Three-term state Del. Jeff Waldstreicher of Kensington said Wednesday morning he will seek the Democratic nomination for the District 18 seat that state Sen. Richard Madaleno is relinquishing to run for governor in 2018.
“I’ve been incredibly humbled by the outpouring of emails, texts, and phone calls from constituents in the last 48 hours urging me to run. I’m in 100 percent, and will be hosting a formal announcement shortly,” Waldstreicher said in an email to supporters, two days after Madaleno—first elected to the Senate in 2006 after serving a previous term in the House of Delegates—declared his gubernatorial candidacy.
Waldstreicher’s move ensures there will be at least one opening in the three-person House of Delegates contingent for District 18 in the June 2018 primary. Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee Vice Chair Emily Shetty—who ran in the primary in 2014—said Wednesday via email that she will make another bid for a delegate seat. Already filed for the race is Chevy Chase resident Mila Johns, a national security analyst at the University of Maryland-based National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, who is making her first run for elected office.
Mila Johns, left, and Emily Shetty, right, are expected to run for Waldstreicher’s delegate seat. Via LinkedIn and provided.
The number of House of Delegates vacancies in District 18 could grow if either of the other current incumbents, Al Carr and Ana Sol Gutierrez, opt to compete with Waldstreicher for the Senate nomination. The district stretches east from Bethesda through Chevy Chase to Silver Spring, while also encompassing all or part of Garrett Park and Wheaton as well as Kensington.
Gutierrez, first elected to the Maryland General Assembly in 2002 after two terms on the Montgomery County Board of Education, said in an interview she is considering options that include a bid for the Senate seat as well as seeking re-election to her current post or running for County Council. “I don’t have a decision made at this time. I’m going to wait until after Labor Day to really see what it is I want to do,” said Gutierrez, a Chevy Chase resident who in 2016 mounted an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for the congressional seat won by now-U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Carr, a Kensington resident who in recent months also has floated the possibility of leaving the House of Delegates to run for County Council, did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday. He has been in the House of Delegates since being appointed to fill a vacancy in late 2007.
Waldstreicher starts with a financial advantage over Carr and Gutierrez in any potential matchup for the Senate seat. The latest campaign disclosure reports, filed at the beginning of 2017 with the Maryland Board of Election, show Waldstreicher with a bank balance of more than $165,000. That is more than six times the $27,000 reported by Gutierrez. Carr had less than $20,000 in the bank, while reporting $35,000 in outstanding loans.
In a competitive primary for the District 18 Senate seat in 2014, retired eye surgeon Dana Beyer of Chevy Chase spent approximately $330,000—with more than $310,000 of that coming out of her own pocket—in an effort to oust Madaleno. The incumbent, while outspent by a 3-1 margin, won by 58-42 percent in the primary and ran unopposed in November in the overwhelmingly Democratic district.
Madaleno’s decision to leave the Senate—where he is vice chair of the powerful Budget and Taxation Committee—marks the latest change in a Montgomery Senate delegation that has seen its seniority and clout eroded by retirements and pursuit of higher office over the past four years. If Madaleno is joined this summer by District 19 Sen. Roger Manno—who is eyeing a run for Congress if U.S. Rep. John Delaney decides to get into the gubernatorial race—it would mean the departure of six of the county’s eight-member, all-Democratic Senate delegation since 2013.
Included in this group are former Senate Majority Leader Rob Garagiola, now an Annapolis lobbyist, current Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, and Raskin, a former Senate majority whip.
“I think the loss of Sen. Madaleno will be particularly felt in Montgomery County,” Waldstreicher said in an interview. “He’s been a hero not only to District 18, but the entire county. I can’t fill his shoes, but I have been in the trenches on the House side—fighting every day for the progressive values that both Rich and I share. So I will be ready in the Senate on Day One to continue that fight.”
Earlier this year, Waldstreicher was among several House of Delegates members eyeing the possibility of switching and running for the County Council, where a 2016 term limits referendum has created openings in four of nine seats. “At the end of the day, I decided my talents are best utilized in Annapolis, where I can join with others to continue fighting back against the Trump administration and their repugnant ideology,” he said.
The two non-incumbent candidates seeking delegate slots in District 18 sounded similar notes.
“I will be running for delegate because I believe that local government is the back stop for all of the madness happening in Washington today,” said Shetty, a Kensington resident who works on health care and technology issues at the federal level for the Stanton Park Group, a Washington-based government relations firm.
“I decided to run for delegate because I believe that we need to continue (and expand) the tradition of sending champions for a strong progressive agenda to represent us in Annapolis,” Johns said in an email.
In 2014, the race for the Democratic nomination for delegate in District 18 attracted four challengers in addition to the three incumbents—the result, in part, of Gutierrez suggesting at several junctures that she might retire. She ultimately filed for re-election and was renominated, along with Carr and Waldstreicher.
Shetty finished fourth in the seven-person contest for three nominations in the 2014 primary, with a boost from the endorsement of The Washington Post. In addition to her post as vice chair at the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee, in which Shetty said she plans to remain while running for delegate “unless a clear conflict arises,” she founded the advocacy committee of the Woman’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County. Johns also is active in the Woman’s Democratic Club as the group’s volunteer coordinator.
Finishing just a handful of votes behind Shetty in the 2014 Democratic primary was Rick Kessler of Silver Spring, a former vice chair of the District 18 Democratic Caucus. Kessler, now on the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, did not respond to a phone message Tuesday asking whether he is considering another run for delegate in next June’s primary.
Another contender in the 2014 primary, current Montgomery County Planning Board member Natali Fani-Gonzalez, won’t be on next year’s District 18 primary ballot: She and her husband two years ago purchased a Wheaton home located just over the boundary line in District 19.
Fani-Gonzalez, mentioned as a possible candidate for House of Delegates as well as County Council in 2018, said in an email she has no plans to run for either—and intends to apply for reappointment to the Planning Board when her current term expires next year.