A behind-the-scenes political contest that has been simmering for more than seven months will be decided tonight, as the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) meets to name a successor to U.S. Rep.-elect Jamie Raskin as state senator from Silver Spring/Takoma Park-based District 20.
As has been the case since Raskin captured the Democratic nomination for Congress late last April, the race to succeed him in Annapolis remains largely a faceoff between District 20 Dels. David Moon and Will Smith—both of whom have rolled out key endorsements in recent days in an effort to lock up a majority vote of the 28-member MCDCC. The committee will make its choice in a special meeting at 7 p.m. in the Silver Spring Civic Center.
Also filing by the Tuesday evening deadline were three other candidates: civic and political activist Darian Unger, who sought a seat in the House of Delegates in 2014; political newcomer Scott Brown; and Arthur Jackson, a Democratic activist in Prince George’s County and the District of Columbia before moving to District 20 in 2011.
However, former County Council member Valerie Ervin, who earlier had indicated she was considering a bid for the vacancy, said late Tuesday she had opted against filing to seek the appointment. “I decided it wasn’t my time to do this,” said Ervin, who resigned from the council in 2013 and mounted a short-lived bid for Congress last year. “Other people had been working the committee a lot longer than I had, and I didn’t want to get in the mix.”
The county’s police and firefighters unions—FOP Lodge 35 and IAFF Local 1664, respectively—announced their endorsement of Smith for the appointment in a letter Monday.
That came three days after a coalition of other local unions had declared their backing for Moon. Among the unions in the pro-Moon coalition: UFCW 1994 MCGEO, which represents a large majority of Montgomery County government employees, and SEIU Local 500, whose membership includes the support staff in the county’s school system.
General Assembly Website
Del. David Moon, left, and Del. Will Smith
The 34-year old Smith, who, if appointed would be the first African-American state senator from Montgomery County, has garnered endorsements from the African-American Democratic Club of Montgomery County and the county’s African Immigrant Caucus, as well as the Muslim Democratic Club of Montgomery County. Moon, 37, who would be only the second Asian-American to represent the county in the Senate (District 16 Sen. Susan Lee, elected in 2014, is the first), has the support of the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans of Maryland.
Moon also has significant support from the local Hispanic-American community: The Latino Democratic Club of Montgomery County has endorsed him, as has council member Nancy Navarro, the council’s only Hispanic-American member. Moon, a longtime political operative before his election to the House of Delegates, managed Navarro’s first campaign for the council. CASA In Action—the political arm of CASA, which advocates for Latino immigrants in Maryland—is part of the labor coalition that endorsed Moon late last week.
Besides Navarro, elected county officials who have gotten involved in the contest include County Executive Ike Leggett, the county’s first black chief executive, and council member Craig Rice, the only African-American currently on the council. Both have endorsed Smith, while at-large council member Hans Riemer, a Takoma Park resident, is backing Moon.
Meanwhile, at-large council member Marc Elrich, also a Takoma Park resident, weighed in this past weekend with a letter to the MCDCC urging appointment of a “caretaker” to serve until 2018, to allow for an open-seat election for the Senate without an incumbent running.
Elrich’s letter comes amid some recent blowback in District 20 over the longstanding provision of the Maryland constitution that leaves the filling of mid-term vacancies in the General Assembly to the political party of the officeholder who previously held the seat, rather than allowing a special election to be held.
“People just fundamentally think that these seats should be filled by election, not appointment, particularly since these will be two-year appointments. People want to VOTE for their representatives,” Elrich told the MCDCC, adding, “When the County Council recently had a vacancy, we opted to appoint a caretaker and I think it was the right decision. After listening to people, I’ve concluded it would probably be a wise decision here.” He was referring to the 2013 decision by the council to name Cherri Branson to the seat vacated by Ervin’s resignation, with Branson pledging not to seek a full term in 2014 to allow for an open-seat race.
“We are blessed with some smart, politically involved and progressive people that we could draw from,” Elrich added, without endorsing a particular candidate as a caretaker senator. However, Unger, who has been seeking the Senate seat for months while pledging not to run for a full term if appointed, said Tuesday he had urged Elrich to send such a letter to the committee.
“I have said this is not a democratic process, and this is my way of trying to improve it,” Unger said.
However, despite unhappiness in several quarters about the current appointment process—which MCDCC Treasurer Tim Whitehouse criticized in a Washington Post op-ed piece late last month—the idea of appointing a caretaker to ensure an open-seat race in 2018 appears to have gained little traction within the committee.
This will be the third time in a little more than three years that a state Senate seat from Montgomery County has come vacant due to a resignation, and, in the past two instances—involving District 15 in 2013 and District 14 last year—the MCDCC voted to elevate a sitting delegate to the Senate. The difference between those vacancies and Wednesday’s decision is that efforts to agree on a consensus candidate in District 20 failed, forcing the committee to decide most likely between two incumbent delegates in a contest expected to be close.
But, if the appointment process is not popular with many Democratic activists as well as the rank-and-file electorate, both current members of the county’s legislative delegation and the MCDCC itself have benefited from it. Of the 32 senators and delegates now representing Montgomery County, nearly one-third had their Annapolis careers launched or advanced through the appointment process.
And the MCDCC, in naming a sitting delegate to the state Senate, creates a vacant delegate seat that also must be filled by appointment—presenting an opportunity for MCDCC members to move up the ladder.
When then-Del. Craig Zucker was named to fill a Senate vacancy in District 14 last year, then-MCDCC member Pam Queen was appointed by the committee to fill his delegate seat. This time around, at least one member of the MCDCC, Jheanelle Wilkins, has expressed an interest in the delegate vacancy that would result if Moon or Smith is named to succeed Raskin. She’s one of up to a dozen Democratic activists in District 20 who might go after that slot.
Before winning election to the House of Delegates in 2014, both Moon and Smith served as campaign managers for Raskin. Raskin, who resigned the Senate seat last month and will be sworn into Congress on Jan. 3, has avoided taking sides in the Moon vs. Smith faceoff—after earlier trying unsuccessfully to head off such a confrontation.
