On a rainy August afternoon at the Montgomery County Republican Party headquarters in Rockville, party chair Dennis Melby is sorting through dozens of colorful campaign signs for candidates ranging from presidential nominee Donald Trump to 6th Congressional District candidate Neil Parrott ahead of an open house for supporters.
Posters on the wall depict Trump thrusting his fist in the air following the July 13 assassination attempt on his life as well as his 2023 mugshot emblazoned with the message “Never Surrender.” A table is covered with “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper stickers and pamphlets with information about various referendums appearing on the November ballot in Maryland.
“We have everything you could need here,” Melby said.
Melby heads the central committee for the county’s minority party – according to state elections board data, the county is home to just 98,000 registered Republicans among more than 404,000 registered Democrats. There hasn’t been a Republican on the Montgomery County Council since 2006, and there has never been a Republican council president. The last Republican county executive left office in 1978.
While former Republican U.S. Rep. Connie Morella of Bethesda had a stronghold on the county’s Congressional District 8 seat from 1986 to 2002, she’s considered one of the last popular Republican leaders in the county. The District 8 seat, which represents areas including Silver Spring, Bethesda and Takoma Park, has been held by Democrats since now-U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Kensington bested Morella in 2002. Takoma Park’s Jamie Raskin has held the seat since 2017.
Congressional District 6, which is considered more “purple” due to the more conservative jurisdictions that border Montgomery County within its boundaries, has been represented by a Democrat since 2013 with Rep. David Trone of Potomac currently holding the seat.
“In a jurisdiction like Montgomery County, you can basically say whatever you want, but if you have an R after your name on the ballot, you’ve got a big problem,” said Dr. Stephen Farnsworth, political science professor and director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia.
Melby isn’t in denial about this fact. He said he knows it’s an uphill ballot to get a Republican elected in Montgomery County in 2024. But that doesn’t mean the party can’t get county residents of all political affiliations to support its priorities such as changing the number of terms that a county executive can serve and more parental oversight into school curriculums, Melby said.
“I think the Republican Party especially needs to do a better job at marketing,” notes Reardon Sullivan, the former GOP committee chair who was the party’s unsuccessful nominee for county executive in 2022. “We need to make sure people are understanding the issues.”
This means focusing on delivering what Sullivan calls the Republican party’s “clear, common sense message” to voters of all affiliations.
But what does that look like in a county where at least 60% of registered voters are most likely to vote blue?
“One needs to be realistic. If you can’t win an election, you shape policy in other ways. And so the trajectory that makes sense for Republicans in Democratic-dominated places is to look to areas where Republicans can get something they want, in part because Democrats are either indifferent to it or also agree with the idea,” Farnsworth said.
Pushing a two-term limit for county executive
Taking a page from that playbook, the Montgomery County Republican Party (MCGOP) is supporting an initiative on the Nov. 5 general election ballot that calls for an amendment to the county charter that would limit the Montgomery County executive to two four-year terms. The current term limit is three four-year terms, or 12 years.
The referendum on the two-term limit is sponsored by the Committee for Better Government, which is led by Sullivan. The committee submitted petitions to the county elections board with enough valid signatures — meeting the threshold of 10,000 — for the referendum on the initiative to be placed on the ballot.
The initiative is not sponsored or even technically endorsed by the MCGOP but has received its full-throated support. The committee promoted the petition at its booth during the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair in Gaithersburg in August and is encouraging voters to choose “yes” on the referendum in its voters guide.
“It’s just common sense,” Sullivan said. “The president and the governor only get two four-year terms. I think this is something a lot of people can agree on, regardless of party.”
While Sullivan has continually insisted the initiative is not “personal or political” and that it is not an attempt to replace Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) without an election, Elrich has called the initiative a ploy to push him out of office. Elrich, who beat Sullivan in 2022, is currently serving his second term as county executive and is expected to run for a third term in 2026 if the referendum fails.
“This has nothing to do with good government. They just don’t agree with what I’m doing, so the strategy is to make sure I don’t get to run in another election. That’s really disturbing,” Elrich said. “I welcome [Sullivan] to run against me again and share his ideas.”
Farnsworth said the two-term initiative is an example of how county Republicans can find creative ways to impact elections.
“As the partisan divisions in America have become more intense, it’s become very difficult for moderates of either party to win primaries,” Farnsworth said. “So instead of talking about electing a Republican, you talk about term limits to at least create more open seat possibilities for new people to get elected.”
Elrich voiced a similar sentiment, saying the Republican party has become “extreme” and “not the party it was in the old days.”
“Democrats in the county were comfortable voting for Republicans like Connie Morella. They shared a lot of policies and values with people who are Democrats,” Elrich said. “It’s different now.”
For their part, Sullivan and Melby said they were surprised but “encouraged” by the County Council’s willingness to hear from supporters of the initiative at a required July 16 public hearing.
“They let everyone speak, didn’t interrupt them … . It was a wonderful experience. I hate to talk good about Democrats,” Melby said with a laugh.
However, the initiative has generated controversy among public officials, as well as the county’s Charter Review Commission, which opposes it. The Montgomery County Education Association, the union representing Montgomery County Public Schools teachers, has also come out against the proposed charter amendment.
Councilmember Evan Glass (D-At-large) has been especially critical of the process that allowed the initiative to make it onto the ballot.
“I have major concerns with a decades-old process that the state of Maryland allows for the county’s charter commissions to operate,” Glass said at a June 18 council meeting. “More specifically, it is the Maryland constitution that allows for referenda to get onto the ballot with an extremely small percentage of the population supporting them.”
The 11-member council wrote a letter to the Maryland General Assembly in July asking the legislature to consider changing the requirements for citizen-led ballot initiatives to qualify to appear on the ballot. The General Assembly will not meet again until its next session begins in January 2025.
The Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) said in an email to MoCo360 that it is not supporting the initiative and advised voting against it on the party’s sample ballot. The committee did not elaborate on why it opposes the measure.
Taking on public education
The county’s school board elections are nonpartisan, but there’s no law that prohibits local political parties from making endorsements. MCGOP has endorsed just one candidate in the race for three Board of Education seats – Brenda Diaz, a former Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) teacher who is running against current MCPS teacher Natalie Zimmerman for the District 2 seat. Both candidates knocked current board member Rebecca Smondrowski out of the race in the May 14 primary.
Diaz, who now runs a homeschool program and also teaches online, has cited school safety as her top issue in the race. She also supports restoring the MCPS “opt-out” policy for LGBTQ+ books and testified to the school board and to the County Council during the pandemic against requiring COVID-19 vaccines to enter certain public spaces.
“Schools are a potential area where Republicans can make gains in Democratic-leaning jurisdictions. Public opinion shows that there’s a lot of anxiety about the future right now,” Farnsworth said.
He noted that while Montgomery County public schools are considered successful when compared to other districts across the country, that doesn’t mean parents may not have concerns — which makes education a big election issue.
“High objective measures for a school district doesn’t necessarily eliminate the anxiety of an individual parent about what their son or daughter is getting in that school system,” he said.
Alternatively, the MCDCC is not making endorsements in the school board race.
“The county party reaffirms its neutrality in all non-partisan elections including school board elections although Democratic Central Committee members, precinct officials, and area coordinators are permitted to participate in non-partisan elections,” MCDCC communications co-chair Seth Grimes said in an email to MoCo360.
Melby and Sullivan said the GOP party chose to get more involved in the local education conversation because its members are frustrated with MCPS.
“They don’t listen to the people. I think that’s a basic problem, and they have so much money and so much power,” Sullivan said of the leadership of a district with a $3.3 billion budget that oversees 211 schools and a student population of more than 160,000.
As with other Republicans across the country, MCGOP members also are concerned about what they believe is being taught to students.
“We’re concerned about teaching [critical race theory] in schools, and making kids learn about transgenderism in the early grades and things like that … we need to get back to reading, writing, arithmetic, STEM, instead of all these social issues,” Melby said.
Critical race theory is an “academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society – from education and housing to employment and healthcare,” according to the Legal Defense Fund. It is not listed as part of the MCPS curriculum, nor is teaching about transgender identity, although the school system approved a number of LGBTQ+ picture books as optional to be used in elementary schools in late 2022.
When asked why he believed these concepts were being taught in MCPS schools when the curriculum shows otherwise, Melby cited the use of the picture books, calling them “inappropriate.”
“You can tell whether the kids are going to be able to grasp what’s going on or not, and it’s going to cause more confusion,” Melby said. “We need to make [books] age appropriate, so people know what normal is. I think we need to get back to normalcy.”
Elrich voiced frustration with the local Republican attitude about the school system.
“They don’t seem to be capable of making a distinction between asking for better leadership and asking for changes in policy, versus defunding the schools because you’re angry at the way they’ve done things,” he said.
In line with the national Republican party, both Melby and Sullivan said they support removing some books from schools, although Sullivan said it’s “not about banning books, it’s about making sense.” Their proposed criteria for removing a book: anything that’s not “normal” or could be considered “divisive.”
“Both sides need to stand up and say, ‘Let’s be normal,’ ” Melby said.
Elrich said he’s frustrated with that kind of attitude and said he believes it’s important for students to learn about history and diverse backgrounds.
“If you raise people with these kinds of lives, then you’re surely going to develop a population that has no understanding of the complexity of society,” Elrich said.
Farnsworth said the views expressed by Melby and Sullivan could resonate with voters who are grappling with how the world has changed since they were in school.
“There are certainly voters who wish it were the 1950s again, but that’s simply not the reality in the schools or in the communities of today,” he said. “Ultimately, the world is changing very rapidly, and schools are trying to prepare students for the world of today and tomorrow, but parents are most familiar with the world of yesterday. It’s a combustible mix.”
Encouraging voting by mail
MCGOP is also taking a page from the Democratic playbook by encouraging Republican voters to request mail-in ballots. Through the “bank your vote” campaign, party chapter leaders have been knocking on doors throughout the county, urging registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters to vote by mail. Sullivan said one party member had knocked on as many as 1,000 doors by the first week in August.
Melby said the committee was inspired to take this approach after Parrott, a Hagerstown resident, lost the Congressional District 6 election in 2022 to Trone. Parrott is currently running for the seat again against Democratic nominee April McClain Delaney of Potomac. Trone chose not to run for re-election, instead unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in the March primary.
“He lost because so many Republicans, especially in northern Montgomery County, just didn’t vote. Not that they voted against [Parrott], they just didn’t vote. So we decided we got to do what the Democrats are doing now,” Melby said.
That means encouraging Republican voters to vote by mail or to participate in early voting. Melby has received pushback for this initiative from local Republican voters, which is not surprising given how many Republican leaders have been critical of voting by mail. Dan Cox of Emmitsburg, the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2022, was particularly vocal about his opposition to the practice, and challenged a 2022 court decision that allowed local elections boards to start processing mail-in ballots prior to Election Day.
“We have talked about how much we hate the proliferation of mail-in ballots and how we fear that this expanding use invites fraud,” Melby wrote in the county party’s Sept. 23 newsletter. “But perhaps we need to take the next step and examine how exactly this opportunity for fraud exists and why our own use of a mail-in ballot does not increase the risk of fraud but in fact might reduce that risk.”
Melby said he chooses to address the skepticism head on.
“Every time I send them a newsletter, people push back. They say, ‘I don’t believe in this. I believe in going to the polls,’ ” Melby said. “I explain that we have to play the game of the majority party. The people that are in control … we need to play their game or else lose at their game.”
When asked what he meant by “the people that are in control,” Melby said he is “impressed” with the Montgomery County Board of Elections and doesn’t believe the board is doing anything illegal or untoward. But he and Sullivan both are concerned that not enough is being done to verify voter ID on a national level.
Sullivan said he and Melby disagree with the legal practice of having people collect and turn in mail-in ballots that other voters have filled out.
“We’ve seen people take stacks of ballots and dump them in [dropboxes] and there’s some people who say that’s morally wrong,” Sullivan said. “But that’s something that’s allowed by the law and we have to play by those rules.”
