{"id":9234,"date":"2018-01-16T08:03:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T13:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9234"},"modified":"2018-01-16T08:03:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T13:03:31","slug":"the-floreen-path-to-at-large-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9234","title":{"rendered":"The Floreen Path to At-Large Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Montgomery County\u2019s At-Large County Council race may be the hardest contest in the county to predict.\u00a0 That\u2019s because it doesn\u2019t necessarily involve candidates running against each other directly.\u00a0 It operates more like a political market in which the four candidates who are able to sell their product to the most people win.\u00a0 That\u2019s why candidates who are completely different from each other \u2013 who are selling entirely different things \u2013 often finish in the top four together.\u00a0 Viewed in this way, there are multiple paths to victory available in every at-large election.\u00a0 One path worth examining for this year is the one taken by four-term incumbent Nancy Floreen.<\/p>\n

Floreen, a former Planning Board Member and Mayor of Garrett Park, was first elected as part of Doug Duncan\u2019s End Gridlock slate in 2002.\u00a0 With four terms in office, she is by far the longest-serving female at-large Council Member since the council\u2019s current structure was established in 1990.\u00a0 She has enjoyed strong support from the business and real estate communities for her entire tenure in office and has also drawn some labor and progressive backing.\u00a0 One union that has never endorsed her is MCEA \u2013 indeed, she is the only council candidate who has been elected four straight times without the Apple Ballot since MCEA began using it in the 1990s.\u00a0 Floreen is not known for initiating progressive bills, but she has often voted for them, including the 2008 prevailing wage law, the 2013 and 2017 minimum wage hikes, the 2014 public campaign financing law and the 2015 paid sick leave law.\u00a0 Despite her reputation for business-friendly positions, Floreen passed three major tax hikes during her two years as Council President and voted for others.\u00a0 Progressives don\u2019t give her enough credit for her willingness to support new revenue for government.\u00a0 And so it\u2019s fair to say that she has balanced between the left and the center during her four terms in office.<\/p>\n

A Floreen mailer from her first campaign in 2002.\u00a0 Note how she shows support from two very different County Executives.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The electoral trajectory of Council Member Marc Elrich, who went from losing four straight council races to finishing first at-large two cycles in a row, is well known.\u00a0 Several candidates have tried to emulate his success over the years but none have matched it.\u00a0 Floreen\u2019s success is less recognized but still substantial.\u00a0 Since 2002, she has finished third, fourth, third and second in the Democratic primaries in that order.\u00a0 Since her first election, she has cut the vote gap between herself and the first-place finisher by more than half.\u00a0 If she were not covered by term limits and chose to run for reelection, she would be the odds-on favorite to finish first in the next at-large race with Elrich running for Executive.<\/p>\n

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Below are Floreen\u2019s ranks of finish in the 2006, 2010 and 2014 primaries by state legislative and council district.\u00a0 Also displayed is her percentage of the vote in 2014.\u00a0 She enjoyed significant gains in 2014, especially in Upcounty districts where she finished first or second.<\/p>\n

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Below is the same information displayed by city and town.\u00a0 In 2014, Floreen became the top vote-getter in most Upcounty areas including Brookeville, Clarksburg, Damascus, Darnestown, Germantown, Laytonsville and Montgomery Village as well as Burtonsville, Gaithersburg, Sandy Spring and Wheaton.\u00a0 Her vote percentages ranged from 18-22% with the exceptions of Dickerson, Downtown Silver Spring and Takoma Park, areas with local favorites in the race.<\/p>\n

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Floreen combines schools and jobs in a 2014 mailer.<\/em><\/p>\n

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So what has Floreen been selling in the at-large political market?\u00a0 She has run as a center-left, business-backed candidate emphasizing economic growth, job creation, schools and social liberalism.\u00a0 She has also been aided by the fact that in three of her four terms, she was the only female at-large incumbent.\u00a0 That combination allowed her to pick up lots of votes in relatively moderate Upcounty and Midcounty areas as well as from people who felt the council should have at least one woman who represented the whole county.\u00a0 Not only has that been a successful strategy, it has been increasingly successful over time.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just due to incumbency \u2013 during Floreen\u2019s tenure in office, two of her at-large colleagues were defeated and another (George Leventhal) slid from finishing first in 2006 to fourth in the next two cycles.\u00a0 By 2014, enough voters wanted to buy Floreen\u2019s product that they elevated her above everyone else save Elrich.<\/p>\n

There are echoes of Elrich all over the evolving at-large race.\u00a0 Several candidates are advocating his positions in favor of raising the minimum wage, limiting the influence of corporate money, protecting renters and working to reduce income inequality.\u00a0 But Floreen\u2019s path to at-large success is a proven winner too.\u00a0 Will anyone take it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Montgomery County\u2019s At-Large County Council race may be the hardest contest in the county to predict.\u00a0 That\u2019s because it doesn\u2019t necessarily involve candidates running against each other directly.\u00a0 It operates more like a political market in which the four candidates who are able to sell their product to the most people win.\u00a0 … Continue reading The Floreen Path to At-Large Success<\/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_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,209,44],"tags":[1545,1933,1478],"class_list":["post-9234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-council-at-large","category-nancy-floreen","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-council-at-large","tag-nancy-floreen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2oW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234","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=9234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9244,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234\/revisions\/9244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}