This person adds: “It’s not meant to be a criticism of everything that the council does. It’s a generalized dissatisfaction with a group of people who, for the most part, lack business experience, lack business sensitivity and don’t have as one of their primary agenda items growing our economic base.”
Empower Montgomery, which describes itself as an education and advocacy group that isn't affiliated with a political party, is organized under the IRS code as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4). It is barred from advocating for or against a particular candidate, but is permitted to run advertising that focuses on issues that may affect next year’s election. It plans to raise money to do so.
In addition, while the county’s new public campaign financing system—due to kick in with the 2017-2018 election cycle—is intended to limit the role of wealthy individuals and interest groups in local campaigns, next year could see a sharp increase in money in so-called independent expenditure efforts at the county level. Long a fixture in federal elections, independent expenditure campaigns permit unlimited individual and corporate donations to be used to directly bolster or attack a candidate, as long as the independent expenditure does not coordinate with an individual candidate’s committee.
“2018 could be the year of the independent expenditure, because of the number of candidates and the change in campaign finance laws,” Silverman predicts, alluding to recent modifications in state law that have restricted corporate contributions to individual candidates.
Barring the unlikely event of a competitive general election campaign, the independent expenditure efforts likely would be aimed at the June 2018 Democratic primary in an effort to affect the outcome by broadening the electorate that traditionally votes.
“The demographics of the county have changed. Are they going to be reflected in off-year Democratic primary voters?” wonders Silverman, who now runs a government relations/lobbying firm. “The other question in terms of trying to look at 2018 is, ‘Can you expand the voting population beyond the super Dems?’”
That’s a reference to the hard-core primary voters, disproportionately older, who turn out in off-year primaries—and who effectively determine who is elected to the county executive’s office and the County Council. In 2014, 25.7 percent of registered Democrats voted in the primary for county executive and other local and state offices, down from a little over a 26 percent turnout in 2010. Empower Montgomery lists as one of its aims “to engage younger and independent voters who feel shut out from a closed political process.”
The business community, unhappy over last year’s sharp increases in property and recordation taxes, could have a surprising partner. Gino Renne, president of UFCW Local 1994 MCGEO—which represents the large majority of the county government’s 9,000-member workforce—says his union has been holding “some informal conversations” with business groups “because we all understand the need to expand out the tax base, otherwise we are going to have some significant challenges maintaining quality government services.”
Renne, whose union had a mixed record in its endorsements in the 2014 primary election, has made little secret of his distaste for the current council’s budgetary decisions and their impact on his membership. “This council has been the most arrogant I have ever seen, dating back to 1977,” he says. “Do I believe the…candidates due to be termed out are going to be viable candidates [for county executive] in the eyes of the average voter? My answer to that is that they’ve got one helluva hill to climb.”
Renne adds: “I think the stars have lined up for an outsider to come in with clear vision and a clear business plan—and I think they’re going to be the person to beat, whoever that may be.”
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Shortly after Elrich began serving his first term as a councilmember in 2007, he sought to invite representatives of Venezuela’s socialist regime to discuss possible areas of cooperation with the council. Leggett, who found out about Elrich’s move while on a trip to Israel, quickly moved to quash it.
“[To say] I was pretty animated would be an understatement, I guess,” the low-key Leggett, who for the most part has had a friendly relationship with Elrich, chuckled in an interview several years after the episode. “I was pretty upset.”
Now, in the crowded field of candidates eyeing a run for county executive next year, both friends and foes of Elrich agree that he may be the closest thing to an early front-runner in the race to succeed Leggett.
“That’s what everybody has told me,” Elrich says with a smile.
Elrich is also the most controversial candidate in the field. Members of the county’s business community all but quake at the prospect of him occupying the executive’s office, a mood brought on by his recent role as the council’s leading critic of development in the county and a left-wing past that dates back a half-century to his days as a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Maryland. Some critics in the business community regard him as a foe of capitalism.
After spending years on the council resisting questions about his ideological leanings, Elrich seems resigned to the need to address them now that he is seeking the county’s highest office. “Nothing I have recommended in Montgomery County has anything to do with socialism,” Elrich says. “I think people overestimate my affinity for ideology. I see myself as much more practical.
“Do I share a very progressive view of human beings, that everybody should get a fairer share of what’s on the table? Yeah. If that’s socialism, I guess I’m guilty of it.”
He also has had a bumpy relationship with a number of his council colleagues, and is the only veteran member of the council never chosen to be its president or vice president. Floreen is sharply critical of Elrich’s longtime refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at public gatherings, saying she finds this “offensive for a public official.” Elrich says he has long been opposed to loyalty oaths, which he considers the Pledge of Allegiance to be, and doesn’t plan to alter his stance. “Some of the worst Americans probably said the pledge every day—Oliver North comes to mind,” he says, alluding to a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s.
Despite the negative reaction that the mere mention of his name sparks in some political circles, Elrich benefits from the most defined base of any of the potential candidates: a combination of liberal activists who regularly turn out for Democratic primaries, and vocal residents concerned about the encroachment of development into their residential communities.
Elrich arguably would also benefit from a primary system that has no provision for a runoff between the top two finishers. “Because we don’t have a runoff system, if we have four or five people running [in 2018]—which is easily imaginable—then a person could actually win the Democratic primary with 23 or 24 percent of the vote, and would be a distinctly minority candidate,” says former Planning Board Chairman Gus Bauman, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for county executive in 1994.
The other two councilmembers who seem certain to run have bases of support that appear to be smaller and less firm than their colleague’s. While Berliner can claim the Bethesda/Chevy Chase area as a geographic base, he—unlike Elrich and Leventhal—has never run countywide, and faces the time- and money-consuming burden of introducing himself to voters outside of his home area. Look for Berliner to tout his credentials on consumer-related issues. “I’m proud of the work I did to hold Pepco accountable—and that effort has succeeded,” he says, also pointing to “my regional work to improve Metro.” At the same time, business interests have warmed to Berliner during his tenure, seeing him as willing to take up issues of importance to them after a rocky relationship earlier in his term. And he has adopted a cause that’s popular with consumers and those with ownership interests in the busy Bethesda restaurant scene. “I’m the only councilmember who thinks it’s time to end our monopoly over liquor,” say Berliner, referring to the county’s current control over the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages.
Leventhal, who speaks fluent Spanish and has a Latino wife, hopes to tap into the county’s Latino community—now approaching 20 percent of the population and working to increase its number of registered voters. “I’m the primary reason we have universal access to health care in this county, and a very, very large percentage of the [participants in the] Montgomery Care system, which I originated, are Latino,” Leventhal says. “I think I’ve done as much as anyone in elected office to advance the interests and look out for the needs of our Latino population.”
But a source who is politically active in the Latino community, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says support for Leventhal within that constituency remains a question mark. “George has done a lot with the immigrant community,” the source says. “He’s also made a lot of people mad. I think George probably feels he can carry the Latinos, but that’s not a given.”
