Anyone who is right of Elrich. Not Hucker, not Reimer. Maybe Blair. Blair seems pretty moderate.

I very well may vote for Blair in the end. I’m certainly leaning that direction. But he’s going to need to be more explicit about about his positions and answer some questions.

Anonymous wrote:Blair

Elrich can't handle money to save his life. The whole federal reimbursement funding was a disaster that cost the county millions.

Riemer and Hucker are more of the same.

And yes, Blair is an unknown. But I loathe the county leadership so much at this point, an unknown is work taking a chance on.

But Blair isn’t an unknown. We know at least one thing about him and that is that he was for years listed as a “co-founder” of Silverman’s front group Empower Montgomery and now he says he has nothing to do with it. Basically pretends that he doesn’t know these people.

There is a worse option than muddling through with the current status quo and that is going back to all the shady crap that was going on when Duncan was in charge. Duncan and Silverman screwed us over and put us in a hole that has taken a long time to recover from.

Blair

Blair

Elrich can't handle money to save his life. The whole federal reimbursement funding was a disaster that cost the county millions.

Riemer and Hucker are more of the same.

And yes, Blair is an unknown. But I loathe the county leadership so much at this point, an unknown is work taking a chance on.

Anonymous wrote:I’ll vote for the candidate who was most vocal against Thrive 2050, particularly the housing development plans that will wreck middle and working class neighborhoods.

Right now that’s Elrich.

I’ll vote for the candidate who was most vocal against Thrive 2050, particularly the housing development plans that will wreck middle and working class neighborhoods.

Please vote for Blair. We need a change and that is our only option. Even if he doesn’t seem like the outsider he says he is, he is an outsider, and that is what we need. Montgomery county is heading in the wrong direction and we need to change that before it is too late.

The issues with MCPS are a great lens to view all of the candidates.

For starters, none of them demonstrated any leadership by timely raising questions about preparation for safe return to school after either the summer or winter breaks. A timely intervention would have been in July for the September return and early December for the January return. Remarkably, both Hucker and Riemer have kids in MCPS.

So looking at the response, what we see are Blair totally staying silent and ducking the issue and the other 3 wading in late to score points. Riemer, my guess is based on political calculations from outcomes in VA, seems to have expediently aligned himself with keep schools open at all cost faction. This group is also more consistent with his core constituency of comfortable white liberals and are also very active on social media where Riemer seems to live. Hucker seems to have aligned himself with the close schools/go virtual faction, which is more closely aligned with the Democratic base. Elrich, in keeping with his history, has both aligned himself with the public sector unions with the “pause” and also as is in keeping with his history also proposes a reasonable “compromise” hybrid solution that is probably unworkable because it’s much too late to implement something so difficult.

Each voter can look at these responses and decide for themselves which they prefer and vote accordingly.

No one is covering themselves in glory.

I will not vote for Elrich.

*2nd term

Yawn. Already plenty of threads on this topic.

Like most of the county, I’m ABR - Anyone But Riemer.

Elrich has a huge lead in the polls. He leaves some things to be desired but appears to be better than Hucker (judging by the disaster that was his recent MCPS townhall). I also didn’t realize he has Ortman-Fouse working for him. She quite terrible and share’s a big chunk of responsibility for MCPS’s decline.

The other choice is Blair. He seems fine overall and could give this county new life, but I fear that he’s not actually the outsider that he seems and is too closely tied to the Duncan/Silverman ancien regime that was most famous for getting the Washington Post to write an article that all but stated that Duncan was bribed by Jack Abramoff. Never has given a convincing answer for why he was listed as a “co-founder” of the front group Empower Montgomery for so many years and yet now claims he had nothing to do with them. Blair doesn’t answer any direct questions and the only thing I truly know about him seems to be a lie. So not great.

All-in-all, it’s going to be Elrich’s election to lose and he seems to have done enough at this stage to get rewarded by voters with a 3rd term.

Anonymous wrote:I’m not even sure who’s running but I’m a democrat and I don’t like Elrich at all. So not him.

It will be Elrich and you WILL vote for him.

I’m not even sure who’s running but I’m a democrat and I don’t like Elrich at all. So not him.

What are the main differences between the candidates? Who are you supporting and why?