By Adam Pagnucco.
In an election night rant to MCM reporter Maryam Shahzad, County Executive Marc Elrich excoriated Republicans, developers and especially developer money. These are familiar themes from a politician who has blasted developers for decades and once compared growth to a tumor. Following are the embedded X post by Shahzad as well as a transcript of her exchange with Elrich.
Unofficial results – voters choose to limit county executive to two terms
We talked to CE Elrich tonight @mymcmedia pic.twitter.com/Nzq1vi95OS
— Maryam Shahzad (@maryam_mcm) November 6, 2024
Elrich
My take is that the Republicans and developers got together because they could not beat me in an open election and basically told people that we needed now term limits. You know, I saw people canvassing. Voters don’t even know we have term limits, so they made it sound like this was something new and a lot of people are agreeable to term limits.
This is one of the problems, you know, with not being able to compete with developer money in a race like this. Even the Republicans couldn’t have raised enough money to do this without some of the developers in the county. I don’t think it’s good for democracy. I don’t think it’s good to be dishonest about what you’re doing.
But I got two years, we’re going to get everything we can get done. I’m going to make sure I work really hard to make sure the next county executive is progressive and is going to work on the interests of the residents of the county and not be beholden to the development community.
Shahzad
Thank you, and since you know, you won’t be running for reelection, can we ask, do you have any plans in the future?
Elrich
Um, I may not be running for reelection, but it doesn’t mean I won’t be running for election, let’s put it that way.
*****
I will evaluate Elrich’s remarks in a future post, but there is math to do on this and other races. The election may be over but the work never ends!