By Adam Pagnucco.
Esther Wells, the Republican nominee for Montgomery County executive, has announced her endorsement by former Delegate and current Washington County Commissioner Neil Parrott. Her Facebook video, in which she appears with Parrott, is embedded below.
Parrott may not be well known in much of Montgomery County, but he is a familiar figure in both Western Maryland and Annapolis. During his three terms in the House of Delegates, he was regarded as one of the most conservative figures in the General Assembly. Four years ago, the Baltimore Post-Examiner reported that Parrott had earned a lifetime rating of 93% from the American Conservative Union. Parrott was once the chairman of MDPetititions.com, a site that gathered ballot signatures to repeal state laws abolishing the death penalty, protecting transgender people and granting in-state tuition to undocumented Maryland residents. (All of these efforts failed.) Parrott later ran for the U.S. House District 6 seat, losing to David Trone (in 2020 and 2022) and April McClain Delaney (in 2024).
Parrott made waves even before he was elected to the House of Delegates. Back in 2010, I reported that he had written a 2005 letter to the editor in the Hagerstown Herald-Mail advocating that HIV patients be required to get tattoos marking their status. Parrott wrote:
It is time to take the threat of HIV seriously. A compassionate and serious solution must preserve the dignity of those infected while truly helping to prevent the spread of the disease in an effective way.
One such solution is a tattoo for those who are infected. This mark could be inconspicuously placed, perhaps in a spot covered by a bathing suit, warning only those who might engage in intimate encounters with the infected person.
An effective way to enforce the consistency of the tattoo would be to provide medicine to the infected individual only after they have received the HIV tattoo.
After Trone made a 2022 TV ad about the letter, Parrott told the Frederick News-Post that “he publicly recanted that position 12 years ago.”
Wells describes herself as a “moderate Republican” and since the majority of MoCo’s voters are Democrats, she needs blue votes to defeat Democratic county executive nominee Will Jawando. How on Earth does an endorsement from an arch-conservative like Parrott help her accomplish such a feat?
Parrott endorses Wells. From Wells’s Facebook page.
It’s too bad that Jawando won’t debate Wells because this endorsement would be a golden point to bring up. Bring on the social media instead!