Reply to How do we end Montgomery County socialism?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe it's not socialism, but the whatever you call it, the county is being run into the ground and as a life-long resident, it's sad. [b]The county is so anti-business that they can't even fill existing office parks -- look at Rock Spring over by Montgomery Mall and how that's all being converted to housing or nursing homes (I'm not making this up -- the Marriott headquarters will be torn down in favor of an old folks home!).
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The problem is most of the county is run by people from Takoma Park/Silver Spring, and they don't represent the views of the county overall. Even the at-large council members are from that area. There was an effort on the last ballot to change it so the 9 council members each represent a specific district. That was the result of people gathering tens of thousands of signatures to put it on the ballot. What happened? The Council got scared, and added _their own_ question to the ballot and placed it before this one, and the Council's version would just add more district-specific seats, thus enlarging the council, and keeping all at-large seats in place. That won -- first on the ballot and it probably confused voters. If the Council really cared about that, why did they wait only until _the people_ added a ballot question to react?

Anyway, I think a realistic solution is open primaries. Right now, whoever wins the D primary wins the general. Most voters don't vote in the primaries, so a candidate just needs to cater to one fringe group that votes heavily, to win in the primary. That's how Elrich did it -- he beat Blair by less than 100 votes, among a sea of moderates. The moderate vote was spread across a few candidates, so Elrich just courted 1-2 ultra-progressive votes and swept up all those votes.

If we had an open primary, then you'd end up with 2 (D) candidates on the general ballot and at least one is likely to be moderate.

It's justifiable because 1/3 of registered voters in MoCo are indepdendents, and all candidates can join in taxpayer-funded campaign financing. That means you could have R and D candidates both receiving your money, but no way to vote for/against them because primaries are closed.

Next time you're in Bethesda, drive by the Bethesda (Morella) library. It's named after Connie Morella, a moderate _Republican_ congressional representative. Imagine that -- we used to elect Republicans to office in this area!
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Office parks are dead. Marriott is building a new HQ in Bethesda to give up it's office park. [/quote]
Office parks are only dead in Montgomery County because we are losing jobs. I seriously recommend that you get off your bike, rent a car and go drive out along 66 out to Leesburg. You have no idea what’s going on outside of your own little world. [/quote]

Maybe you meant the Dulles Toll Road/Greenway?  66 will not take you to Leesburg or anywhere in Loudoun.  It runs through Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, and Fauquier counties on the way to Front Royal.  [/quote]

Marriott didn't move there though.[/quote]

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