MoCo: A Blue Island of Sanity in a World Gone Mad

Election results are in, and our little suburban county has clung to reason once again -- and not by a small margin. All the news about how "discouraged" Democrats were supposed to be seems not to have reached the outposts of Rockville and Silver Spring, Bethesda and Potomac, Damascus, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Darnestown, Olney, or any of the other far-flung villages of Montgomery County, Maryland. Voters here cheerfully picked reasonable candidates who will do a good job.

O'Malley beat Ehrlich for governor in our county by margin greater than two to one -- O'Malley got 67.78 percent of the county's vote to Ehrlich's 30.84. Statewide the percentages were closer to 55% for O'Malley and 43% for Ehrlich..

The County Council races offered little in the way of surprises. Marc Elrich has been very popular and came out on top of the at-large race. Nancy Floreen did better than some expected, coming in second, with George Leventhal and Hans Reimer following. The baseline for races between Democrats and Republicans was typically 70% to 30%, so an interesting race is one that deviates from that. For example, perennial candidate Robin Ficker lost to Craig Rice in County Council District 2 with 40.64% of the vote -- is that name recognition after years of seeing him running for office, or do people support his policies? Going the other way, Valerie Ervin beat Joseph Russek by a 81.28 to 18.55 percent margin, which is a whoopin' by any account. As usual, all the county's legislative races were won by Democrats.

Board of Eduction positions are nonpartisan, and we were watching one of those in particular. In candidate forums and interviews, it was clear that all the incumbents were better qualified, more sophisticated, better informed than any of the challengers. Challenger Karen Smith was the exception there, the lone competent challenger, but she was up against the very popular Pat O'Neill, who won with a 67.42% to 32.22% edge. It should be noted that the Parents Coalition hates Pat O'Neill since she referred to them at a board meeting as "pains in the ass," and the anti-LGBT Citizens for Responsible Government also campaigned against her, and against the other incumbents. The CRG was the group behind the "Rotten Apple Ballot" campaign whose signs you saw illegally placed all over the county. Apparently those groups are not so powerful when it comes to influencing voter choices.

By the way, even though the CRG really tried to get people to reject the MCEA's Apple Ballot, my eyeballing the lists seems to show that every Apple Ballot-endorsed candidate won. I think the best thing that can happen to a candidate in our county is to have the Citizens for Responsible Whatever come out against them.

Speaking of anti-LGBT groups, anti-gay activist Martha Schaerr did not do so well in the contest for District 5 school board, even against an opponent who seemed not to do any campaigning at all. I don't think I ever saw a Mike Durso sign, though Ms. Schaerr's were placed illegally in medians and easements across the county and in the lawns of people who did not support her and did not wish to promote her campaign. She also had a well-organized team of volunteers haunting the polling-places. Where I voted, the only person out front was a Schaerr volunteer -- the Democratic Party table had some flyers with a rock to hold them down in the wind. At another site, the volunteer was a student who said she was getting community service hours for her work and fell asleep with a sign in her hands.

Schaerr is an official with the Republican Party but that does not show on the ballot for school board. Therefore it is interesting to see that only 41.49 percent of county voters put the X next to her name, compared to 58.12% for the incumbent Durso. Stealth candidate Schaerr campaigned as a nice mom who wants to empower people, though both the Gazette and The Post published articles about her anti-gay efforts. Looks like people were paying attention this time.

County Question A, the one about ambulance fees, lost with 46.17% of the vote. That one surprised me. I figured people would support the firefighters, but I think that word "fees" makes people jumpy.

Nationally, Republicans took the majority in the House of Representatives -- hoo boy, imagine Speaker John Boehner! -- but not the Senate. Tea Party-backed Republicans Rand Paul in Kentucky (sorry, but for some reason I always picture Ru Paul when I hear that name) and Marco Rubio in Florida won their Senate races, though it looks like Harry Reid has beaten teabagger Sharron Angle in Nevada and Democrat Chris Coons was the projected winner over Republican nutcase Christine O'Donnell in Delaware.

CNN projects that ten governorships will shift from Democratic to Republican when all the votes are counted. Looks like Cuomo beat Paladino for governor of New York. Jerry Brown won as governor of California, but the marijuana initiative lost by a pretty big margin.

Montgomery County is a good place to live. We have all kinds of people here and we accept our diversity in the very best way. This is not a place where the haters will get a toe-hold, people here will debate the issues and in the end we will cast our votes in an orderly and reasonable way. Yesterday's election was a great example of that.