Anonymous wrote:Can’t David Blair get signatures to run? Maybe as a Republican if need be?

Blair endorsed Elrich and will be serving on his economic development team.

I am indifferent on Erlich but I strongly dislike Nancy Floreen. She refused to allow a hearing on the impact of the Bethedsa plan on school overcrowding (when many schools affected are already 30% over capacity.) She’s in the pocket of developers.

Can’t David Blair get signatures to run? Maybe as a Republican if need be?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They absolutely 100 % both suck - agreed.
Can’t someone else run????
Why can’t we get decent candidates in this county?

He won the primary by 77 votes.

The problem was too many Dems threw their hat in the ring, partly because of term limits forcing them off the council (half of the candidates were term-limited council members).

We need open primaries. Then we'd end up with the top 2 vote-getters, across all parties, in the general election.

This is not ‘the problem’ this is ‘the solution’.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They absolutely 100 % both suck - agreed.
Can’t someone else run????
Why can’t we get decent candidates in this county?

He won the primary by 77 votes.

The problem was too many Dems threw their hat in the ring, partly because of term limits forcing them off the council (half of the candidates were term-limited council members).

We need open primaries. Then we'd end up with the top 2 vote-getters, across all parties, in the general election.

Yes. He also went to rich neighborhoods and made NIMBY promises - that doesn’t make him qualified to do anything.
You know how the county wants to build a school on their school property in a potomac? That’s not going to be happening - there’s 400 votes right there. Should we go on?

Anonymous wrote:They absolutely 100 % both suck - agreed.
Can’t someone else run????
Why can’t we get decent candidates in this county?

He won the primary by 77 votes.

The problem was too many Dems threw their hat in the ring, partly because of term limits forcing them off the council (half of the candidates were term-limited council members).

We need open primaries. Then we'd end up with the top 2 vote-getters, across all parties, in the general election.

Nope. I work in the County government. I know full well what Elrich will do and the impact it will have on the County.
I don't actually like Floreen either, but she's the best of 3 crappy choices. Maybe in 4 years we can get a decent candidate, but for now, I'll grudgingly vote for Floreen.

Nope. I work in the County government. I know full well what Elrich will do and the impact it will have on the County.
I don't actually like Floreen either, but she's the best of 3 crappy choices.

Anonymous wrote:Marc will win. Don’t worry.

He’s indicated a willingness to work together with Council to budget and make policy. If he can really create a collaborative effort, I think things will run very smoothly.

We will see how political he is, I guess. I don’t know that aspect of him. I won’t forgive Ike for giving County employees a 14% raise over two years during his re-election campaign when we were barely out of a recession. We are still digging out of structural service cuts that impact residents. Marc better not repeat that kind of stuff. We are likely to have at least a little recession during his term.

The council is a horrible corrupt mess - we don’t need someone ‘ of the cou cil’ . We needed someone fresh. We are so stupid in this county.

They absolutely 100 % both suck - agreed.
Can’t someone else run????
Why can’t we get decent candidates in this county?

Anonymous wrote:
He makes Ben Jelous look like Rush Limbaugh.

What is the evidence for this? It seems, like most of the discussion of Elrich on DCUM, to be a caricature.

Marc will win. Don’t worry.

He’s indicated a willingness to work together with Council to budget and make policy. If he can really create a collaborative effort, I think things will run very smoothly.

We will see how political he is, I guess. I don’t know that aspect of him. I won’t forgive Ike for giving County employees a 14% raise over two years during his re-election campaign when we were barely out of a recession. We are still digging out of structural service cuts that impact residents. Marc better not repeat that kind of stuff. We are likely to have at least a little recession during his term.

Anonymous wrote:Telling me "it's not going to be as bad as you think" does not convince me I should vote for Elrich.

I was actually contemplating voting for Ficker until Floreen was for-sure in.

And although I'm really not enthusiastic about people who switch affiliations in order to run in a general election, well, I can overlook that this time.

But there is no way on earth I'm voting for Elrich. He makes Ben Jelous look like Rush Limbaugh. I'm not sure I can even vote for Jelous, either, for that matter.

Maybe I'm becoming a DINO.

Yeah, the argument that he is not as bad as you think is almost as compelling as the argument made in other threads that 'he won't actually be able to accomplish what he wants so you have no real need to fear him.'

There is plenty of room between being a DINO and not supporting Elrich/Jealous. We just happen to have two very far left nominees at the same time. When we get back to simply left, and not hard left, I will have no trouble coming back to the party. (Or if there were only crazy R options I would hold my nose for the D, but here there are other reasonable options.)

Telling me "it's not going to be as bad as you think" does not convince me I should vote for Elrich.

I was actually contemplating voting for Ficker until Floreen was for-sure in.

And although I'm really not enthusiastic about people who switch affiliations in order to run in a general election, well, I can overlook that this time.

But there is no way on earth I'm voting for Elrich. He makes Ben Jelous look like Rush Limbaugh. I'm not sure I can even vote for Jelous, either, for that matter.

Maybe I'm becoming a DINO.

I understand the argument of people who signed Ms. Floreen's petition and/or intend to vote for her. Voters would like a choice from the "center," independent voices should be heard, there was no mandate in the primary. All of this is true. But what is troubling is the lazy thinking and strawman characterization attribute to Elrich and the failure to think as critically about Floreen.

First, the smear campaign against Elrich has been utterly laughable. If you read his economic development, it sounds much more like honest pragmatism, and in fact it looks like he's trying as hard as he can to avoid raising your property taxes again. There is literally nothing in their to indicate he is trying to bring socialism to Montgomery County.
https://www.marcelrich.org/economic-development
One of these strategies is indeed, "encouraging entrepreneurship"!
He also wrote to Jeff Bezos and indicated he would not rescind Ike Legget's Amazon incentive package - which indeed goes against what some of his DSA/union base would like to hear. And on that note, he has also said he's negotiated with public sector unions to help restructure county government, of all things. I think a lot of us would like to see a more efficient county government, and it would take someone like Marc who the unions would trust in order to get them on board for something like that. Were he one to simply "kowtow to the unions," there would be no talk of restructuring.

Perhaps Marc's most distinguishing feature is his proposal to make real estate developers pay for impact fees necessary to fund infrastructure. This doesn't sound like NIMBYism - it sounds like he wants a place for people of diverse income ranges to live and not have to be stuck in traffic with overcrowded schools as a result. What's so wrong with that? And no, this won't cause developers to stop providing housing altogether - the demand is still there, and it would be a foolish business move to exit the housing market altogether.

Nancy Floreen, on the other hand, seems to want to pave over everything, and is ready to rubber stamp any development plan under the sun, regardless how poorly thought out.
She voted for the same tax increases as everyone else, and then goes namecalling to the Washington Post, calling Elrich "a Marxist and a Socialist."

While Nancy is for sure in her right to gather signatures (even with an army of paid canvassers) and get on the ballot, it doesn't make this move by her any less ugly. She sat out the primary, claiming to take the term limits vote to heart, and then suddenly threw her hat in the ring when she didn't like the result. She did say that "friends" or someone came along and begged her to run, but who would be naive enough to think that these "friends" were not mostly developers.
What makes Nancy's entry particularly unethical is the lopsided financial advantage she will have. She will have virtually unlimited funding from the development community, whereas Marc will be severely limited by having already exhausted his donor base due to the ceiling of the public financing system. Not to mention, he had just endured a grueling primary, while Nancy sat it out. Legal? Yes. Ethical? Absolutely not.

I know Marc has an edgy, leftist reputation that might not sit well with some of you. And I know some would love to see a woman take the helm in an election cycle that desperately needs more women - but is this the way you want to see it happen? As for the moderate vote - the County Council elections for the most part gave us moderate, pro-development candidates like Andrew Friedson and Evan Glass. Progressives like Chris Wilhelm and Brandy Brooks trailed them closely. Since they will arguably have more voice on business development-friendly legislation, Elrich as executive would give an adequate balance, a decent compromise between the more pro-business constituency and the progressive, left wing constituency which would otherwise be shut out.

Furthermore, since 70% of us voted for term limits, both Floreen and Elrich come from the term-limited council - but Floreen has served even longer, is even more entrenched, even less of a "change" a lot of us would like to see. Elrich was often the dissenting vote on the more unpopular Council decisions. I'd wager that the term limits vote was more about ousting the likes of Nancy Floreen, not Marc Elrich.

Lastly, I know it doesn't sound like there's that much of a risk that Floreen and Elrich could evenly split the vote and let us end up with Robin Ficker - but stranger things have happened. Given how much of a lunatic Ficker is, and how much Montgomery County prides itself in being the solidly blue "resistance," wouldn't you want to avoid even the five percent chance of letting this happen?

Please think your decisions about this election thoroughly. Don't let the McCarthyists scare you about Elrich - he is not going to turn the place into Venezuela. What Nancy is doing is cynical, egotistical, and ugly. Let's give Marc a chance!