Montgomery County school board incumbent Shebra Evans will officially appear on the November ballot after a close race, now that primary election results have been certified. While local education and county PTA advocate Laura Stewart held a strong lead in the race for the District 4 seat, it wasn’t clear until the mail-in ballot canvass was well underway if Evans would beat out political columnist Bethany Mandel. Evans bested by 5%, according to state election results.
The Montgomery County Board of Elections certified the results of the May 14 primary election on Saturday, 11 days after polls closed, marking the earliest certification “in recent memory,” according to board president David Naimon.
“I’ve been on the Board since 2011 and this is the first time since I’ve been on the Board that Montgomery County–the county with Maryland’s largest number of active registered voters–was able to complete the canvassing process this early,” Naimon said in a news release.
A total of 172,026 ballots were cast and counted with 25.27% of eligible voters casting ballots in Montgomery County, according to the press release from the elections board. Montgomery County is home to at least 680,831 eligible registered voters, according to state data.
The board sent out a total of 134,175 mail-in ballots and received and processed 79,883, according to state data.
Voters were able to place their mail-in ballots in polling place dropboxes until polls closed at 8 p.m. on primary day. Any ballot postmarked by May 14 was counted if it was received by the elections board for up to 10 days after the election. An election cannot be certified by the board until every eligible ballot is processed.
While congressional races were easily decided on election night, the mail-in ballot canvass made a difference when it came to the Montgomery County Board of Education race, particularly for Evans, Mandel and Stewart.
In the at-large race, incumbent Lynne Harris and challenger Rita Montoya will appear on the November ballot, besting four other candidates. In the District 4 race, Montgomery County Public Schools teacher Natalie Zimmerman and former MCPS teacher Brenda Diaz were able to trump incumbent Rebecca Smondrowski.
In the U.S. Senate race, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) will face former Md. Gov. Larry Hogan (R). April McClain Delaney (D), a Potomac resident and former U.S. Department of Commerce official, and former Maryland General Assembly Del. Neil Parrott (R-2A) are seeking the Maryland Sixth Congressional District seat. Incumbent and Takoma Park resident U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Dist, 8) is being challenged by North Bethesda public relations executive Cheryl Riley (R) for his seat in Maryland’s Eighth Congressional District.
Four sitting judges have been elected to new 15-year terms on the Montgomery County Circuit Court. Judges Marybeth Ayres, Louis Leibowitz and J. Bradford McCullough–all initially appointed to the bench in 2022 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R)–and Judge Jennifer Fairfax, appointed last year by Gov. Wes Moore (D), will remain in their positions. Rockville attorney Marylin Pierre fell short for the fourth time in the past six years.
