Monthly Archives: February 2018

Immigration

Deportation Legal Defense is the Montgomery Way

By Seth Grimes.

Someone asked me earlier this week, “What is Montgomery County doing really well?”

My answer: We are a welcoming, compassionate, and inclusive community. That’s the Montgomery Way.

The Montgomery Way: Our $312 million Health & Human Services budget funds an array of programs that assist our most vulnerable neighbors. Our “inclusionary zoning” approach to land use has made the County an affordable housing leader. And we stand with our immigrant neighbors, including undocumented individuals, in the face of Trump Administration attacks and Republican congressional complicity.

Let’s credit County Executive Ike Leggett with shaping this ethos, which includes a policy of public-safety non-cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Yet attacks on immigrants are intensifying, nationally and here in the Washington DC area. We must respond. Let’s consider two ways we can strengthen local protections.

Montgomery County should fund deportation legal defense and pass a Community Trust Act that formalizes ICE non-cooperation as County law, a step promoted by CASA de Maryland.

Momentum toward these local steps has been building over the course of Donald Trump’s year in office. A start: I recall a productive Takoma Park Mobilization meeting with County Councilmembers Marc Elrich and George Leventhal last February at my office, to broach both ideas. (I’m a Mobilization co-founder; the Mobilization grew out of a November 11, 2016 Rally for Community, taking place the Friday after Trump’s election, that I initiated to show solidarity with immigrant and Muslim neighbors.)

Progress can take time, however; in the last year, the threat to undocumented neighbors has only grown. It’s time to act.

A Montgomery County Deportation Defense Coalition is pushing for action, for funding in the County’s FY19 budget. The Coalition’s argument: “Immigrants in deportation proceedings are not entitled to court-appointed counsel. This means that immigrants who cannot afford to hire an attorney must represent themselves. Per a nationwide study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, represented immigrants are 5.5 times more likely to win their case than non-represented immigrants.” Implicit is that it is our collective duty to stand with and support our neighbors facing deportation.

Public deportation legal defense funding could support and expand the work done by organizations such as Kids In Need of Defense (KIND), which seeks to ensure that every child in the immigration system has a lawyer. Ayuda and the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition also provide legal services to individuals facing deportation. We’re not talking about a new assignment for the County Attorney.

There’s more we can do. A new Maryland Legislative Coalition, working closely with ACLU PeoplePower, is backing the Maryland SAFE Act, currently before the General Assembly. SAFE stands for Supporting All Families Everywhere; PeoplePower is an initiative dedicated to grassroots action in defense of civil liberties. The SAFE Act, HB 1461, was introduced Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez. It would limit Immigration cooperation by state authorities and provide immunity and indemnification for officials who do not cooperate. SAFE is another form of deportation legal defense. I testified for 2017’s failed Maryland Law Enforcement and Governmental Trust Act, and I support this year’s very similar SAFE Act in addition to local, Montgomery County action.

Deportation legal defense is the Montgomery Way, a set of concrete steps we can and should take to ensure that ours remains a welcoming, compassionate, and inclusive community. The Trump Administration is targeting our immigrant neighbors. Deportation legal defense is an important way we can stand up and fight back.

Seth Grimes is a candidate for County Council At-Large.

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Sixth Congressional District

Backlash Builds Against Baker Endorsement of Trone

Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker is experiencing a rapid backlash against his endorsement of wealthy businessman David Trone in his bid for the Democratic nomination for the Sixth Congressional District.

Baker announced his support for Trone two days ago. Today, the Washington Post reported that Trone, his family members and company have donated a total of $39,000 to Baker’s gubernatorial campaign. My own quick scan of Rushern Baker’s latest campaign finance filing revealed the following donations:

David Trone, $6000, 10/5/17;
Julia Trone, $2000, 11/16/17;
June Trone, $6000, 10/5/17;
Michelle Trone, $6000, 11/5/17;
Natalie Trone, $2000, 11/16/17;
Natalie Trone, $3000, 11/16/17;
Robert Trone, $2000, 11/16/17;
Anna-Marie Parisi-Trone, $6000, 11/16/17;
Anna-Marie Parisi-Trone, $6000, 11/16/17.

While David, June, and Robert Trone are described as affiliated with Total Wine, Natalie Trone is listed as a student and Michelle Trone with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). All of the donations were made in October or November of last year.

Problems for Baker

There is certainly no proof of pay-to-play or corruption. Indeed, Baker has been a welcome breath of fresh air on that front in Prince George’s after the disastrous Johnson years. However, Baker’s decision to endorse in a race outside of Prince George’s has raised eyebrows.

In particular, I heard that senior women in the General Assembly are especially annoyed at Baker’s decision to endorse in the race when there was an experienced, talented and respected female legislator, Del. Aruna Miller, in the race. Baker’s wading into the race surprised many, as the Sixth does not overlap with Prince George’s.

Today, that frustration emerged more publicly in the form of a wave of endorsements of Miller’s campaign by her colleagues, especially many senior women. Miller’s campaign issued a press release (see below) touting support from:

Speaker Michael Busch,
Speaker Pro Tem Adrienne Jones,
Chair Emerita Sheila Hixson,
Appropriations Committee Chair Maggie McIntosh,
Environment and Transportation Committee Chair Kumar Barve, Ways and Means Committee Chair Anne Kaiser,
Health and Government Committee Chair Shane Pendergrass, Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Vallario,
Judiciary Committee Vice-Chair Kathleen Dumais,
Appropriations Committee Vice-Chair Tawanna Gaines,
Women’s Caucus Chair Ariana Kelly

It will be interesting to see if this backlash impedes Baker’s efforts to reach further outside the County. Similarly, I’m curious to see if Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, a strong Baker supporter, endorses a candidate in the Sixth District. Unlike Baker, Leggett has long had constituents in the Sixth.

Problems for Trone

Baker’s endorsement has also revived talk of Trone’s use of his wealth. Two years ago, Trone told the press bluntly, “I sign my checks to buy access.” Indeed, former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s lawyers cited this statement in their brief appealing McDonnell’s corruption conviction. County Councilmember George Leventhal also needled Trone regarding his gaffe.

Now, as Michael Kinsley once said, a gaffe is simply when a politician speaks the truth out loud. Trone was forthright and honest on this point, in a manner similar to Donald Trump in presidential bid. But the similarities to Trump and the current concerns regarding the corruption of American politics are hardly likely to endear him to Democratic primary voters.

Aruna Miller for Congress Press Release by David Lublin on Scribd

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Democrats, MCDCC

Jordan Cooper: Local Democratic Party Corrupts Democracy

Last night, the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee considered several rules changes, including provisions involving conflicts of interest and the “Cooper amendment,” designed to prohibit candidates from running for office and MCDCC simultaneously. Today, I am pleased to present this response by Jordan Cooper.

On Tuesday February 13, 2018 the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) voted to prohibit candidates from seeking election to the MCDCC, a partisan political body, while seeking elected office in government. The practice of simultaneously holding a seat in the Maryland General Assembly while sitting as a member of a Democratic Party Central Committee is long established in Maryland and is currently the practice with numerous members of the state legislature from other jurisdictions outside of Montgomery County. The vote of the three dozen individuals who sit on the MCDCC drowned out the voices of the one million people who populate Montgomery County.

It is worthwhile noting that the MCDCC subsequently voted to prohibit its own members from seeking other elected offices but that this provision would not apply to the current election cycle, unlike the first decision that is effective immediately, thus annulling the candidacies of all persons running for both public and partisan office simultaneously. The MCDCC elected to inequitably apply the implementation of the new rules so as to benefit those among them who are currently seeking a seat in the Maryland General Assembly.

More than half of the MCDCC’s current membership has been appointed to the body including all of its officers. None of these individuals have been elected into their current office and yet they are responsible for having effectively appointed one in three members of the Montgomery Delegation to either the Maryland House of Delegates or the State Senate. That’s right; individuals who were appointed to the MCDCC in turn appoint themselves to the state legislature. The MCDCC has effectively become a de-facto channel for bypassing popular election into the Maryland General Assembly.

One would be excused from concluding that the MCDCC is a self-serving body of individuals that seeks to control our government by eluding the direct election of our representatives. Their aforementioned votes indicate their contempt for Democratic voters in Montgomery County who are now being denied the opportunity to determine who, among the willing candidates, will represent them in their local Democratic Party.

This perversion of democracy is indicative of a deeply corrupt Democratic Party that undermines popular participation in our elections. This is the same Democratic Party that created some of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the nation based upon the presumption that having more Democrats elected to Congress is more important than providing Marylanders with free and fair elections.

One can only conclude that it has been in the interests of the MCDCC and of the incumbents in the Maryland General Assembly to depress voter turnout so as to ensure that those favored by the Democratic Establishment prevail on Election Day. Incumbents in Montgomery County are re-elected at a nearly absolute rate and they are elected in off-year gubernatorial Democratic Primary Elections in which only 1 out of every 6 registered Democrats participates, in which participation is closed to all voters who are not registered Democrats, and which are scheduled in the middle of the summer while families are away on vacation. During the last election cycle in 2014 less than ten percent of the population of District 16, where I ran and where I am once again a candidate, elected the Democratic Party nominees who inevitably went on to win the General Election.

Low voter participation favors incumbents who have name recognition among “super voters” and candidates tend to target these individuals on the campaign trail, effectively relegating the remainder of the population to electoral oblivion. As an Area Coordinator for the past few years I organized phone banks and canvasses with elected officials that specifically targeted Democrats who had not participated in every election for the past few cycles. The MCDCC had pledged support but that support never materialized.

I stood up at the MCDCC event to articulate my interest in reaching out to disengaged and disenchanted Democrats while also seeking to drive down healthcare premiums and to reduce the teacher to student ratio as a means of addressing overcrowding in our schools. I explained my steadfast support of the Democratic Party and its candidates in Maryland since I first worked for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2003. And the MCDCC voted to prevent my name from appearing on the ballot this June in a manner that has been permissible for decades.

The only rational conclusion that one can draw from the behavior of the Democratic Party in Maryland is that it is corrupt and that it is in need of a desperate overhaul of its leadership, its objectives, and its platform. The Democratic Party should be one of inclusion that facilitates participation in our democracy. It has shown itself to be decidedly against popular participation in our electoral process and has consistently demonstrated its interest in anti-democratic and collusive measures that undermine our democracy.

Jordan Cooper is a Democratic Candidate for Delegate in District 16 and up until this vote was a Democratic Candidate for the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee in District 16

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Adam Pagnucco, District 18

We Can’t Tell Them Apart

By Adam Pagnucco.

On Saturday, your author attended a forum for the two Senate candidates and eight House candidates running in District 18.  (These are the sad things we do after football season is over!)  What did we learn?

Not a whole lot.

You see, while MoCo has plenty of demographic, cultural and economic diversity, it has little political diversity – at least among those who run for office.  Take the candidates on stage.  Yes, there are demographic differences – two are African American men and five are women.  Yes, there are differences in life and professional experience.  They include a former teacher, a former doctor, a non-profit executive, two incumbent Delegates, a Town Council Member and more.  But on issues?

Let’s see.  They all support public education.  They all want more transportation options, especially those involving transit, walking and biking.  They all want more abundant and affordable health care coverage.  They are all pro-environment.  They are all pro-immigrant.  They all oppose Trumpism.  They all pledged to run positive campaigns.  (Can you imagine if any of them did not??)  They all… well, you get the idea.

There is more political diversity in every barroom, every Thanksgiving dinner and every long line at the grocery store than at a MoCo candidate forum!

The District 18 forum at Newport Mill Middle School.  Photo by Council At-Large candidate Evan Glass.

Let’s be restrained in our expectations: no one “wins” these forums.  The candidates’ objectives are to show that they are informed and competent, that they are in line with the values of folks in the room, and that they are not banana cakes.  Upon demonstrating minimum suitability, they then meet some activists who bring up micro-issues they have never heard of while they smile pleasantly and try to avoid checking their phones.

How do candidates stand out?  There are dozens and dozens of them on the ballot – thirty in the Council At-Large race alone.  The volume of mail about to descend on the county could clear a tropical rain forest.  Is bio and life experience enough?  Will anyone ace all the endorsements (aside from the incumbents)?  Will anyone be able to outspend the others?  That may be unlikely for a race dominated by public financing, as the Council At-Large race is, in which many candidates will be raising similar amounts.  Will any candidate dare to be different when political conformity is expected and few wish to deviate from the norm?

As for issues, here are a few questions that will draw out differences between candidates.  Moderators should keep them in mind for forums so that attendees will win the struggle to stay awake.

Do you support rent control?

Should the county and/or state governments require project labor agreements on construction projects providing for union representation of all craft workers?

Should the private sector be permitted to compete with the county’s liquor monopoly?

Should master plans require infrastructure to be built as a condition of allowing new development?

Do you support tuition-free public college for everyone?

Should the county build M-83, the Upcounty highway from Montgomery Village to Clarksburg?

Should existing traffic lanes be set aside as dedicated lanes for bus rapid transit?

Should a non-partisan commission draw Congressional and legislative district lines even if it means giving more seats to Republicans?  (Just watch the incumbent state legislators squirm on this one!)

Under what circumstances should taxes be raised?

How did you serve the community before you started running for office?

Please moderators – puh-leeeeeeeze – try to draw out some differences between our candidates.  Because heaven help us, for so many of them, we can’t tell them apart.

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Adam Pagnucco

Building Owners Make Council Endorsements

By Adam Pagnucco.

A PAC associated with the Apartment and Building Owners Association of Metropolitan Washington (AOBA) has endorsed Hans Riemer and Marilyn Balcombe for Council At-Large, Craig Rice in Council District 2 and Sidney Katz in Council District 3.  AOBA is one of a small number of business groups that endorse in county elections.  Two others are the Building Industry Association and the Realtors; the latter are known for sending out mail promoting endorsed candidates.  We reprint AOBA’s press release below.

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Adam Pagnucco

MoCo Had Nineteen New Business Filings in 2016

By Adam Pagnucco.

Your author has been a corporate and economic researcher for almost twenty-five years.  During that time, we have encountered MANY crazy statistics.  Most of them can be thrown out in ten seconds or less as obviously flawed, generated by suspect sources or both.  But once in a while, even a crazy statistic can have merit because it comes from an unimpeachable source.  This is one of those times.

According to the State Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT), there were nineteen new business filings in MoCo in Fiscal Year 2016.  Not nineteen thousand or nineteen hundred.  Nineteen.

This stat came to light in connection with HB380, a bill introduced by Delegate Mark Fisher (R-Calvert) that would exempt new businesses from paying personal property taxes.  In writing the fiscal note for the bill, the General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services (DLS) had to estimate how many new businesses are started around the state and the volume of personal property taxes they pay.  So DLS went to SDAT, which processes business filings as part of its duties.  All corporations and partnerships must register with SDAT to operate legally in the state.  SDAT reported to DLS that the state had 332 new business filings in FY16, of which nineteen were in MoCo.

SDAT’s tabulation of new business filings by county in FY16.

Could this be a fluke?  That’s a natural question to ask of any seemingly crazy stat.  Fisher introduced a similar bill two years ago (HB572) for which a fiscal note was drafted using FY15 data.  In that year, the state had 536 new business filings, of which fifty-seven were in MoCo.

SDAT’s tabulation of new business filings by county in FY15.

Let’s note that this data does not directly address jobs, the huge majority of which are created by existing businesses that expand operations.  But MoCo has been a weak job generator over the last fifteen years and in order to have existing businesses, new ones must be constantly created.  An anemic pace of business formation may eventually impact job creation.

According to the Census Bureau’s 2012 Survey of Business Owners (available through American Fact Finder), there were 118,965 firms in Montgomery County, 21,396 of which had paid employees.  Given those numbers, one might expect hundreds of firms to start up and a similar number to go dark every year due to the churn of capitalism.  But nineteen new companies in one year?  Bethesda Magazine printed a list of sixteen Bethesda-area restaurants that closed in 2016.  If only a handful of more businesses closed in the entire county, MoCo would have had net negative business formation that year.

Additionally, MoCo’s performance relative to the rest of the state was sub-par.  According to the Census Bureau, the State of Maryland had 531,953 firms in 2012, of which 101,876 had paid employees.  So MoCo had 22% of all firms in the state and 21% of the firms with paid employees.  However, MoCo had just 6% of the state’s new business filings in 2016 and 11% of new filings in 2015.  We would love to acquire historical data to see if this is a trend.

This data joins soft recent growth in employment and income as well as the $120 million budget shortfall, half of which was due to factors other than tax planning by the wealthy, as evidence that our economy is not as strong as we would like it to be to pay our county’s bills.  And because the new business filings were weak in many other local jurisdictions besides MoCo, economic growth must draw attention across the state as well.

Which candidates for office do you think can help turn this around?

Update, 4/25/18

This was not clear in the fiscal note, but the Department of Legislative Services analyst who wrote it has stated that the new business filings referred to in the note only counted businesses with personal property.  The analyst wrote in an email:

The SDAT data used in Exhibit 1 in the Fiscal and Policy note is for new business filings for those businesses with assessed personal property for that year.  The fiscal note could have been worded a bit more specifically to mitigate any confusion, however, the bill would have provided a personal property exemption for businesses with personal property, so businesses with no personal property would not have had an impact on local revenues.  We never asked for all business filings as the bill really only dealt with a personal property tax exemption.

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Adam Pagnucco, environment, Sierra Club

Sierra Club Issues Second Round of Endorsements

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Maryland Sierra Club has issued a second round of state-level endorsements.  We have previously listed their first round of endorsements and their county-level endorsements in MoCo.  The new MoCo candidates who have been endorsed are:

District 14: Senator Craig Zucker, Delegate Pam Queen.  Delegates Anne Kaiser and Eric Luedtke were endorsed in the first round.

District 15: Delegate candidate Lily Qi.  Senator Brian Feldman and Delegates Kathleen Dumais and David Fraser-Hidalgo were endorsed in the first round.

District 16: Delegate candidate Sara Love.  Senator Susan Lee and Delegates Ariana Kelly and Marc Korman were endorsed in the first round.

District 17: Delegate candidate Julie Palakovich Carr.  Senator Cheryl Kagan and Delegates Kumar Barve and Jim Gilchrist were endorsed in the first round.

District 18: Senate candidate Jeff Waldstreicher, Delegate candidates Emily Shetty and Jared Solomon.  Delegate Al Carr was endorsed in the first round.

District 19: Senate candidate Ben Kramer, Delegate candidate Vaughn Stewart.  Delegates Bonnie Cullison and Marice Morales were endorsed in the first round.

District 20: Senator Will Smith, Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins.  Delegate David Moon was endorsed in the first round.

District 39: Senator Nancy King, Delegate candidate Lesley Lopez.  Delegates Kirill Reznik and Shane Robinson were endorsed in the first round.

Every MoCo incumbent running for reelection was endorsed.  Two Delegates running for Senate, Jeff Waldstreicher and Ben Kramer, were also endorsed.  The full statewide list can be seen here.

The big winners here are the non-incumbent House candidates looking to distance themselves from competitors, including Qi (D-15), Love (D-16), Palakovich Carr (D-17), Shetty and Solomon (D-18), Stewart (D-19) and Lopez (D-39).  Lopez is a really big winner because she gets to talk about something other than the District 39 slate controversy and she interrupts a growing slew of labor endorsements for her most viable rival, MCGEO employee Gabe Acevero.  Interestingly, the Sierra Club did not choose between the leading two District 20 open House seat contenders, Lorig Charkoudian and Darian Unger.

We are tracking prominent institutional endorsements and will post a summary list soon.

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Adam Pagnucco

Back Door Rent Control Bill Introduced at Last Minute

By Adam Pagnucco.

In preparation for months but dropped at the last minute, a local bill now under consideration by the Montgomery County delegation may just bring rent control to the county.  The bill has received scant notice… until now.

MC 15-18 would establish standards of just cause for the eviction of tenants in Montgomery County.  The bill defines just cause as tenant behaviors including not paying rent, breaching the terms of the lease, committing illegal acts on the premises, causing substantial damage, engaging in disorderly conduct, refusing to grant access to the landlord for repairs and inspections and refusing to provide information to satisfy affordable housing agreements.  Just cause would also exist if the landlord is removing the unit from the rental market, recovering it for use by family members or performing work that requires evacuation.  There is also this definition of just cause:

A tenant refuses, after receiving notice, to execute an extension or a renewal of an expired residential lease for a term of like duration and on terms substantially similar to the terms of the prior residential lease.

In other words, a tenant may not be evicted if a lease renewal does not have terms “substantially similar” to the prior lease.  What does that mean?  If a lease contains a rental rate that increases above the prior rate by more than the rate of inflation, is it “substantially similar” or not?  The bill does not say.  It’s possible that if the bill is passed in its current form, a tenant could challenge a new lease with an above-inflation rent hike on the grounds that it is not “substantially similar” to the prior lease.  If the courts agree, MoCo would be effectively subject to rent control.

The circumstances of the bill’s introduction are troubling.  The bill was drafted on October 17.  There was plenty of time for it to be introduced before the delegation’s local bill hearing in Rockville on December 6, which was live streamed and is available for viewing on the county’s video archive.  Instead, the bill was introduced as a late file on February 2 – more than three months after it was drafted.  The hearing in Annapolis seven days later, which was not televised or recorded, had just eight witnesses because there was not enough time to hear everyone who wanted to speak.  (That’s a sharp contrast with the Rockville hearings, which frequently stretch into the wee hours.)

The upper right corner of the bill clearly shows its drafting date as October 17.

We have no position on just cause eviction, but a huge body of research shows that rent control has been a massive policy failure.  Its usage in Takoma Park has coincided with an 18% drop in the number of rental units in the city between 2000 and 2015.  Even a Vietnamese Communist Foreign Minister admitted that rent control there was a mistake, saying, “The Americans couldn’t destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy.”

Bills like this are why we have a legislative process, as lengthy and frustrating as it might be.  It’s entirely possible that this bill’s sponsors do not intend for it to enact rent control.  One of the reasons why we have public input and press scrutiny is to identify unintended consequences in legislation so that they can be remedied and not cause problems later.  When bills are withheld for months and dropped at the last minute, that process is hindered.  Moreover, the delegation needs to consider this: is it fair to ask colleagues to cast a tough vote on something as politically volatile as rent control just months before the election?  And especially under circumstances of introduction such as these?

This bill needs to be withdrawn, reworked and reconsidered next year.  Whatever is done, let’s make sure to get it right.

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Adam Pagnucco, Hans Riemer, Marc Elrich, Nancy Navarro

Laborers Union Announces MoCo Endorsements

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Mid-Atlantic region of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) has announced its endorsements in MoCo county-level races.  The union is supporting Marc Elrich (County Executive), Andrew Friedson (Council D1), Ben Shnider (Council D3), Nancy Navarro (Council D4), Tom Hucker (Council D5) and Hans Riemer and Chris Wilhelm (Council At-Large).

LIUNA’s announcement on Twitter.

Elrich and Shnider are starting to roll up progressive endorsements; both are supported by SEIU Local 32BJ and Casa, while Shnider has the Sierra Club and Elrich has the AFL-CIO.  Friedson looks like he is building the kind of business-labor coalition that once supported politicians like Doug Duncan.  Navarro and Hucker have no opponents – so far.

LIUNA, SEIU and UFCW Local 400 (grocery store workers) are probably the most active unions in the Washington region that include at least some private sector members.  LIUNA does not represent any MoCo county employees, but it does represent workers employed by the county’s private trash removal contractors.  LIUNA’s main objective is getting the county to use project labor agreements on its construction projects which would mandate union representation of the workers on those jobs.  While the union has not been a huge player in MoCo politics in the past, it did spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get Cathy Pugh elected as Mayor of Baltimore in 2016.

[Disclosure: your author worked as a strategic researcher for LIUNA’s international office in 1994 and 1995.]

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Adam Pagnucco, Dana Beyer, Jeff Waldstreicher, Larry Hogan, Marc Elrich, Marc Korman, Rich Madaleno, Roger Berliner

Top MoCo Fundraisers, January 2018

By Adam Pagnucco.

Recently, we have run several reports on fundraising through January 2018.  This post combines all of our data and presents the top 20 fundraisers in MoCo so far.  Note that we break out self-financing and report totals raised for the cycle, not just totals since the last report.  And… here they are!

A few random thoughts.

1.  It’s natural to expect Brian Frosh and Peter Franchot to be the leaders since they both hold statewide offices.  Of the county-level candidates, Council Member Roger Berliner, who is running for Executive, is number one.

2.  The numbers for Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18), who is running for Governor, are misleading since he will be applying for public matching funds.  Madaleno has said that he anticipates receiving about $975,000 from the state.

3.  Delegate Jeff Waldstreicher (D-18), who is running for Senate, is the leading fundraiser among all of MoCo’s state legislators.  He will need that money against his self-funding rival, Dana Beyer.

4.  County Executive candidate David Blair, gubernatorial candidate Krish Vignarajah, Council District 1 candidate Andrew Friedson and Council At-Large candidate Bill Conway are first-time candidates.  It’s a significant achievement for first-timers to make a list of this kind although it’s somewhat tempered by the self-financing of Blair and Vignarajah.

5.  Delegate Marc Korman (D-16) is the only first-term elected official on this list.  That’s a big deal and a sign of good things to come.

6.  Council Member Marc Elrich, who is running for Executive, has never been on a top fundraising list in his life.  He is now, and that’s thanks to public financing.

7.  Lieutenant Governor candidate Susan Turnbull raised more money in a month and a half of campaigning than half the people on this list did in the entire cycle, a staggering feat.

8.  Governor Larry Hogan has raised more money this cycle ($11.5 million) than everyone on this list combined.

Note: an earlier version of this post mistakenly omitted Turnbull’s results.  We have corrected it to include her.

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