{"id":9338,"date":"2018-01-30T10:52:56","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T15:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9338"},"modified":"2018-01-30T11:58:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T16:58:22","slug":"campaign-finance-reports-districts-16-and-17-january-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9338","title":{"rendered":"Campaign Finance Reports: Districts 16 and 17, January 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

District 16<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

First, the easy part: all three incumbents \u2013 Senator Susan Lee and Delegates Ariana Kelly and Marc Korman \u2013 are running as a team and are headed to reelection.\u00a0 Lee has historically been one of the delegation\u2019s best fundraisers (although Korman surpassed her by a little bit this cycle).\u00a0 Kelly is beloved by advocates for families, women and children for her work on their issues and has emerged as a leader on ridding Annapolis of sexual harassment<\/a>.\u00a0 Korman is a rare bird: a lawyer who is good with numbers.\u00a0 Metro riders everywhere should thank him for his tenacious work to improve WMATA.\u00a0 Great things are predicted for Korman so long as he does not return to blogging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Attorney Sara Love and MCPS teacher Samir Paul are the top non-incumbents vying for the seat being vacated by Delegate Bill Frick, who is running for County Executive.\u00a0 Love and Paul would be great candidates in any part of the county, but unfortunately for them, they are running in the same district.\u00a0 Love fits in well with the progressive female voters who dominate District 16 primaries.\u00a0 Paul is a teacher who has been active in MCEA (which has endorsed him<\/a>), but his message is much bigger than education as he draws links between all public institutions that confer benefits but require investment, especially WMATA.\u00a0 Love and Paul had super fundraising performances and are essentially equal in cash on hand.\u00a0 Those who have met them are impressed with both of them, but sadly, there is only one open seat.<\/p>\n

The Big Question: will Frick, who filed a disappointing January report<\/a>, drop back down to the House race?\u00a0 We know Frick does not enjoy that question, but since he withdrew from the Attorney General\u2019s race and refiled for Delegate at the last hour in 2014<\/a>, this is on everybody\u2019s mind.\u00a0 Such a move by Frick would probably result in all four incumbents being reelected, wasting huge time and effort by Love and Paul.<\/p>\n

District 17<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

This district is a mess.\u00a0 The only certainty here is that Senator Cheryl Kagan and Delegate Kumar Barve will be reelected, assuming that Kagan is not picked up by a gubernatorial candidate as a running mate.\u00a0 As for everything else\u2026 well.<\/p>\n

At the root of the mess is Delegate Jim Gilchrist.\u00a0 By all accounts, he is a nice guy who never causes trouble.\u00a0 His defenders describe him as a studious, intellectual workhorse who gets into the weeds and doesn\u2019t claim credit for anything.\u00a0 But he has little tangible to show for three terms in office.\u00a0 He has passed no signature legislation.\u00a0 His website<\/a> is inactive.\u00a0 His Facebook page<\/a> has not been updated since 2014 as of this writing.\u00a0 And his fundraising is weak.\u00a0 Consider this: since 2006, Gilchrist has raised a total of $83,217 from others, an average of $27,739 per cycle.\u00a0 (He has also self-financed $11,120 over that period.)\u00a0 MoCo has a bunch of candidates who can raise $27,000 in a month.<\/em><\/p>\n

The search result for Gilchrist\u2019s website less than five months from election day.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

So why does he keep winning office?\u00a0 He has a guardian angel: Barve, who is his committee chair and likes him.\u00a0 Barve slates with him regularly and appears in joint mailers with him.\u00a0 Gilchrist would be a goner in most districts, but with Barve helping him, he survives.\u00a0 And that has caused grumbling in some parts of District 17.<\/p>\n

This time, Rockville City Council Member Julie Palakovich Carr decided to run for Delegate<\/a> in July even when it appeared that all three incumbents (Barve, Gilchrist and Andrew Platt) were running for reelection.\u00a0 Six months later, Platt dropped out<\/a> and Barve and Gilchrist quickly decided to slate with Palakovich Carr<\/a>.\u00a0 That\u2019s when simmering tensions erupted into the open.<\/p>\n

Kagan, who is no fan of Gilchrist, announced that she was not endorsing the Delegate slate, at least not yet.\u00a0 This is almost unheard of; in virtually all cases when incumbent Delegates form a slate and none of them are challenging the sitting Senator, the Senator participates.\u00a0 And when Kagan posted her decision on Facebook, the Mayor of Gaithersburg and two Gaithersburg City Council Members voiced their displeasure with the slate.<\/p>\n

Open dissatisfaction with the Delegate slate surfaces on Kagan\u2019s Facebook page.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The nominal reason expressed by some for their unhappiness is that with the inclusion of Palakovich Carr, all three slate members are from Rockville and none are from Gaithersburg.\u00a0 (The two cities are roughly equal in size.)\u00a0 But lurking underneath is festering discontent with Gilchrist\u2019s performance in office.\u00a0 Some would prefer open competition in part because it might lead to Gilchrist\u2019s defeat, but instead they got another slate designed to protect him.\u00a0 Two Gaithersburg House candidates \u2013 school board member Rebecca Smondrowski and attorney Julian Haffner (who is married to a City Council Member) \u2013 have now entered the race.\u00a0 Barve is the only Delegate candidate with any real money, so all the others have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

The Big Questions: will the Gaithersburg grumblers step up and organize for one or more of the House candidates from their city?\u00a0 Or will they cut their losses and make their peace with Barve and his slate-mates?\u00a0 And what, if anything, will Kagan do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. District 16 First, the easy part: all three incumbents \u2013 Senator Susan Lee and Delegates Ariana Kelly and Marc Korman \u2013 are running as a team and are headed to reelection.\u00a0 Lee has historically been one of the delegation\u2019s best fundraisers (although Korman surpassed her by a little bit this cycle).\u00a0 Kelly … Continue reading Campaign Finance Reports: Districts 16 and 17, January 2018<\/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":[151,116,272,251,228,172,299,27,274,273],"tags":[1545,1531,441,1582,1572,1550,1597,1886,1436,1473,1594,1220,2124,2123,1593],"class_list":["post-9338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-ariana-kelly","category-bill-frick","category-cheryl-kagan","category-district-16","category-district-17","category-jim-gilchrist","category-kumar-barve","category-marc-korman","category-susan-lee","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-ariana-kelly","tag-bill-frick-2","tag-cheryl-kagan","tag-district-16","tag-district-17","tag-jim-gilchrist","tag-julian-haffner","tag-julie-palakovich-carr","tag-kumar-barve","tag-marc-korman","tag-rebecca-smondrowski","tag-samir-paul","tag-sara-love","tag-susan-lee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2qC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338","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=9338"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9347,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338\/revisions\/9347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}