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Y’all have followed the election results, and there’s nothing I need to say that hasn’t already been said elsewhere, other than that the results will affect county governments and the residents we serve. The new House and Senate majorities will work to: restore limits on executive power, end the war in Iran, remove tariffs that we pay on imported products, and roll back the SNAP and Medicaid cuts that state and local governments are attempting to backfill with local revenue. Nobody knows how the President will respond, but we know what Congress will do, because the incoming leaders are telling us.
Locally, I have a lot to say, starting with a hearty congratulations to Allison Pickard, the next Anne Arundel County Executive. She will take office on December 7, leaving my team and hers exactly a month from tomorrow to ensure that she and her team are prepared for day one.
County Executive-Elect Pickard is far ahead of where I was eight years ago in her planning. As a council member, she had a front row seat and a direct line to everything going on inside the executive branch, and ran for this office with a long list of things she wanted to improve. In recent days, I’ve had meetings with Allison and our teams, and I’ve been truly impressed by the planning and preparation that is underway. I believe that they’ll take what we’ve built and make it better.
I also want to thank Dave Crawford for stepping up and running in a tough environment. With limited resources, he did what he could to represent his political party and make the race competitive.
The County Council will look very different come December 7, but we don’t yet have final results. It’s safe to congratulate Kelly Smith in District 1, Catelyn Middlebrooks in District 2, Nathan Volke in District 3, Julie Hummer in District 4, and Gavin Buckley in District 6, so congratulations to them all.
But there are some 25,000 mail-in ballots and 7,500 provisional ballots uncounted from the results reported on Wednesday. The plan is to count the mail-ins in three batches: Thursday, Saturday, and next Thursday, with the provisionals count on Friday the 13th.
Amanda Fiedler in District 5, and Dawn Pulliam in District 7 led before yesterday’s first one-third of the mail-ins were counted. Both of their leads held but shrank after last night’s count. Fiedler leads today by only 32 votes, and Pulliam by 784. Both are Republicans, and Republican voters tend to vote at the polls rather than by mail.
Natalie Ogilvie in District 5 and Spencer Jones in District 7 will both end up in the lead if their mail-in ballot margins on Saturday and next Thursday match their margins from last night, and if provisionals are evenly split. That outcome would change the partisan breakdown of the County Council from 4-3 to 6-1 in favor of Democrats.
In other words, we have some very close races, and whichever way they go, I’ll be congratulating the winner and encouraging them to work with their colleagues and the Pickard administration to continue making Anne Arundel County the Best Place For All.
Until next week…