{"id":11497,"date":"2018-07-16T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11497"},"modified":"2019-05-29T04:28:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T08:28:41","slug":"moco-democrats-reveal-preferred-directions-for-the-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11497","title":{"rendered":"MoCo Democrats Reveal Preferred Directions for the County"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lots of attention has been paid to who will win the MoCo Democratic Primary for Executive.\u00a0 At this point, it appears to be Council Member Marc Elrich.\u00a0 But much less attention has been paid to something equally important: the voice of the voters.\u00a0 In this primary, MoCo Democrats spoke out loud and clear about their preferred directions for the future of the county.<\/p>\n

The Executive race is like no other in MoCo.\u00a0 The office may not be as powerful as the County Council on paper, but its holder is THE leader and spokesman for the county and sets the tone and direction of the county going forward.\u00a0 Voters understand that.\u00a0 And they scrutinize the message and vision of the Executive candidates to a much greater extent than others running for local office.<\/p>\n

In this primary, there were six candidates for Executive.\u00a0 Each had enough resources to be heard.\u00a0 And as a group, they sent three kinds of messages to the voters.\u00a0 By choosing between these three messages, the voters indicated their preferred directions for the county\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Status Quo (23% of the vote)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Council Members Roger Berliner and George Leventhal ran on their records in office and argued that they merited a promotion to Executive.\u00a0 Berliner and Leventhal were arguably the two most effective legislators on the County Council.\u00a0 Both showed substantial skill at passing a large variety of bills, including difficult ones like Berliner\u2019s bill to protect street trees and Leventhal\u2019s bill to prevent unilateral sales of county property by the Executive.\u00a0 The two served a combined twenty-four years as committee chairs and each was elected Council President twice.\u00a0 Their records were not just their own, but were also essentially those of the council itself.\u00a0 Boiled down to its basic nature, their message was, \u201cI\u2019m an experienced leader and you can count on me to continue the county\u2019s success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berliner and Leventhal ran on their records as Council Members in their mail.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>\"engagement<\/a><\/p>\n

In many years, this kind of strategy would have worked.\u00a0 MoCo Democrats tend to respect effective elected service.\u00a0 But this was not one of those years as Berliner and Leventhal combined to get 23% of the vote.\u00a0 More than three-quarters of Democrats opted for change of one kind or another.<\/p>\n

Progressive Plus Anti-Developer Direction (29% of the vote)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite being in elected office continuously for 31 years, Council Member Marc Elrich ran as a change candidate.\u00a0 He argued that the county needed a more progressive social justice direction that would help renters, vulnerable people and those living in and close to poverty.\u00a0 He was especially focused on closing the achievement gap in public schools and instituting the most progressive environmental standards in the nation.\u00a0 At the same time, he lambasted developers<\/a> as \u201cthe special interest with too much influence over the government\u201d and vowed to \u201chold developers accountable for providing the resources necessary to maintain our quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elrich\u2019s comments about developers on his website and in email are in line with the message he has used for decades.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t just Elrich\u2019s campaign; almost the entire progressive movement in MoCo lined up behind him and did everything they could to get him elected.\u00a0 The result was 29% of the vote.<\/p>\n

Competitive Direction (48% of the vote)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three non-Council Members \u2013 businessman David Blair, former Rockville Mayor Rose Krasnow and Delegate Bill Frick \u2013 had very different biographies but they had similar campaign messages, especially on the economy.\u00a0 All three agreed that the county\u2019s economic competitiveness is slipping<\/a> and must be restored to fund the kinds of progressive priorities favored by all the candidates, and most of the voters.<\/p>\n

Blair, Krasnow and Frick made economic competitiveness the focus of their campaigns in their mail and websites.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blair, Krasnow and Frick combined to receive 48% of the vote with essentially the same message on the economy.\u00a0 The Executive election revealed that the group of voters wanting economic competitiveness and tax restraint is the largest faction in the county\u2019s Democratic Party.\u00a0 The competitive direction candidates did not win because there were too many of them and they split up each other\u2019s support, allowing Elrich to squeak in by 80 votes.<\/p>\n

Combine the competitive direction Democrats with the roughly 40% of registered voters who are unaffiliated or Republicans and you get 70% of the general electorate \u2013 the exact percentage who voted for term limits.\u00a0 These numbers are not a coincidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Executive election is not quite finished yet.\u00a0 Council Member Nancy Floreen is trying to get on the ballot as an independent, which we believe is an uphill battle<\/a>, and a general election awaits.\u00a0 But through their votes on candidate messages, MoCo Democrats have spoken about where they would like the county to go.\u00a0 Elected officials would be wise to heed them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Lots of attention has been paid to who will win the MoCo Democratic Primary for Executive.\u00a0 At this point, it appears to be Council Member Marc Elrich.\u00a0 But much less attention has been paid to something equally important: the voice of the voters.\u00a0 In this primary, MoCo Democrats spoke out loud and … Continue reading MoCo Democrats Reveal Preferred Directions for the County<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,272,492,338,16,84,46],"tags":[1545,441,1627,1938,1993,1464,1508,1480,2064],"class_list":["post-11497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-bill-frick","category-county-executive","category-economy","category-george-leventhal","category-marc-elrich","category-roger-berliner","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-bill-frick-2","tag-county-executive","tag-david-blair","tag-economy","tag-george-leventhal","tag-marc-elrich","tag-roger-berliner","tag-rose-krasnow"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2Zr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11497"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12119,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497\/revisions\/12119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}