Category Archives: Republicans

Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery County Council, Republicans

Why Republicans Want Nine Districts, Part Two

By Adam Pagnucco.

In Part One, I explained the primary reason why the county’s Republican Party leadership supports Nine Districts, even going so far as to use the party’s official website to raise money for the group. The Republicans believe that having nine county council districts instead of five could produce one (or more) districts in which Republicans could compete. Using 2018 general election data, I built a 32-precinct district that accounts for one-ninth of the county’s registered voters and maximized Republican electoral participation while minimizing Democratic participation. (I used registered voters as an admittedly imperfect proxy for population.) Here is what my so-called Red District looks like on a precinct map.

The Red District has the strongest presence of Republicans and the weakest presence of Democrats of any contiguous district I can construct. But could it actually elect a Republican to the county council? Let’s find out.

First, let’s compare the eligible voters by party as of the 2018 general election between the county as a whole and the Red District.

In the county as a whole, Democrats had a 43-point advantage over Republicans in eligible voters. In the Red District, the Democratic advantage shrank to 13 points. Democrats still held a plurality in the Red District, but with 44% of eligible voters, they were not a majority.

Now let’s look at actual voters.

Among actual voters, Democrats had a 48-point advantage over Republicans countywide. (2018 was a year in which Democrats were highly motivated to vote by the current occupant of the White House.) But in the Red District, the Democratic advantage shrank to 16 points. Once again, Democrats were a plurality but not a majority of Red District voters.

The table below shows the performance of the two major-party gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Ben Jealous and Republican Larry Hogan, in the county as a whole and in the Red District. Only election day votes are shown because precinct data does not include other voting modes.

Jealous won the election day vote countywide by 5 points. (Counting all voting modes, Jealous won MoCo by 11 points.) But in the Red District, Hogan blew out Jealous by 33 points on election day. Clearly, the Red District is VERY different from the rest of the county in its preference for governor.

But Hogan is an unusual Republican whose popularity extends well into the Democratic voting base. Judging a propensity to favor the GOP by looking at Hogan’s vote tallies alone is problematic. And so, as a proxy for hypothetical support for a generic Republican, I calculated the combined votes for the Democratic council at-large candidates (Gabe Albornoz, Evan Glass, Will Jawando and Hans Riemer) and the Republican council at-large candidates (Robert Dyer, Chris Fiotes, Penny Musser and Shelly Skolnick) for both the county as a whole and the Red District. Those results are shown in the table below.

In the county as a whole, the Democratic council at-large candidates totally blew out the Republicans by 72-26%. That’s why the Republican leadership hates the at-large seats as much as they do – Democrats can roll up their vote totals in Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Kensington and Republicans can’t pick up enough votes elsewhere to win. But in the Red District, the Democratic council at-large candidates only had a 6-point edge. Compared to the rest of the county, that’s a narrow margin.

Let’s remember that 2018 saw massive Democratic turnout in reaction to the individual in the Oval Office. That makes it an unusual year. Given that fact, the above data suggests that in a more normal year, a strong Republican council candidate could defeat a weak Democrat in the Red District. That’s the dream of MoCo Republicans. And that’s why they support Nine Districts.

Now, would something like the Red District actually be created in a nine district system? That’s hard to know. Redistricting is nominally within the purview of a commission appointed by the council every ten years, but the council can substitute its own map if they wish. That means if Nine Districts passes, council Democrats will effectively design the districts directly or indirectly. They could scatter rural Republicans around two or three districts (perhaps one based in Potomac, another based in Clarksburg and maybe a third based in Damascus). Doing that would create two or three competitive general elections. Or they could do what state-level Democrats did in designing the current congressional districts, which was to pack Republicans in one district (Congressman Andy Harris’s District 1). If they elected to go that route, they would design something very close to my Red District.

One thing is for sure: the Republican Party would be jumping up and down to get a chance to compete. They don’t have that in the current system. But they might have it if voters approve nine districts.

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Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery County Council, Republicans

Why Republicans Want Nine Districts, Part One

By Adam Pagnucco.

In a prior column, I noted the participation of many county Republican Party leaders in the Nine Districts group. These leaders even went so far as to use the party’s official website to raise money for the Nine Districts campaign fund. Why is the GOP’s local leadership so interested in eliminating at-large county council seats and replacing them with nine districts?

The answer is simple: nine districts might be the only way they can get a Republican elected to the county council.

It’s important to remember that the council has not always been unanimously Democratic. District 1 (Bethesda-Chevy Chase-Potomac) elected two Republican council members: Betty Ann Krahnke (1990-2000) and Howard Denis (2000-2006). District 2 (Upcounty) was represented by Republican Nancy Dacek from 1990 through 2002. Those were the days when Republican Congresswoman Connie Morella represented most of MoCo – a much less partisan time. District 2, which represents much of Upcounty, is the most Republican-heavy council district in the county. Its current seat holder, Council Member Craig Rice, has won his last three general elections with 59% of the vote in 2010, 60% of the vote in 2014 and 71% of the vote in 2018. The shift of the GOP from being the party of Morella to the party of Donald Trump has brought hard times to local Republicans.

Nine districts could resuscitate the party. That’s because a change from five districts to nine districts could allow enough Republicans and independents to congregate into one district to make it competitive in a general election. That is clearly what the county’s Republican leadership is hoping for. But could it actually happen? Could dark blue MoCo – even the reddest one-ninth of it – ever elect a Republican again?

To test that hypothesis, I pulled precinct-level data from the 2018 general election. I used the following criteria to select precincts that would form the most Republican-intensive district possible in the county:

Lowest percentage of registered Democrats
Highest percentage of registered Republicans
Lowest percentage of actual voting Democrats
Highest percentage of actual voting Republicans
Lowest percentage of votes going to Democratic council at-large candidates
Highest percentage of votes going to Republican council at-large candidates

There were two additional requirements. First, the precincts had to be geographically contiguous. (No random splatters of territory like Maryland’s Third Congressional District!) And second, the precincts had to contain one-ninth of the county’s registered voters, which I used as a proxy for population.

In practice, this turned out to be pretty easy since 23 precincts met all six of the above criteria. Two more met five criteria, three more met four criteria and two more met two criteria. Two precincts met none of the criteria but they had to be included to make the district contiguous. A few others did well on qualifying criteria too but were either non-contiguous or created difficulty in keeping the district at the appropriate size. All of this reinforces a central fact: in MoCo, partisanship is heavily geographic.

And so here it is: 32 precincts containing 73,269 eligible voters as of the 2018 general election, almost exactly one-ninth of the total registered voters in the county. (Again, I’m using registered voters as an admittedly imperfect proxy for population.)

Let’s call this the Red District. Here is what it looks like on a map.

The Red District has the shape of a jagged “C” and hugs the western Potomac River, the Frederick County border and the Howard County border. Its largest communities are Clarksburg, Damascus, Poolesville and part of Potomac. It is not geographically compact, but it does have a community of interest because it includes the least dense, and most rural, parts of the county. Its shape was inevitable. These are the areas where Republicans are strongest and Democrats are weakest.

How would the Red District have voted in the 2018 general election? We will find out in Part Two.

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Adam Pagnucco, Republicans

County Republican Leaders Helping Nine Districts

By Adam Pagnucco.

Seven members of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee, the governing body of the MoCo GOP, have given the Nine Districts for MoCo group money, in-kind contributions or both. So have other leaders of the county Republican Party.

The Nine Districts campaign finance reports reveal the following transactions between GOP Central Committee Members and the organization.

County GOP Central Committee Members Who Gave Money

Greg Decker (Legislative District 39) made two monetary contributions of $100 each on 6/1/20 and 7/10/20.

Paul Foldi (Legislative District 16) contributed $100 on 2/5/20.

Lorraine Jaffe (At-Large) contributed $100 on 2/5/20.

Reardon Sullivan (Legislative District 15) contributed $200 on 6/6/20.

County GOP Central Committee Members Who Gave In-Kind Contributions

Martha Schaerr (Legislative District 19) made three in-kind contributions totaling $132.77 for an outdoor banner and printing petitions on 8/12/19 and 8/14/19.

Gail Weiss (Legislative District 16) made a $120 in-kind contribution for hats and caps on 1/15/20.

Reardon Sullivan (Legislative District 15) made a $20 in-kind contribution on 2/25/20 for “proportional use of PC video editing software.”

Ann Hingston (At-Large) made four in-kind contributions totaling $499.43 for office supplies, printed materials and U.S. Post Box rental.

Hingston also wrote this piece on the county Republicans’ website advocating for Nine Districts and asking for financial contributions to the group.

Other party leaders have helped Nine Districts. Sharon Bauer, president of the Montgomery County Federation of Republican Women, gave $50 to the group on 2/13/20. Ryan Gniadek, the contact for the Montgomery County Federation of Teenage Republicans, gave $15 to the group on 1/23/20. And Ed Amatetti, the Republican nominee for County Council District 2 in 2018, gave $25 to the group on 12/26/19. The checks are small but the dots to be connected are many.

Nine Districts is not a solely Republican group. Developers are paying the vast majority of its costs, county employee unions are providing thousands of dollars in in-kind support and lots of people beyond those groups support the concept. But the presence of this many Republican party officials among its supporters as well as the use of the county GOP’s website to raise money for Nine Districts is not a coincidence. Passing the 9 district charter amendment is a big priority for county Republicans.

And soon, I’ll explore exactly why that is.

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Republicans

MoCo Republicans Embrace Trump’s Views But Avoid the Name

Below is an email blast that I received from incoming MCRCC Chair Dennis Melby. I realize that email blasts tend to be shrill and designed to appeal to party militants but I was still struck by (1) how closely he embraces Trump’s views tightly even as (2) he refuses to say his name, an emerging trope among some Republicans who recognize that the President is just a dead political weight.

Even more striking is his caricature of the Black Lives Matter movement and its supporters, especially when juxtaposed with his vociferous defense of the police. There is no mention of George Floyd’s murder or of it being part of a long pattern of far too many Black people dying or suffering injuries in police custody. The police have an exceedingly tough job, made more difficult by weapons being so widespread in our society, but we must acknowledge and then figure out how to stop these killings of our neighbors and fellow citizens.

In contrast to Melby’s scaremongering language, the demonstrations in MoCo have been incredibly peaceful with broad based support. Indeed, the most noted case of violence was the man on the Capital Crescent Trail who assaulted the kids putting up pro-Black Lives Matter flyers. While I share his concern about crowds, demonstrations are outside and fortunately seem to have been related to relatively little transmission spread.

Moreover, it’s not like the man is a supporter of measures to contain COVID-19. Instead, he complains about every form of it. Everyone would love for kids to go back to school but it just isn’t safe now. For a start, there is simply no way to keep teachers apart from young kids or young kids from each other. Can you imagine a teacher trying to comfort a crying kid from six feet away? Older kids are hardly likely to use better judgement when leaders like this mock social distancing.

Here is the email:

Last week the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee elected me as Party Chairman for the remainder of the year, and I thank them for their support. We have such an important election in less than three months.

In the United States, in Maryland and in even in Montgomery county there’s a deepening feeling of frustration. Something’s just not right. No kids in school for the foreseeable future, work from home as much as you can, cut back on social activity for as long as it takes, but watch massive demonstrations and even violence as if it is acceptable.  It is not.

Although the police are our neighbors and family members there’s a small segment of the population on the far left bent on dismantling them and turning our defense against violence and threats over to social workers.  We need to continue the struggle for racial justice and against antisemitism, but under the guise of that struggle many people are fueling hatred and intolerance against “the others”, which can only lead to a lack of trust and understanding.

Just over the weekend the far left and many in the teachers unions have coordinated with the government to ban opening all in-person education in Montgomery county, public and private. Only a screen in front of a student is acceptable. This is not acceptable. We need an elected county government with common sense to check actions like this.

Yet we’re standing up. We say do everything you can to move on, safely and with sanity. Open the schools when you can, stop the violence and intimidation, support the cops who are vastly good, decent folks who want to do the right thing. While we all admit there’re wrong things in the world we know our American society strives to correct wrongs, to lift people up, and remain a place the world wants to come to.

So we stand with our first responders and laud them. We back the blue and hold their selfless works in admiration and respect. And we’re 100 percent sure that our great, perhaps the greatest medical establishment the world has ever seen will conquer this pestilence we’re faced with soon, not only for us, but for the world.

Believe me – both parties want to get back to boom times – one party to collect great taxes and the other party to provide great wealth. And yes, there are plenty of folks in between too! Even though the media portrays it differently we’re moving together as one united country, over the bumps in the road, fighting for family, community, freedom and justice.

Our November elections will reject the far-left extremists on the national level and move us closer to true representation on the local level. And the future will be bright, I know it.

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Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery County Council, Republicans

Nine Districts for MoCo Claims 15,000 Signatures

By Adam Pagnucco.

Nine Districts for MoCo, the group seeking to replace the current county council structure of 5 district seats and 4 at-large seats with 9 district seats, claimed earlier today that it has obtained 15,000 signatures for its proposed charter amendment. Under the state’s constitution, a charter amendment proposed by voters must receive valid signatures from not less than 20% of registered voters or at least 10,000 voters. The group’s Facebook post appears below.

The original deadline for receipt of petition signatures was Monday, July 27. However, the State Board of Elections extended the deadline by one week due to the COVID-19 crisis, meaning that the group may submit its signatures to the county on Monday, August 3. The county board of elections must then verify the signatures to ensure that the 9 district charter amendment qualifies for the ballot.

The group’s declaration was shared on Facebook by the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County, the Montgomery County Republican Club, the Republican District 16 Team, the Conservative Club of Maryland and former Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Mark Uncapher.

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Republicans

Hough Rails Against Renaming DC’s Football Team

Sen. Michael Hough (R-Frederick and Carroll) has gone on a Twitter tear on the decision to rename the Washington Redskins something else. I guess it goes with his repeated Trumpian bashing of Montgomery and Frederick Counties for not opening more quickly. He also derides NBC4 for no longer using the former team name.

Notwithstanding his ritualized attack on liberals, I don’t see anything especially conservative in choosing to follow a leader who believes against all evidence that he can will the pandemic away and who embraces racist white identity politics as part of his desperate attempt to change the subject. One shouldn’t confuse a personality cult with ideology.

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Adam Pagnucco, Republicans, taxes

Is the County Council Sneaking in a Tax Hike?

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Montgomery County Republican Party has alleged on its website and through blast email that the county council is “sneaking in” a tax hike. County GOP Chairman Alexander A. Bush wrote:

At a time when unemployment claims in Montgomery County have increased by 4,717% since the first week of March, our County Council has agreed with County Executive Elrich to give notice that they are “considering” an increase in the property tax rate “4.5% higher than the constant yield tax rate [which] will generate $62,978,926 in additional property tax revenues.”

Mr. Elrich admitted in his March 15th budget proposal that the current COVID-19 crisis will exacerbate the decline of income tax revenues in the County. But rather than tightening its belt, like families and private businesses must do, Mr. Elrich asked the County Council to drastically increase property taxes to make up the difference.

I was heartened by the March 16th response from eight of the councilmembers: “this is a time for cautious decision-making, not property tax increases.” And thus, I was surprised by the County Council’s notice on Thursday that they were, in fact, “considering” the full tax increase.

At a time when small businesses throughout the County are closing their doors and desperately hoping to survive long enough to reopen, this proposed property tax increase is obscene. This may be why the County Council has worked so hard to hide it from the public. Thursday’s legally-mandated notice in the print edition of the Washington Post is the only trace of it. The notice is not published online and the Council’s calendar entry for the April 21st meeting makes no mention of it. This notice was allegedly approved at the Council’s March 31st meeting, however (and possibly in violation of the Maryland Open Meetings Act) the recording shows no discussion of this issue whatsoever. In fact, it was approved unanimously – and without any debate – as part of the “consent calendar,” which is reserved for uncontroversial matters.

Is the GOP right? Does this constitute “sneaking in” a tax hike?

It is true that the county executive proposed a property tax hike in his recommended budget that was promptly rejected by 8 council members. But that fact is actually irrelevant to the advertisement taken out in the Washington Post. The advertisement was mandated by state law regarding increases in property tax rates above the constant yield tax rate, which is defined as “the General Fund real property tax rate for the coming fiscal year that would generate the same amount of revenue that was generated during the current fiscal year.” The state law is extremely specific on the wording, style, placement and timing of the advertisement. It even requires that the county send the advertisement to the state to prove that it is following state law.

An excerpt from the county Republicans’ website.

The county’s standard practice is to exceed the constant yield tax rate but to restrict the growth in property tax collections to the rate of inflation, which is consistent with the county’s charter limit. Staying within the charter limit does not constitute a tax hike. In contrast to MoCo, most other Maryland counties lack charter limits on property taxes at all. In times of rising assessments, these other counties can leave their property tax rates constant and their collections can easily rise faster than inflation. (Let’s note that many of these counties are governed by Republicans!)

As to the GOP’s allegation that this notice was somehow hidden from the public, that is absolutely false. All of the details were contained in a staff memo posted in plain view on the council’s website. The memo includes the language of the newspaper advertisement which we reprint below.

This is perfectly consistent with past practice even when the executive is not proposing a tax hike. Here are the council resolutions on newspaper advertisements for constant yield tax rates from 2018 and 2019, when the county executive did not propose and the council did not pass property tax hikes.

And so there is no “sneaking” of any kind. The county followed state law on newspaper advertisements, a requirement that has nothing to do with decisions on tax increases. It would seem that the Montgomery County Republican Party has a problem with the county obeying state law.

There are two possibilities accounting for the Republicans’ argument: mendacity or ignorance. Neither is a good reason for why they should replace the Democrats in power.

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Adam Pagnucco, Aruna Miller, Republicans

Are Republicans Trying to Help Aruna Miller?

By Adam Pagnucco.

Much has been said about the Maryland Republican Party sending out racist mailers targeting Congressional District 6 candidate Aruna Miller.  The standard interpretation of this seems to be that the GOP sees Miller as a strong candidate and is trying to keep her out of the general election.  Indeed, the Washington Post editorial board made that argument.  But what if the Republicans are actually trying to help Miller instead?

The classic example of intervention in an opposing party’s primary is Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill’s promotion of conservative GOP Representative and eventual opponent Todd Akin.  McCaskill spent $1.7 million on ads accusing Akin of being “too conservative” during his GOP primary, helping boost him past the rest of the field.  And that’s not all – when Akin pulled a successful TV ad in favor of one that flopped, McCaskill schemed to have her pollster contact Akin’s campaign to persuade him to re-run the high-performing ad.  Once Akin won his primary, McCaskill exploited his weaknesses to finish him off and get reelected.

Two “anti-Akin” ads by McCaskill and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Why do we bring this up?  Some of the people who received the GOP mailers were female Democrats, including Miller herself.  A few took to Facebook and Twitter to complain about it.  And if they didn’t get them directly, they may have read about them in publications like the Washington Post, Bethesda Magazine and India West.  How do you think they are going to react when they see a female Democratic candidate getting bashed in racist mail sent by Republicans?  They are going to rally to Miller, of course, and that’s what happened on social media.  Maybe that’s the point.

Miller uses GOP racism to motivate her supporters.

Aruna Miller is doing really well in this campaign.  She is raising lots of money, doing well at forums, attracting great endorsements from the Sierra Club and the teachers and is the most prominent woman running in a primary electorate that is roughly 60% female.  But look at this race from the standpoint of the GOP.  They know David Trone won an absolute majority of the vote in rural Frederick and Carroll Counties in the CD8 primary – the kind of areas that Republicans need to dominate in the sixth district.  They know Trone could spend $10 million in a general election, something no other Democrat can do, and that would free up national Democratic money to go to other Congressional districts around the country.  Most of all, Trone looks more like incumbent Congressman John Delaney than any other candidate – a center-left businessman who says he has created thousands of jobs.  The GOP knows that kind of candidate can win in this district.  Why would they want another one like Delaney?  And if they don’t, why not help a rival win?

Maybe we’re reading too much into this but we don’t think the GOP is stupid.  This kind of tactic can work.  Just ask Claire McCaskill!

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Adam Pagnucco, Maryland Democratic Party, Republicans

Maryland GOP Catching Up to Democrats in Fundraising

By Adam Pagnucco.

Maryland is a majority Democratic state.  So one would expect that in financial competition between the two state parties, the Democrats would blow the Republicans away.  That may have been the case a few years ago, but not anymore.

In Maryland, the two state parties have two campaign accounts each: a federal account used for promoting federal candidates and a state account used for promoting state and county candidates.  Contributions to the federal account are regulated by federal election law while contributions to the state account are regulated by state election law.  Both federal and state money can be used for purposes like paying staff, voter registration and voter turnout so there is a bit of flexibility in use.  There are a few local party accounts but they are dwarfed by the state parties.

Below is the distribution of federal and state fundraising for the Democratic State Central Committee of Maryland.  A few things stand out.  First, because there are many Democratic federal elected officials, federal fundraising often exceeds state fundraising.  Second, election year receipts are far greater than off-year receipts.  Third, the presence of a Democratic Governor and/or a marquee federal race (like the 2006 U.S. Senate contest between Ben Cardin and Michael Steele) is good for fundraising.  In 2017, the first year for current Democratic Chair Kathleen Matthews, the party exceeded its off-year pace in federal money but slightly lagged its typical state fundraising.  Still, despite not having the Governor’s seat, the party did pretty well and finished 2017 with almost $800,000 in the bank.

Below is the same information for the Republican State Central Committee of Maryland.  The GOP’s federal fundraising is often puny due to its lack of federal elected officials.  (The 2006 race involving Michael Steele was a big exception.)  But in state money, the Republicans do better than the Democrats when they have an incumbent Governor.  They have led the Democrats in state fundraising four years in a row and exceeded them in total money raised in 2005, 2014 and 2017.  Their total cash on hand at the end of 2017 was about a quarter of the Democrats.

The chart below shows GOP fundraising as a percentage of the Democrats.  Again, notice how the last four years stand out in how the Republicans have exceeded the Democrats in state-level fundraising.  The Democrats’ advantage in federal fundraising can be used for staff and voter activity but it cannot be used to directly promote the party’s gubernatorial nominee in the coming election.

Governor Larry Hogan will have an enormous financial advantage against whoever wins the Democratic nomination and the two parties could be at rough parity.  If Hogan wins, it’s reasonable to assume that the GOP will continue to raise as much or more in state-level money as the Democrats during his second term.  That would be a nice boost for the next generation of Republicans looking to succeed him.

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Red Maryland, Republicans

Hogan Cheerleader Blog Continues MD GOP Fear Mongering Campaign


There they go again. Building on the Maryland Republican Party’s  fear mongering mass email over foreign election observers, Hogan Cheerleader Blog Red Maryland continues the scam by implying that election observers would be Russian and this is how the Russians interfere in our elections.

Of course, anyone who reads a newspaper should know this isn’t how the Russians tampered in 2016 and that fighting off observers is playing into Trump’s “fake news” scam by fighting off efforts to improve and to secure our elections.

The could have also bothered to search the web and found the 2016 OSCE election report. Among the over 400 observers were exactly two from the Russian Federation. In contrast, the United Kingdom and Spain, to take just a couple of examples, sent 25 apiece. You can read their final report, including recommendations, here.

Red Maryland bloggers may not say they don’t like Trump and Hogan is different. But they sure are his – and Larry Hogan’s – “useful idiots” as Lenin might say. Needless to say, Governor Hogan has remained #HoganSilent on MD GOP Trump tactics.

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