...... and will vote for him in November. Nancy Floreen is backed by the same interests who backed David Blair. While she usually voted ok on the Council, sometimes it was like pulling teeth. As part of Doug Duncan's "End Gridlock Slate" in 2002, she was part of the Duncan's slander of the late, great Blair Ewing. Duncan's slate won. Is gridlock any better now than in 2002? The question answers itself.
Marc has shown himself to be a thoughtful, practical progressive -- exactly where most MoCo voters are. We should not let moneyed interests succeed in convincing people otherwise.
Here is what I wrote about Marc last spring in endorsing him.
This has been a tough one, and has gotten tougher with the Post’s endorsement of previously unknown businessman David Blair – and his influx of money into the Campaign.
I have been comforted knowing that Ike Leggett has been our County Executive for the last dozen years. A man of great experience, skill, wisdom, and temperament, he rightly engenders confidence even on those occasions when he makes a decision with which I may not entirely agree. Because reasonable people may differ on particulars of policy, and I invariably recognize that he might be right and I might be wrong. So I see this race to succeed him through that lens.
Initially, I was not terribly concerned about who might win, because all the active Montgomery County Democrats are generally on the same page. I figured my job as a citizen member of a hiring committee of a few hundred thousand members (the Democratic Primary voters) was to figure out who would come closest to Ike’s virtues, and be prepared to move us forward. As I attended campaign forums and did more research, I saw differences in the styles and backgrounds of the candidates, and eventually narrowed my choices down to Roger Berliner and Marc Elrich. I would be comfortable with either one, although on the issues immediately before us, I tend to agree more with Marc than with Roger, who, while not a slave to business entreaties, seems to me to be overly open to ideas I find unwise, like some of the road projects and the termination of the Department of Liquor Control, which provides significant revenue to the County and whose efficiency, under the Leggett Administration, has been improving. On the other hand, I see the virtue in having a County Executive like Ike Leggett who is not perceived by large elements of the business community as hostile.
So I see the merits of both Marc and Roger, and, before the Blair onslaught, I might not have weighed in. But David Blair has changed the calculus.
At the first forum I attended, Blair seemed to have only a surface understanding of the issues facing the County. As I tried to learn more about him, I found out that he was an extremely wealthy businessman who had NO history of community involvement, no history of financially supporting Democratic candidates (or even voting in Democratic primaries), and who feigned ignorance of when he had switched party affiliation from the Republican to the Democratic Party. See here. Yet, the Washington Post (which, for the highest offices, almost always tries, on economic grounds, to find the most conservative candidate it can stomach) endorsed him, and then the torrent of television and mail ads began, paid for by Blair’s seemingly bottomless resources. His position papers are mainstream and not terribly controversial, but I would not hire him to be County Executive because we have no way of knowing how much he really knows about governing and how he would deal with tough issues. Blair is running the slickest campaign money can buy. This is the antithesis of a grass roots candidacy; it is totally top down, from the Post, business interests, and Blair’s own wealth. Even the young man who came to our house to canvass admitted he had no idea why Blair should be elected, but that he, the canvasser, was being paid. See here. (In my canvassing for Rich Madaleno, I visited a house in which a college-age fellow was wearing a Blair for County Executive shirt. He told me he only used it for working out, had decided not to canvass for Blair, and told me that Blair was paying $15 per hour. I fear that many of those supporting Blair do not know much about him, other than that he is a “fresh face.” Well, as Roger Berliner’s controversial TV ad notes, we know where that can lead us (Roger now runs a version without the visual morph of Blair’s face into Trump’s). I am not willing to take the leap of faith that the Post and Blair wish us to take, particularly when there are clearly well-qualified alternatives.
I have not seen any recent polling, so I do not know who has the best chance of defeating Blair. While business interests seek to portray Marc Elrich as mindlessly anti-business because he will not roll over to their every request, Marc’s record over many years on the County Council shows that he is a practical problem solver. Marc’s TV ad really does encapsulate his career. While I like Roger, I think Marc would be the better choice. The range and depth of his endorsements by so many community organizations suggests that he is best positioned to defeat the unknown and untested David Blair.
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