Reply to How do we end Montgomery County socialism?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]
OMG, you are dumb. The state and county had to bribe Marriott to stay. Over $60 million in direct subsidies.

Montgomery County only has two Fortune 500 companies that we are so desperate to keep that we will bribe them to stay. Now go check how many are HQ’d in NoVA without bribes. [/quote]

And they didn't choose an office park.[/quote]

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