{"id":8458,"date":"2017-09-05T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8458"},"modified":"2017-09-04T19:43:15","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T23:43:15","slug":"first-impressions-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8458","title":{"rendered":"First Impressions, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The combination of County Executive Ike Leggett\u2019s retirement, public campaign financing and term limits<\/a> is producing an unprecedented flood of candidates<\/a> running for the County Council\u2019s four at-large seats.\u00a0 By the time of the filing deadline<\/a> next February, thirty or more people could be in the race.\u00a0 Your author has previously written<\/a> about those who may be running who have prior electoral experience.\u00a0 Starting today, we will be sharing first impressions of seven new at-large candidates, all of whom have been subjected to withering, multi-hour interrogations by your author.\u00a0 We are pleased to report that all seven survived these encounters and any damage is hopefully temporary.<\/p>\n

The at-large council race is a fascinating and historic affair.\u00a0 Since the current council configuration was established in 1990, there have never been three at-large vacancies.\u00a0 Normally, your author considers the past in evaluating what the future will be.\u00a0 But in some respects, the past may not be as useful a guide as usual because of the sheer unprecedented nature of what is now happening.<\/p>\n

The best analogy for this current at-large race is a giant, open air bazaar.\u00a0 Voters enter it and encounter dozens of kiosks, each with a candidate selling his or her candidacy.\u00a0 Each candidate promises the best deal \u2013 just for you! \u2013 as the voters stroll by.\u00a0 Which ones can cut through the noise?\u00a0 Which ones can attract the most people?\u00a0 The four kiosks that sell their wares to the most voters will win the competition.\u00a0 And it could very well be that those wares will be very different from each other as different segments of the market drive their favored candidates to victory.<\/p>\n

Overall, the at-large field is shaping up to be deep and talented.\u00a0 The only shame here is that there are many more good candidates than available seats, meaning that some highly qualified people are going to lose.\u00a0 On to our first impressions of the new candidates, given in no particular order.<\/p>\n

Marilyn Balcombe, Germantown<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some liberals stereotype business leaders as anti-union, anti-government (except when collecting corporate welfare), anti-tax and primarily \u2013 perhaps solely \u2013 concerned with accumulating profits.\u00a0 Your author once worked on union organizing campaigns in the South and met a few corporate owners who fit that bill!\u00a0 But if that\u2019s what you think of business leaders in general, Marilyn Balcombe is going to surprise you.<\/p>\n

The long-time President\/CEO of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce, Balcombe is representative of MoCo\u2019s chamber leaders who tend to be very different from their counterparts elsewhere.\u00a0 All of the full-time, paid local chamber presidents are women.\u00a0 Some of them are moms who have been active in their PTAs.\u00a0 Most are Democrats who tend to be liberal on social issues.\u00a0 All favor funding for public education.\u00a0 All are pragmatic rather than ideological.\u00a0 And absolutely none of them are tea partiers.<\/p>\n

Balcombe, who holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology, is analytical by nature.\u00a0 She does not prejudge issues on the basis of ideology and continually seeks out evidence in making her decisions.\u00a0 She agrees with the county\u2019s emphasis on education but wants to augment it with robust economic development.\u00a0 She\u2019s a good listener who prefers policy to politics.\u00a0 (She will admit to not being crazy about the political parts of running for office!)\u00a0 Above all, she is a grown-up.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for a serious, hard-working, center-left candidate who will focus on making the county more competitive with its neighbors, Marilyn Balcombe should get your vote.<\/p>\n

More to come in Part Two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. The combination of County Executive Ike Leggett\u2019s retirement, public campaign financing and term limits is producing an unprecedented flood of candidates running for the County Council\u2019s four at-large seats.\u00a0 By the time of the filing deadline next February, thirty or more people could be in the race.\u00a0 Your author has previously written … Continue reading First Impressions, Part One<\/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":[151,209],"tags":[1545,1933,2013],"class_list":["post-8458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-council-at-large","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-council-at-large","tag-marilyn-balcombe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2cq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458","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=8458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8459,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458\/revisions\/8459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}