Jawando declares victory in Montgomery County Executive primary

Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando declared victory Friday in the Democratic primary for county executive even though votes are still being counted.

Jawando has amassed roughly 40% of votes tallied so far, tailed by Councilmember Andrew Friedson with 34% and Councilmember Evan Glass with almost 22%. Jawando said Glass called him Tuesday night to concede. Friedson, who has yet to concede, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“With the trend lines, the way they’re going, we are going to be the Democratic nominee, in probably one of the widest margins we’ve seen in recent memory,” Jawando touted Friday.

Mail-in ballots are still being counted, Jawando said, as well as 6,000 day-of provisional ballots. “We have done very well in the day-of ballots, so I really am confident,” he added.

Though the general election is still ahead of him, Jawando listed his priorities for his prospective tenure as county executive: to help the legislature balance the state budget, raise taxes on data centers, restore funding to Montgomery County schools and social workers and reform small business regulation.

One of the state’s few publicly financed candidates to be able to declare victory in a race, Jawando said his campaign had to surmount expensive adversity. “I had millions of dollars spent attacking me with false ads,” he said. “[$1.3 million] was spent just on one negative ad that ran for a couple months against me, so I think we gotta get this money out of politics.”

Jawando will face Republican nominee Esther Wells in the general election in November.

Originally published at Marylandmatters.Org