Four incumbent Montgomery County Circuit Court judges who were appointed last year by Gov. Larry Hogan are running in this year’s primary, along with two challengers.
Last year, Circuit Court judges Gary Bair, Ronald Rubin, Cynthia Callahan and Robert Greenberg retired from the bench. To replace them, Hogan appointed:
- Kathleen Dumais, a former state delegate and Rockville attorney
- Carlos Acosta, who previously had been a Montgomery County District Court judge
- Theresa Chernosky, a Montgomery County public defender of 20 years
- Rachel McGuckian, an attorney who had been with the firm Miles & Stockbridge for 25 years.
Challenging the four incumbents are Marylin Pierre and Thomas P. Johnson III, both of whom ran unsuccessfully for the judiciary in 2020.
Dumais, Acosta, McGuckian and Chernosky all filed for election at the end of January. The filing deadline had been Feb. 22, but was recently extended to March 22. Pierre and Johnson filed their candidacies last year.
In Maryland, circuit court judges appointed by the governor must stand for election in the next general election that occurs one year after being nominated. Upon being elected, they serve 15-year terms.
The four candidates out of six who receive the most votes in both the Democratic and Republican primaries advance to the general election in November.
Johnson, an attorney in private practice, lost in both the Democratic and Republican primaries in 2020.
Pierre, a Rockville attorney, finished among the top four vote-getters in the 2020 Democratic primary in an election where four sitting judges were running for re-election. Pierre ultimately lost in the November general election to the four incumbents that year.
During the 2020 race, sparks flew between Pierre and the incumbent judges, who she accused on Twitter of being “an in-group” and being “related by marriage.” Pierre criticized the judicial vetting process in Maryland, while the incumbents pointed out that she failed on multiple occasions to make the Montgomery County Trial Courts Judicial Nominating Commission nominee list.
A few days before the 2020 general election, the four incumbent judges in the race got a restraining order against Pierre after one of her campaign workers allegedly handed out campaign literature falsely stating that Pierre was a judge. Pierre told Bethesda Beat at the time that she had “no first-hand knowledge” of the volunteer handing out the literature, and that she never referred to herself as a judge.
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media
