this way become. Another part of it depends on whether one of Friedson’s opponents can exploit it. Glass agrees with many of Friedson’s views on housing, but Jawando does not. If I were Jawando, I would actively try to organize support and raise money in this district as unlikely as success might seem. Jawando could never win the district, but if he can steal even a few votes from Friedson here, he injures Friedson’s chances to win.
An additional beneficiary of this sentiment could be District 1 council candidate Debbie Spielberg, who is currently a special assistant to County Executive Marc Elrich, a long-time housing skeptic. Spielberg’s platform contains no endorsement of runaway housing construction, that’s for sure.
Lastly, the county’s pro-housing grassroots activists need to pay attention to the above perspective. They have a great issue – housing affordability – but they are politically unorganized and not yet in a position to capitalize on voter sentiment favoring more housing. If Friedson is their champion – not yet a certain thing with Glass in the race – and if he is taking hits inside his district on their issue, pro-housing folks need to work hard to make sure that Friedson gets a reward to offset any losses he incurs. If instead they split between candidates or effectively sit out the election, future candidates will learn from such choices and will be deterred from taking risks on behalf of more housing.
How this develops will be a major campaign theme as we approach the primary elections.