‘I am direct with people’: Q&A with county executive candidate Andrew Friedson

First of Bethesda Today’s interviews with the three top Democratic contenders

May 27, 2026 8:00 a.m. | Updated: May 27, 2026 7:54 a.m.

District 1 Montgomery County Councilmember Andrew Friedson is seeking the Democratic nomination for county executive in the June 23 primary election. Credit: Jaqueline Kalil

Editor’s note: Bethesda Today government and politics reporter Ceoli Jacoby and contributing editor Louis Peck recently sat down with the three leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for Montgomery County executive to discuss their views on major issues and their visions for the county. This week, Bethesda Today is running each candidate’s interview in Q&A format, in alphabetical order of the candidates’ names. (Each Q&A has been edited for length and organization.) For more information on the candidates, check out our 2026 Primary Election Voters Guide.

Thursday: Evan Glass

Friday: Will Jawando

Andrew Friedson

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Age: 40 (born Jan. 9, 1986, Montgomery County)

Home: Bethesda, married, one child

Education: bachelor of arts (government and politics), University of Maryland College Park, 2008 (president, student body, 2007-2008)

Professional background: Deputy chief of staff, Comptroller of Maryland (2011-2013); division director and senior adviser, Comptroller of Maryland (2013-16); interim executive director, College Savings Plans of Maryland (2015); senior policy adviser, Comptroller of Maryland (2016-2017); board member, Maryland Small Business Development Financing Authority (2016-17); board member, Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. (2019-2023)

What differentiates you most from your opponents, and what do you believe makes you the most qualified to be the next county executive?

There are some policy differences. There’s also an approach difference. The clear [policy difference] that I think most people are focused on at this moment is taxes. I’m the only person who has consistently advocated against and voted against tax increases. I’m running against colleagues who, to varying degrees, have supported different amounts of tax increases.

There are some differences on public safety, in terms of the defund the police movement. I was never part of that advocacy effort — I’m running against colleagues who were and, to a certain extent, perhaps still are. The effort to remove the school resource [officer] positions with people in them — similar to what Elon Musk and Donald Trump did with DOGE — was attempted here, in the middle of a budget year. I voted against that. And there are significant differences on economic development—the ability to focus on economic development, to have the trust and relationships within the business community, and the background to be able to actually grow the economy.

You also cited a difference in your approach. How so?

There is a consistency level here that is different … I haven’t avoided tough issues. Housing is one obvious high-profile example. I haven’t changed my position 180 [degrees] on issues based on the office that I’m running for. The things that I ran on in 2017 and 2018, when I was first running for the council, are the exact same things I’m running on now — housing affordability, the cost of living, growing the economy so that we can sustain a high quality of life. Go back and look at my literature and at the [2018] campaign website. Our theme was ‘ease the squeeze’ on families. Now everybody’s talking about ease the squeeze.

I am direct with people, and we’ve gotten a lot of support even from those who don’t agree with us 100% of the time [but] who appreciate that they know where I stand on issues that we can work together on. I also think there’s a distinction in that I am the only person who has any government management experience. I worked at the state level, and not only reorganized and restructured a large government agency but have worked and led government departments at a high level.

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What do you see as the biggest policy issue or political challenge facing Montgomery County, and what steps would you take as county executive to address it?

We are facing an assault on Montgomery County by the Trump administration that is unique and unprecedented — and that directly relates to the economic challenges that we face. I don’t think we can choose [among] “Do we fight back against Trump, do we support our immigrant community — one third of the county being foreign born who are at risk–or do we grow the economy?” All of those things are interrelated: Our economy is under attack, our immigrant community is under assault, and our economy has been stagnated and is overly reliant on the federal government.

We need a county executive who is going to be relentlessly focused on fighting back against the Trump administration: One-third of the county’s workforce is a federal worker, [and it is] an attack not only on our values, but on our community and our people. We need a county executive who’s going to protect them. But we also need a county executive who can provide them with opportunities outside of the federal government, so that we’re not only relying on the federal government.

We never expected that the federal government wouldn’t be the baseline. Now, it’s not even a foundation. The floor has been dropped from beneath us, and the next county executive is going to need to be relentlessly focused on growing an economy outside our reliance on the federal government.

Your ads vow “No Tax Hikes.” How far into the future does that cover if you’re elected?

The campaign conversation is specifically about the contrast in this race on an approach to governing, where tax increases every year are proposed to solve every problem. I represent a different aspect of how you govern: My view is tax increases should be the absolute last resort. I am not philosophically opposed to saying that we shouldn’t look at revenues ever at any point. This isn’t a ’read my lips’ situation.

You’re presumably referring to then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush vowing “Read my lips: no new taxes” during a 1988 campaign debate?

Yeah. I am a person who says that when you ask residents and families to make a sacrifice, it should be the absolute last thing that you do. And the first thing that you should do is look inward to making county government work better for residents, and that has not happened. That’s where you ended up with tax increases in 2020, in 2023, in 2025, and in 2026.

It is very difficult to do what has happened over the last several years—and that is to propose tax increases and to increase the structural deficit at the same time. I saw tax increases proposed various times at the state level. All of those were to solve a structural deficit. When [then-County Executive] Ike Leggett worked together with the council in the depths of the [Great Recession], they raised certain taxes — but they did so to solve a fiscal crisis. [What has happened in the last several years] creates a fiscal crisis: It puts us in a situation where taxes are going to have to be raised every single year in order to foot the bill. That is crazy, that is unsustainable, and we need a county executive who is going to do something differently.

In the second term of [County Executive Marc Elrich], he’s proposed tax increases every single year — but one. What was the one year he didn’t propose a tax increase? The year that I was council president. Did we figure out a way to fund the budget? Yes. Did we figure out a way to provide historic funding for our public schools? Yes. We can solve these problems, but you have to be serious about actually solving them. It is the easiest and laziest thing in government to say: “We’re not going to look at fixing any challenge. We’re not going to look at the money that we’re spending in the programs we’re doing and how we can improve them. We’re just going toask residents to pay more.”

You’ve spoken during the campaign about achieving greater “efficiencies” in county government. Would you undertake an intiative to restructure and reorganize the government?

We need to do a deep dive into every single department, and this is what hasn’t been done. The county executive eight years ago promised this, and I agreed with him. His emphasis was that he had unique relationships with the labor unions, and that he was going to work together with the workforce to come up with efficiencies. The [labor unions] have actually come to the table and suggested they’re willing to have these conversations. The county executive has been unwilling to do that. We received nothing in terms of the reorganization and restructuring of county government that we were promised.

I have made suggestions we could look at, but they are more draconian than what a county executive has the ability to do–because the county executive, behind closed doors, can negotiate with his departments. No department in a public setting is going to say that they have a program that doesn’t work. They will if they’re in a private negotiation, where they’re getting something out of it. I am not able, as a council member — and the council, as a body [of] 11 people, is not able — to do the deep digs and deep dives in a thoughtful, methodical way. I need to be county executive to do that; I want to be county executive to do that. I think that is the primary function and the primary job.

What are some of your specific ideas for addressing this?

If you’re doing it in a draconian way, we have vacancies that have been vacant for more than three years, we need to look at every single one of those. When the next county executive is looking at next year’s budget, every department should have to justify any position that’s been vacant for more than 12 months. If you have a position that’s been vacant for more than 12 months, you [should] have to get approval for getting that in the budget and recommended to the council.

I’m not saying no position should be allowed that’s been vacant. There are extenuating circumstances and we have to be reasonable. But the burden should be on the department to either use it or lose it, because it’s not providing services to residents, and all it’s doing is adding funding … . It’s part of the vicious cycle I’ve been talking about, of why we’re going to end up in this death spiral of endless tax increases unless we have a new direction.

I want to pay public employees more, to make sure that we can recruit and retain the best people. I was the [sponsor] of paid parental leave [for county employees in 2022]. I believe strongly in supporting our workforce. But we can’t afford to both add head count and to increase pay for our public employees, and not make any changes to what we do.

Nearly half of the county government’s $8 billion annual budget goes to Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). Should the executive and the County Council be more involved in scrutinizing that budget?

Frankly, the council’s awareness of the issues happening within the school system have all been because of Office of Inspector General [reports]. I led the effort to expand the Office of Inspector General in my first term on the council. We later got authority to allow the inspector general to look into MCPS; historically, only the state inspector general could. Today, half of the work of the Office of Inspector General is MCPS, which is exactly what it should be — because it’s half the budget.

The failure up to this point is there hasn’t been real oversight at the committee [level]. What used to happen in Montgomery County — and where we need to get back to — is the county executive, the superintendent and the school board used to hammer out deals. Prior to this getting to be a recommended budget and an advocacy campaign where we have sit-ins at the County Council and rallies before public hearings, there were deals struck on reducing class size, on actually focusing on outcomes. That’s how funding happened.

You’re advocating going back a couple of decades, when then-Superintendent Jerry Weast and then-Councilmember Michael Subin hammered out school budgets in the basement of Weast’s home?

Yes, yes. And guess what? Net results? We had a world-class school system. We had schools that were ranked in the top 100 in the country, we were the No. 1 rated school system in the state. We have none of those things now.

But the demographics have changed, too. This is not the school system it was then.

Agreed. However, we are failing those students more than any other students. So, it is not reasonable to suggest that the reason we have dropped is exclusively because of demographics. Because the schools where those demographics haven’t changed to the same extent–and I wish frankly they had, because I don’t think that the demographics are as equitable as they could be–those schools are the ones that have dropped. We have lost excellence and have come up well short on equity. This idea of we should pick one or the other is absurd. In Montgomery County, we have always, and should always demand both.

If you look at the third-grade reading and math scores, the children who have been most left behind are students of color and our kids with disabilities. If money were solving the problem, we would see improvements year over year, because we’ve been adding hundreds of millions of dollars. We need to get back to a situation where we’re focused on educational outcomes, and not just school funding.

MCPS recently approved a six-year $2.7 billion capital improvement plan to address longstanding issues in its facilities. The superintendent has said the district’s actual needs are closer to $5 billion. Are there ways to cut this price tag, and, going forward, can the county avoid such a huge backlog?

We need the school system to be a much better steward of public resources and assets, and we need to have a deal that is struck between the county executive, the superintendent and the school board on a long-range plan which includes what the maintenance plan is going to be. It’s not good enough just to build new schools: We have to maintain the schools that we have. This has been a runaway train in many ways. While we were building $217 million [in] new schools that apparently we didn’t even need, we weren’t investing in HVAC systems and learning environments in the schools that we actually have.

When I was council president, we had tens of millions of dollars in one-time funds. It’s unsustainable to use one-time dollars for ongoing expenses. So I suggested using them for schools — not into the general fund, which is largely personnel and which is ongoing [but] to a school [building]. I offered the school system: “Could you use tens of millions of dollars for HVAC specifically?” Their answer was no. It was different leadership at the time, but that wasn’t their process: They only had three contractors; the contractors only worked in the summer. They said, “We couldn’t even use the money if you gave it to us.”

But the right county executive, with the current superintendent, is going to have to solve these issues in a meaningful way. There are creative solutions. We should think about partnering with the trades and having opportunities for training on HVAC in schools — and actually get HVAC systems that are rebuilt in the process. There are other places that have done similar models. I think we can do something like it here, but you have tohave a school system that’s willing to partner with the county government, actually develop a plan, and then execute it. You have to have a county government that is willing and able to demand it, and then follow through on it. Up to this point, we haven’t had that.

You mentioned earlier being against the removal of school resource officers from MCPS when that was an issue in a previous budget cycle. Would you like to see that program reinstated in light of some recent incidents?

I think we need to revisit that. This was a classic case of being reactionary to an issue that needed reform, but it didn’t need to be blown up from my perspective. The reaction ended up creating more problems than it solved… . We shouldn’t govern by trying to win news cycles. We should be governing by actually solving problems.

[With] the school resource officer program, there was a legitimate issue that should have and could have been resolved, which was about discipline. There were certain instances where the school resource officers,contradictory to policy, were involved in student discipline. It was actually not supposed to be how it worked. Rather than solving that problem, the response — because it was part of the defund the police movement nationally — was to eliminate the program.

[There were] no conversations by bringing the community in Montgomery County and police officers together to talk through the problems and the challenges, and figure out how to solve them. That’s why you’ve ended up with these huge battles where the principals came out and said, “What are you doing? We like the program. If there are problems, let’s fix them.” There were several principals whose programs worked. Because other schools had issues, their school was being denied a program that was actually keeping their community and their students safe.

If elected, how would you decrease the cost and increase the supply of housing in the county, particularly for people who work here and have to commute long distances because they can’t afford to live here?

I chair the committee that oversees housing. If you want to know what I will do as county executive, look what I’ve done in office on this issue. We created a housing production fund, which has become a national model for how state and local governments should be tackling the housing affordability crisis. I’ve met with leaders all across the country that are following what’s now called the Montgomery County model … . That actually came up from the Housing Opportunities Commission staff and a private builder who were working on a deal together. I delivered on it.

The most progressive people are saying, “We should have social housing.” The answer is we already do; the Housing Production Fund is a social housing funding mechanism. It is actually — maybe they don’t want to hear this — a public-private partnership, where the government does what it does best and the private sector does what it does best, and we end up with affordable mixed-income housing, particularly [in communities] that have transit access.

We created a nonprofit preservation fund to retain half of the naturally occurring affordable housing. We’re seeing significant amounts of preservation, including in Bethesda: Battery Lane and Bradley Boulevard are part of that effort to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing in the most expensive housing areas of the county. We’ve made it easier, cheaper, and faster to build affordable housing. I led an effort, Accelerate MoCo, which reduces the time it takes to build mixed-income housing by 75%. And I think we can do that across the board for all housing … we can have dramatic improvements in the time it takes to build. We have to fix the permitting system.

Fixing the permitting system is something we’ve been hearing about for a long time. What’s the obstacle?

Leadership, I would argue. There are proven ways to do this all around the region. On Accelerate MoCo, that started with biohealth. It came from United Therapeutics. I went to them and asked, “What are your plans for expansion?” They said, “We do plan to expand, but probably not in Montgomery County.” I asked why, and they said, “It takes three-plus years for us to build anything here. That’s an entire research trial. That’s billions of dollars to us.” So, we worked with them, figured out a process — and then we added [a process for] mixed-income housing.

The next frontier for the next county executive is workforce housing. We’ve started this effort with the workforce housing zoning text amendment on the corridors to say, “We want to really focus on firefighters and teachers and nurses, and make sure that the people who serve our community can actually live in our community.” That’s a zoning dynamic that relies on individual property owners actually being interested in changing their home–to a duplex or some other housing type. But if we really want to see this happen, the county government is going to have to put some dollars behind it and incentivize it.

The [Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit] program was designed for teachers, firefighters, and nurses. It doesn’t really serve them anymore. We need … to focus [on those with] 70%-80% to 120% of area median income. Those are the people we’re losing. That has always been the backbone of Montgomery County. Instead of doing dozens of deeply affordable [units], you could do hundreds, maybe thousands, of workforce units with a modest level of subsidy.

That leads to the question of a corridor-based approach to increasing workforce housing. At least one of your opponents has criticized this strategy, arguing it will change the character of neighborhoods and push out existing residents. Your response?

This was a carefully crafted proposal that was a compromise from the original proposal by the leading opponent of this initiative. He was for it in a much more aggressive way until he was against the moderated proposal. There was a proposal originally to eliminate single-family zoning within a mile of transit, pretty much across the board. …Ultimately, we made a decision that we wanted to make progress, but we wanted to be reasonable in the process. We had listening sessions all over the county. We made adjustments, and then [Councilmember] Natali Fani‑González and I built consensus, and passed it overwhelmingly at the council.

Now, you are able to do workforce housing in Montgomery County in a way that you couldn’t before. Instead of tearing down a house and rebuilding it with a massive single-family home, which is what has been happening, you have other choices. These are owner-occupied units overwhelmingly — which means nobody is displacing anybody. The owner of the property decides whether they want to build something else — or sell it to someone else to build it. But that’s their choice. We’re not talking about a naturally occurring, affordable housing rental building that could be replaced with a much taller, higher-end luxury building. That’s where displacement comes into play.

There are a decent number of [homes in these areas], about 20%, that are not owner occupied. A lot of those are special exception businesses — small, older, single-family homes that are fortune tellers, dentist offices, pet care facilities. What we’re saying is, “Instead of this having to be a business, we think it should be a home, but we should give you more options so it actually can make sense for what you want and need.” We created a regulatory review where … one of these homes has to go through the same process as one of these tall buildings.

But doesn’t it come down to people in the vicinity of a single-family home being converted to a duplex or another kind of structure feeling they have lost control, fearing the character of the neighborhood is going to change?

We have to separate facts from feelings. I understand how people feel. The idea that we are going to pass policy that prevents change, which I think some people would like if we had the power to do that, has never been on the table. Change is going to happen. The question is, “Do we fight it? Do we ignore it, or do we embrace it?” Properties can change right now. Someone can put an addition on their home, someone can put an accessory dwelling unit on their lot; someone can tear down their home and build a much bigger home.

So, what we’re saying is, “Do you think that it is reasonable that the only option this [owner] has, on a major corridor, is to tear down their small bungalow or split-level that was built in 1950 or 1960 and replace it with a 5,000-square-foot house?” Those neighbors don’t want that either, but that’s what the status quo almost requires, because that’s the only option that is available.

If you rebuild a house, the height limit is 35 feet. Our requirement and limitation is 40. We’re talking about five additional feet of a neighboring property. We’re not talking about skyscrapers. We’re talking about a modest additional level of height on a major corridor: These houses are only the houses that are abutting a roadway that is 100 feet wide with three or more travel lanes.

When the county’s rent stabilization law was adopted in 2023, you opposed it. As county executive, would you seek its repeal or short of that, are there changes you would like to see?

I was concerned certain things would happen. They have materialized, and I think we need to revisit it. The bottom line is: Since rent stabilization, evictions are way up. The rate of homelessness has skyrocketed. We have the highest rates of homelessness of any jurisdiction in the region. And rents are basically the same. From a data standpoint, the 10 years prior to rent control — and currently the annual increase year over year — are pretty much unchanged. It was just over 2% [in rent increases, it remains] just over 2%. So, we haven’t made a meaningful impact in lowering people’s rents, which was the goal–and we’ve had dramatic impacts in other areas.

The most dramatic is that we have seen a 97% drop in new multi-family residential permits. So, the question really should be, “Are we willing to allow a scenario where we have a housing crisis that requires more housing to be built, and continue to allow a scenario where no new multi-housing is being built?” Will I be a county executive who’s willing to accept that reality? The answer emphatically is no.

You’re saying you would advocate for repeal of the law?

There are things that we can revisit. I think the next county executive is going to have to have a conversation with the next council about how to address these issues. But my North Star is going to be, “How do you solve the housing crisis?” We can address issues of renters without destroying the housing market in the process.

Does that mean repealing it and replacing it with something else? I don’t know. I had proposed a different approach, which would have prevented gouging, double-digit rent increases, which wouldn’t have had the dramatic impact. I had, at one point, a majority of colleagues who supported that until the advocacy got so fierce. We should revisit that and look at whether that would have been a more appropriate intervention.

There have been six county executives prior to Marc Elrich since the present form of charter government took effect in 1970. Do you see any of them as a role model?

I have two role models. They’re two people I consider to be mentors — Ike Leggett and Doug Duncan. I came of age politically under their leadership in the county. They had very different approaches, and I think they were both critical to the county for different moments.

Ike Leggett was the leader that managed us through an unprecedented crisis in the depths of the recession, protecting a social safety net while making extremely difficult decisions and rallying people around it. Also, [he was] navigating us through a dramatically changing county, where we were seeing the demographics rapidly change. I would want to emulate his sober, steady, thoughtful type of leadership.

In Doug Duncan, you had somebody who was willing to be a visionary, to be bold and to make a splash–and we need that in Montgomery County right now. We used to be the regional powerhouse, a place that made [The Music Center at] Strathmore and a revitalized Silver Spring realities. We used to be a place where our biohealth industry was on an explosive growth trajectory. Right now, we’re just hanging on.

You are the only candidate in this race who has never used the county’s public campaign finance system, which was created about four years before you first ran for council. Why?

I’m running against people who have run for a lot of things. I’m running against one person who’s run five times in 11 years, and who has spent a lot of money on getting his name out there. I’m running against another person who’s run three times, including twice countywide. I’ve never run countywide before. We know our message resonates with the people that we get to talk to, but we have to get in front of as many people as possible.

So, our entire campaign strategy is predicated on two things: No. 1, we need to get our message out and to make sure people understand what’s on the line. And No. 2, we want to see more people voting. One of the challenges with our current process is that fewer and fewer people are voting in local elections, and smaller and smaller numbers of people are making the decision of who is going to be the chief executive of the [county]. Ultimately, we need resources to meet those people, to make sure we’re expanding the electorate — unlike what’s happening at the federal level.

I don’t believe reducing the number of people who get to vote is a positive; I feel passionately about that in my bones. But I also feel passionate about it because that is our path to victory: The more people who vote in this race, the better off we are going to do. I need to have a campaign that can support that and reach those voters.

In the year prior to this election, you raised about $1 million, with at least 25% of that coming from the county’s real estate and development community. What would you say to those voters who are concerned that such heavy reliance on one sector for campaign contributions could influence you once you’re in office?

I’m really proud of the broad-based support that we have. We have grassroots support from as many people or more than any other campaign. … If you look at my record, [it] would show that I don’t get influenced by individual groups that are shouting the loudest or people who are peddling influence in the way that they want. I focus on data, on solving problems, on trying to bring people together to broker compromises and get things done.

There are plenty of things in my record that would show I’ve gone against what was the traditional view of the business community—that they wanted certain things and didn’t get it. Example? I supported a right-of-first refusal bill that they adamantly opposed and told me it would be disastrous. I championed that effort. (Editor’s note: In 2024, Friedson successfully sponsored a bill designed to preserve affordable housing by allowing the county to assign its right-of-first refusal to purchase rental properties to “qualified entities.”)

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a county executive who has relationships in the business community and can get their support to invest in Montgomery County. But the suggestion that I have only one type of support from one group of people is not reflected in reality–in the fundraising that we’ve done and in the campaign we’re running. And it’s not reflected in the track record that I have over eight years on the County Council.

Louis Peck, a contributing editor for Bethesda Magazine, can be reached at lou.peck@bethesdamagazine.com.   

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine