{"id":7878,"date":"2017-04-25T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7878"},"modified":"2017-04-23T20:18:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T00:18:09","slug":"two-tiers-in-the-at-large-council-race-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7878","title":{"rendered":"Two Tiers in the At-Large Council Race, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In Part One, we spotlighted five losing candidates who went on to be elected to multiple terms on the Montgomery County Council.\u00a0 That illustrates a key point: candidates with electoral experience often come back stronger in future races, even if they lose their first elections.\u00a0 The top tier of potential at-large council candidates includes the following people who have earned lots of votes in prior races for council and the General Assembly and presumably know how to earn them in the future.<\/p>\n

Hans Riemer <\/u><\/p>\n

49,932 votes in the 2014 at-large primary, third place<\/p>\n

Your author admits to being partial to Riemer as a former member of his staff.\u00a0 That said, he is the only incumbent in the race as his three current colleagues have been tossed out by term limits.\u00a0 Back in 2010, we ran a series on why MoCo incumbents lose and identified four reasons: they were Republicans<\/a>, they were lazy<\/a>, they made lots of enemies<\/a> (especially in their districts) and they had great challengers<\/a>.\u00a0 Riemer is not a Republican, he\u2019s not lazy and he has no more enemies than most other local politicians.\u00a0 Great challengers are rare, and because Riemer is the only incumbent running for one of four seats, four great challengers would have to get in to knock him out.\u00a0 That\u2019s just not going to happen.\u00a0 The only certainty in this race is that Riemer will be reelected.<\/p>\n

Beth Daly<\/u><\/p>\n

39,642 votes in the 2014 at-large primary, fifth place<\/p>\n

Dickerson activist Beth Daly ran a solid at-large campaign in 2014.\u00a0 Her support crossed over with incumbent Marc Elrich and she got many valuable endorsements from the labor and environmental communities.\u00a0 Daly\u2019s problem had less to do with her and more to do with the field as she was running against four incumbents.\u00a0 So did Riemer in 2010, but he benefited from incumbent Duchy Trachtenberg\u2019s blowing up her relationships with labor and sitting on a huge unspent campaign balance.\u00a0 None of the 2014 incumbents committed mistakes of that magnitude, and Daly, despite all the things she did right, could not break through.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know if she has any interest in running again, but if she does, she would be a strong contender in a wide open race.<\/p>\n

Tom Hucker<\/u><\/p>\n

7,667 votes in the 2014 District 5 primary, winner<\/p>\n

If Hucker stays in District 5, he will be defending a safe seat.\u00a0 Pay no attention to his close victory in 2014; Hucker and his super-duper staff led by MCDCC Chair Dave Kunes have locked down the district.\u00a0 But there are rumors that Hucker could run at-large.\u00a0 If he does, he would be formidable.\u00a0 Hucker has a true-blue progressive voting record in both Rockville and Annapolis, and with more than 20 years of political experience, he knows how to win.\u00a0 Labor and the environmentalists will be there for him, too.\u00a0 Note: it\u2019s misleading to compare the vote totals of Hucker and his 2014 opponent, Evan Glass, to the other candidates on this list.\u00a0 Hucker and Glass ran in a vote-for-one race whereas most of the others ran in multiple-vote races.<\/p>\n

Evan Glass<\/u><\/p>\n

7,445 votes in the 2014 District 5 primary, second place<\/p>\n

Former journalist and uber-activist Evan Glass nearly shocked the world by coming close to beating heavy favorite Hucker in 2014.\u00a0 Since then, he has kept busy by running youth film non-profit Gandhi Brigade and serving on Committee for Montgomery\u2019s board.\u00a0 He has well-wishers in many parts of the county\u2019s political community and could be a consensus candidate in whatever election he enters.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to note that Glass and Hucker won\u2019t be in the same race.\u00a0 One will run in District 5 and the other will run at-large.\u00a0 Our prediction: there is a strong possibility that the two former rivals will be council colleagues in December 2018.<\/p>\n

Will Jawando<\/u><\/p>\n

5,620 votes in the 2014 Legislative District 20 primary, fourth place<\/p>\n

5,634 votes in MoCo in the 2016 Congressional District 8 primary, fifth place<\/p>\n

Former Obama aide Will Jawando is the kind of candidate you could fall in love with.\u00a0 He\u2019s handsome, well-spoken and ridiculously charismatic.\u00a0 He\u2019s also good at raising money.\u00a0 But after running strong for a District 20 House seat in 2014, he inexplicably ran for Congress in 2016.\u00a0 Our prediction is that Delegate Sheila Hixson, who just gave up a committee chair she held for more than twenty years, will retire and Jawando will run for her seat.\u00a0 But if Jawando runs for council at-large instead, he will get more than his fair share of votes.<\/p>\n

Charles Barkley<\/u><\/p>\n

4,896 votes in the 2014 Legislative District 39 primary, first place<\/p>\n

Note: the above race had no challengers<\/p>\n

District 39 Delegate Charles Barkley was first elected in 1998 as part of a slate of Democrats who took out three Republican Delegates.\u00a0 He has coasted to victory in the district ever since.\u00a0 Something of a maverick<\/a> in Annapolis, Barkley has told Bethesda Magazine that he will likely be running for council at-large<\/a>.\u00a0 Barkley\u2019s problems are that he has never run a modern campaign including social media and blast email and his district has the smallest number of regular Democratic voters of any legislative district in the county<\/a>.\u00a0 But he reported a $205,478 campaign account balance in January 2017, and if he doesn\u2019t enroll in public financing, he can spend every cent of that in a race for council.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the top tier.\u00a0 The second tier is everyone else.\u00a0 There are some noteworthy candidates stepping forward.\u00a0 Chris Wilhelm<\/a> is a progressive MCPS teacher who has worked for Delegate David Moon (D-20) and is off to a fast start.\u00a0 Marilyn Balcombe, President\/CEO of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce, is well-known in the business community and is smart and pragmatic.\u00a0 School board members Rebecca Smondrowski and Jill Ortman-Fouse have not publicly said they\u2019re interested in the council \u2013 yet \u2013 but both of them ran against MCEA-endorsed opponents and won.\u00a0 Would any of them, or any of the many other people thinking about running, be top-notch candidates?\u00a0 There\u2019s no way to tell right now.\u00a0 But given the number of at-large openings and the high probability that some of the top-tier people won\u2019t get in, at least one new candidate will probably win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. In Part One, we spotlighted five losing candidates who went on to be elected to multiple terms on the Montgomery County Council.\u00a0 That illustrates a key point: candidates with electoral experience often come back stronger in future races, even if they lose their first elections.\u00a0 The top tier of potential at-large council … Continue reading Two Tiers in the At-Large Council Race, Part Two<\/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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,355,209,90],"tags":[1545,846,1606,1933,469,1513,781,703],"class_list":["post-7878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-charles-barkley","category-council-at-large","category-hans-riemer","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-beth-daly","tag-charles-barkley","tag-council-at-large","tag-evan-glass","tag-hans-riemer","tag-tom-hucker","tag-will-jawando"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-234","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7878","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=7878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7881,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7878\/revisions\/7881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}