Sullivan Proposes DEI Seats for Montgomery County Council
Long-time left-leaning Republican chooses to embrace a left-wing concept to try and score Republican wins in Maryland's largest county. It will backfire.
Reardon Sullivan is at it again.
In the past, the left-leaning former donor of Democrats like Joe Biden, and former Chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party who used his position to stump for Peter Franchot, has now proposed a new Charter Amendment in Montgomery County.
Sully would like to end complete Democratic domination through a charter amendment restructuring elections for the council’s four at-large seats. Currently, the Democratic and Republican parties each hold primary elections to decide their four nominees for the seats. Those nominees along with any unaffiliated, third party or write-in candidates then face off in the general election, with the top four vote-getters winning. The Montgomery County Council had two at-large seats from 1970 through 1990 and has had four of them since. A non-Democrat has never won an at-large council election in all of those years while three Republicans (Denis, his predecessor Betty Ann Krahnke and District 2’s Nancy Dacek) won district seats.
Sully would like to add this language pertaining to at-large council members to the county’s charter: “Four Councilmembers shall be elected by all qualified County voters, with no more than two members belonging to the same political party.” That would guarantee that Democrats, who have always controlled all four seats, would be limited to two at most.
Sully’s model for this concept is the Council of the District of Columbia. The D.C. Council has four at-large seats, with two being elected every two years for four year terms. The two candidates who are elected in each cycle may not be from the same political party, a requirement embedded in the D.C Home Rule Act passed by Congress in 1973.
Sullivan, sensing that Montgomery County Republicans are so far out of touch with the Montgomery County electorate that they have no possible chance of winning elections there in the next twenty years, has decided that the Montgomery County Council needs some partisan affirmative action. To that end, Sullivan wants the voters to support a charter amendment that guarantees two at-large seats on the County Council go to non-Democrats. Bascially, two Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion seats carved out just for Republicans.
I’m sure the fact that Reardon Sullivan himself has expressed interest in running for an At-Large County Council Seat (and the fact that said said comes with a $156,284 a year salary) has nothing at all to do with Reardon Sullivan the activist suggesting the county adopt such a bylaw amendment.
As Adam Pagnucco notes in the above article, the plan the Sullivan proposes is based on the same model the District of Columbia has for the D.C. City Council. That system has been in place since D.C. first elected a council in the 1970’s.
It has not worked out the way that Sullivan thinks is did. A Republican has not won a city-wide at-large council seat since the 2004 election. In every at-large council election since then, the two “non-majority party” seats have been won by Democrats who have switched their political affiliation to independent in order to run for the at-large seat. While the council operates with a 13 Democrat to 2 Independent majority, it effective runs as an all Democratic body.
Basically, the system works just like a normal two-party system would, just that some candidates choose to bypass the Democratic primary and run in the General Election.
The same thing would invariably happen in Montgomery County, short of Montgomery County Republicans actually putting in the effort to recruit and campaign for candidates who can actually win a damn election.
Sullivan’s proposed Charter Amendment is the kind of nonsense one would expect from defeatist Republicans who are more comfortable with being losers than actually putting in the effort to try and win an election. It is a solution that will do nothing to solve the perceived problem it addresses, and it flies in the face of Republican messaging on DEI initiviates and affirmative action.
It’s a stupid idea that should be laughed out of the room by the Montgomery County Charter Commission and County voters alike. Sullivan needs to go back to the drawing board and think of actual, useful ideas if he wants to help Republicans win in Montgomery Coutny again.