By Adam Pagnucco.
It’s time to take a quick snapshot of campaign finances in the Democratic primary for county executive. Neither Mithun Banerjee nor Peter James have reported raising any significant money. That leaves the three council members who are running: Andrew Friedson, Evan Glass and Will Jawando. I will follow up with a post on outside groups soon.
I’m not doing a series on these numbers as I did a couple months ago. Instead, we’re going to stick to a few quick and dirty stats designed to help us divine who is in the best position to win.
Let’s start with fundraising as shown in the chart below. This data comes from downloads of contributions and loans because the summary sheets are sometimes inaccurate in this cycle.
Friedson, who is using traditional financing, is blowing away his competitors, who are using public financing. That has been widely reported elsewhere. Jawando is ahead of Glass primarily because he received a $204,913 contribution precisely on May 12. The gap between them could be due in part to application and reporting timing.
Now let’s turn to a more interesting set of numbers. Using spreadsheets of downloaded contributions and expenditures, I constructed a set of monthly net cash positions for the cycle for each of the three candidates. That’s shown in the chart below.
The first thing you’ll notice is that Friedson started out the cycle with $623,193. That was because he was fundraising throughout his first term and did not have either primary or general election competitors in 2022. That gave him a useful headstart.
He then had waves of fundraising in early 2024 and early 2025. His numbers really began to take off last summer as all three candidates were in the race. He reached almost $2 million in cash on hand by the end of March.
Then – WHOOSH. That’s when Friedson started spending big while his opponents were still building their balances. He spent roughly $1.2 million before his opponents began large scale voter outreach. It’s a massive advantage and gave him air supremacy for a good six weeks. Note that Glass’s March poll, which found Friedson in third place but within the margin of error, was taken before this spending surge.
In the past, I have discussed burn rate. That’s not as useful a stat a month out from the election as it once was because candidates are supposed to be spending money now. If they’re not, then they don’t know what they’re doing. Instead, let’s try to measure voter communications capacity – a huge key to winning elections. For the sake of this analysis, I define it as money already spent on TV, mail and digital plus remaining cash on hand and the pending matching funds requests of the publicly financed candidates. The chart below illustrates this distribution.
This is an imperfect stat for a few reasons. First, the candidates are still raising money. Second, some expenses may have been incurred but not reported as of May 12. And third, some of the remaining money will undoubtedly be spent on non-communications functions (like staff and overhead). That said, the chart’s message is clear: Friedson has more capacity to reach voters than Glass and Jawando combined. And that’s separate from the substantial expenditures by the realtors (in favor of Friedson) and the Affordable Maryland PAC (against Jawando).
Those who would make the case for a Friedson win will point to these numbers and say he is overwhelming his opponents. The numbers certainly back up that point of view.
But wait, you might say. David Blair had by far the most money last time and he lost. Money doesn’t always win!
That’s true. But remember my history of Blair polls in 2022. (I worked for Blair in that campaign.) Marc Elrich was the incumbent and started the race with huge name recognition and a high approval rating. And still Blair came within 32 votes of winning. This time, none of the council members have the advantages Elrich had. They’re a more evenly matched group. That amplifies the potential roles of money and smart campaigning in this cycle and among this particular field.
A more persuasive argument against the Friedson-is-crushing-everyone theory is that the outside groups supporting Jawando have only made relatively small efforts so far. Entities like CASA in Action, Progressive Maryland, the Working Families Party and their associated Super PACS and independent expenditure entities have a lot more capacity to play – if they want to invest it. Also, the teachers union is good at distributing Apple Ballots during early vote and in many election day precincts. That could offset the money advantages of Team Friedson.
But still, this is a good story for Friedson. We’ll see if it results in a win on June 23.