The Montgomery County Education Association announced late Wednesday that it was withdrawing its endorsement of Board of Education member Christopher Barclay in the latter’s bid for the Democratic nomination for the District 5 County Council seat.
The move followed disclosures that Barclay used a school board-issued credit card for $1,500 in unauthorized expenses over a two-year period. In a statement, MCEA President Doug Prouty said: “We believe Chris can have a good future in public service in the county. But in light of the recent news and financial disclosures, we cannot recommend him in this race at this time.”
The MCEA, which represents 12,000 teachers in the county school system, is left without an endorsed candidate in the District 5 race less than three weeks before the June 24 Democratic primary. Sources close to the union said there are no plans to endorse another candidate.
The decision to rescind the endorsement, approved by a supermajority of a gathering of the MCEA’s representative assembly, came a day after another major county public employee union, Service Employees International Union Local 500, announced it was dropping its support of Barclay and switching its endorsement to another candidate for the council seat – state Del. Tom Hucker. The SEIU represents non-teaching support staff in the school system.
Hucker had aggressively sought the backing of the MCEA earlier this year when it went to Barclay. But knowledgeable sources said there was no appetite within the MCEA for a switch to Hucker at this time, for fear that it would be viewed as opportunistic and an effort by the MCEA to jump aboard the bandwagon of a candidate viewed in many quarters as the frontrunner for the District 5 nomination.
“As teachers and childhood educators, we hold ourselves to the highest of standards,” Prouty said in his statement explaining the MCEA’s decision. "It is what our community expects of all those in public service. We also believe that Chris Barclay has been – and we hope will continue to be – an important voice for our county’s neediest students, schools and neighborhoods. Nevertheless, we regretfully withdraw MCEA’s recommendation of Mr. Barclay…for the vacant County Council District 5 office.”
Prouty did add, “We look forward to continuing to work with Chris as a member of the Board of Education.” Barclay’s term on that body runs through 2016.
In a brief conversation Wednesday evening, Barclay reiterated earlier comments that he plans to remain in the race, and later issued a statement declaring in part: “I am disappointed in the decisions of MCEA and SEIU. I have stood with [Montgomery County Public School] employees to make sure they got pay increases, to fend off furloughs and to make sure that they could maintain affordable health benefits when times got tough. It's too bad they couldn't do the same for me.”
The MCEA decision appears to be the first time the group has rescinded the endorsement of a candidate in the midst of a campaign. The MCEA and SEIU moves also leave Barclay bereft of significant outside organizational support in his County Council bid, and calls into question the viability of his already struggling campaign for the District 5 nomination.
Barclay does have the endorsements of three current council members — County Council President Craig Rice, District 4 Councilmember Nancy Navarro, and interim District 5 Councilmember Cherri Branson. Those endorsements were orchestrated by former District 5 Councilmember Valerie Ervin, who has sought to keep the seat in the hands of a minority group member. Both Barclay and Ervin are African-American.
But, even before this week’s developments, the contest for the Democratic nomination in District 5 – which extends from Silver Spring and Takoma Park north along the border with Prince Georges County – was increasingly viewed as a two-way race between Hucker and Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board Chair Evan Glass.
Barclay had just $5,000 in the bank as of January. His latest campaign finance report, filed last week, showed him raising about $20,000 during the first five months of 2014, leaving him with a paltry $7,700 in his campaign treasury in the month leading up to the June 24 primary.
By comparison, the latest filings showed Hucker sitting on nearly $133,000 in the final weeks of the primary, with Glass having nearly $68,000 in the bank.
The two other candidates in the District 5 contest, management consultant Terrill North – a board member of Impact Silver Spring, a community service group – and Jeffrey Thames, who heads an organization that seeks to provide opportunities to former prisoners, have both been hampered by a lack of funds in seeking to mount viable campaigns. North reported having about $17,500 in the bank last week – he and his wife have loaned the campaign $16,500 of their personal assets – while Thames’ filing said he had just $350 on hand.
Besides the newly won endorsement of the SEIU, Hucker had previously garnered the backing of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1994 MCGEO, which represents about 5,500 permanent workers in the county government and other local public agencies. Also behind Hucker are the Montgomery County Firefighters Association and the union representing county police officers, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35, along with the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO.
Of the nearly $24,000 that Hucker – who founded and ran labor-allied Progressive Maryland prior to his election to General Assembly in 2006 — has raised since January, $9,000 came from groups affiliated with organized labor, according to his latest campaign finance report.
Hucker’s close ties to labor, combined with an aggressive style that some critics contend borders on bullying, has created palpable nervousness among elements of the county’s business community – who envision him exerting considerably more influence on the nine-member County Council than as a two-term member of the 141-member House of Delegates. But the degree to which Glass may benefit from this restiveness in the dwindling period before the primary is unclear.
Glass, who last week won the influential endorsement of the Washington Post — in an editorial that charged both Hucker and Barclay are “in thrall to the unions and would set the county back on a path toward profligate spending” – has received the formal endorsement of one business group, the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors. Political action committees tied to that group and its state affiliate, the Maryland Association of Realtors, donated a total of $12,000 to his campaign. That represents more than a quarter of the $43,000 Glass raised over the past five months.
MCGEO officials, in a recent post to their Web site headlined “The Post would like to see us destroyed,” took particular aim at Glass, a former journalist who recently co-authored an opinion page article in the Post advocating privatization of Montgomery County’s current system of distributing and selling alcoholic beverages.
“…Evan Glass, who bills himself as a progressive, is interested in privatizing the Department of Liquor Control!” MCGEO charged. “His plan would mean many of our members would lose their good, middle class jobs. And if he, and others who agree with him, can succeed at privatizing one County department, which department do you think will fall next?”
In a statement Wednesday following the MCEA decision, Glass declared: “The MCEA took a good look at both Christopher Barclay and Tom Hucker and voted to support neither candidate. Their decision underscores the need for oversight and accountability and sends the right message to voters that we need responsible local leadership on the County Council.”
“Now it's up to the people of the 5th District to vote on who will best represent them at the local level.”
