Let’s step back four years when the world was just as it is today only a shade less violent and bigoted. There were three serious candidates for the office of county executive on the Democratic primary ballot: Marc Elrich, David Blair, and Hans Riemer. Elrich “won” the plurality vote by 32 votes. At the time it was clear that had Riemer not run, either Elrich or Blair would have had a majority vote in that primary. (My own assumption is that more of Riemer’s moderate votes would have gone to Blair than to Elrich.) The implication is that a) Riemer was the spoiler and b) ranked-choice voting gives both the public and the candidate a convincing winner.
Four years later, and the same scenario plays out. Jawando “won” the vote over Friedson by seven percentage points (6,549 votes), which is better than Elrich’s performance four years previously, but he has only a 41% plurality victory. As so often happens in our local primary elections, more Democrats oppose than support the winner for county executive. I predicted this outcome back in June 2025.
With a third-place 22% of the vote, there is no question that Evan Glass is this year’s spoiler. For someone with such energy and ability, it’s a horrible way to end (or at least pause) a political career. He denied the public a convincing win.
(The two last-place candidates, Banerjee and James, are not spoilers. Allocating all their votes to Friedson or Jawando does not produce a majority win.)
It’s hard to tell who would have won had Glass not run or had we benefited from ranked choice voting. Unlike four years ago, I don’t get the sense that most of Glass’s voters would have gone for Jawando or for Friedson, so we’ll never know who the real winner would have been in a truly democratic vote.
My guess is that Mr. Jawando will occupy the county executive’s office for the maximum allowed two terms. By that time, let’s hope Montgomery County implements mandatory majority wins in the primaries—ranked choice voting or some other run-off protocol. We deserve convincing wins, not manufactured wins.
