Montgomery County Picks a New Executive for the First Time in Eight Years: Jawando, Who Beat $1.4 Million in PAC Opposition, Faces Wells
Marc Elrich is term-limited and running for the council instead. Democrat Will Jawando won his primary with 52,744 votes despite nearly $1.9 million in super PAC spending, almost three-quarters of it aimed at him; Republican Esther Wells, a Montgomery Village accountant, is the alternative.
For the first time in eight years, Montgomery County voters will pick a new chief executive on Tuesday. Incumbent Marc Elrich, in office since 2018, cannot run again: county voters approved a referendum in 2024 limiting county executives to two consecutive terms, and Elrich is on the ballot instead for one of the County Council's four at-large seats. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the winner of the executive race will lead the county government and shape decisions on public services, housing, transportation and the county budget.
The Democratic nominee is Will Jawando, an at-large councilmember, who won the June 23 primary with 52,744 votes, ahead of Andrew Friedson's 44,520 and Evan Glass's 29,006. He did it against the money: Affordable Maryland PAC reported nearly $1.9 million in independent expenditures in the Democratic primary, and almost three-quarters of it - $1,396,189.73 - was directed against Jawando, with a further $269,587.54 spent against Glass. Jawando won the nomination anyway.
The Republican nominee is Esther Wells, a certified public accountant from Montgomery Village, who previously ran for a Board of Education seat in 2022. The contrast on the ballot is between a sitting councilmember who survived a heavily funded primary challenge and a first-time executive nominee running on a taxpayer-focused profile; the county's nearly 189,000 unaffiliated voters sit outside both primaries and will help decide the general election.
The executive race tops a long, three-page ballot. Below it, voters choose four at-large council members - Democrats Marc Elrich, Scott Goldberg, Laurie-Anne Sayles and Karla Silvestre and Republican Sherwin Wells are in that contest - plus seven district council seats, school board representatives, and the statewide races and constitutional questions every Maryland voter faces. The council the new executive will work with is being chosen on the same ballot.
