Veteran District 39 Sen. Nancy King trails political newcomer Amar Mukunda in primary election
Other Democratic incumbents with challengers appear set to return to Annapolis next year
By
Louis PeckJune 24, 2026 2:21 a.m.
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District 39 Sen. Nancy King—the state Senate’s majority leader and a senior member of the Montgomery County legislative delegation—was trailing her challenger, 33-year-old Amar Mukunda of Germantown, late Tuesday in what could turn out to be a major upset in the Upcounty constituency.
With about 85% of the precinct vote reporting from Tuesday’s primary, Mukunda was leading King by 48% to 36%, a margin of about 950 votes. Mukunda enjoyed leads in both early voting and the Primary Day vote, although King had a slight edge in mail ballots—most of which are yet to be counted.
Neither King nor Mukunda could be reached by Bethesda Today for comment late Tuesday.
Mukunda, an entrepreneur who grew up in Montgomery County and is a combat engineer in the U.S. Army Reserve, initially announced for a delegate seat from District 39 last year. But in November, he shifted to take on King, who first was elected to the House of Delegates in 2002 and then moved to the Senate in 2007.
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“It’s time for a new generation of leaders” Mukunda, the son of immigrants from South Asia, declared on his campaign website.
His candidacy received a boost when two major environmental organizations, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, endorsed him this spring in the wake of differences with King—an advocate of the proposed widening of the Capital Beltway and I-270—over transportation policy.
While facing a challenge from Mukunda, King also headed a slate that sought to deny renomination to Del. Gabriel Acevero of Montgomery Village.
But while two incumbents on the King-led slate—Dels. Lesley Lopez and Greg Wims—were on their way to renomination to their seats, Acevero also won one of the three available delegation nominations. Lopez led with 26% of the vote, followed by Acevero with 24% and Wims—first appointed to fill a vacancy in 2023—coming in with 22.5% in his bid for a full term.
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That left the remaining member of the King-led slate, Gaithersburg Councilmember Robert Wu, falling short in his bid to win a House of Delegates seat, as he finished with 19% of the vote.
To the south in Bethesda/Chevy Chase-based District 16, incumbent Marc Korman led the Democratic primary with 33.5% of the vote as he sought his fourth term in the House of Delegates. He was followed by Sarah Wolek, with 31%. Teresa Woorman also appeared to have secured her first full term in Annapolis, winning just under 20% to 16% for challenger Tazeen Ahmad.
It was a similar outcome in neighboring District 18, where the three incumbents—Emily Shetty and Jared Solomon, both of Kensington, and Aaron Kaufman of Chevy Chase—easily turned back a late challenge from Kate Stein of Chevy Chase.
There will be two new delegates from Montgomery County next year, both chosen to fill openings created by retirements: Matt Post of Olney, a former student member of the Board of Education, easily won nomination to an open seat in District 14.
In District 19, where incumbent Dels. Charlotte Crutchfield and Vaughn Stewart were easily renominated, about 250 votes separated the two top finishers for the seat of retiring Del. Bonnie Cullison.
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The mail ballot count, set to resume later this week, could determine the winner between Sebastian Johnson of Glenmont and Christa Tichy of Aspen Hill; Tichy led at the end of the night with 13.5% of the vote, followed by Johnson with 12.5%. Both Johnson and Tichy currently serve on the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee.
The other state senators from Montgomery County besides King with primary challenges cruised to victory.
District 16 Sen. Sara Love of Cabin John took more than 90% of the vote over Lou James Bartolo of Chevy Chase with about all but one of the district’s precincts reporting–while in District 17, Sen. Cheryl Kagan captured about 80% against a challenge from Philip Cook of Gaithersburg.
Love has no Republican opponent in November, and will return to Annapolis in January for her first full term in the Maryland Senate. Kagan faces a Republican challenger, Helene Meister of Rockville, in the fall.
Most of those nominated in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for seats in the county’s General Assembly delegation are guaranteed of four more years in Annapolis.
Republicans have placed candidates on the November ballot in just two of the county’s nine state Senate seats: Districts 9 and 17.
In District 9—largely based in Howard County, but which also covers a piece of northern Montgomery— Sen. Katie Fry Hester of Ellicott City will be challenged by Republican Ben Hightower of Glenelg.
And there are only four Republican candidates for 26 seats in the Maryland House of Delegates located in whole or in part in Montgomery County. In District 9A, Dels. Chao Wu and Natalie Ziegler, both Howard County residents, will be opposed by Fitzgerald Mofor of Brookeville and Spencer Rhoda of Damascus.
The two other Republican delegate candidates—Peter Chan of Boyds and Ann Hingston of Bethesda—will each compete for one of three delegate seats up for election in District 15 and District 16, respectively.
It has been nearly a quarter of a century since a Republican last won a state legislative seat from a district in Montgomery County in 2002.
Other competitive contests
This year, Democratic primary contests for General Assembly in Montgomery were often overlooked amid an expensive, open-seat race for county executive in which ads saturated the TV air waves.
Nevertheless, there were competitive primary contests in about half of the county’s nine state legislative districts.
Upcounty District 39, which includes Germantown and a portion of Gaithersburg, yielded perhaps the biggest political free-for-all of any of the county’s legislative districts: It featured a challenge to King, 76, who has served in the General Assembly for nearly 25 years, by an opponent less than half her age.[JR1]
Meanwhile, the slate led by King—which included two other incumbents, Lopez and Wims—sought for the second election in a row to oust the district’s remaining incumbent, Acevero.
Acevero, a self-professed Democratic socialist who has had a scratchy relationship with King and other colleagues in the District 39 delegation, once worked for UFCW Local 1994 MCGEO, the union representing a majority of the county government’s employees.
Acevero and the union had an acrimonious parting of the ways in 2020, and this year’s pre-primary early voting period culminated in a reported physical altercation between Acevero and Local 1994 President Gino Renne at a voting site in Gaithersburg.
Acevero is among 33 of the county’s 35 incumbent legislators seeking re-election this year; the retirements of the remaining two, Dels. Bonnie Cullison (District 19) and Pamela Queen (District 14), triggered spirited contests to succeed them.
Five non-incumbent candidates—four of whom had previously been candidates for elected office in the county—quickly jumped into the Democratic race to fill Cullison’s open seat in District 19, which extends from Silver Spring through Glenmont, Aspen Hill and Derwood to Gaithersburg.
In District 14, which encompasses much of the northeastern section of the county, Post established himself as the early frontrunner to succeed Queen after announcing his candidacy last September and raising $176,000 in four months. The three District 14 incumbents–Sen. Craig Zucker and Dels. Anne Kaiser and Bernice Mireku-North—added him to their slate shortly after the candidate filing period closed in February.
But the other non-incumbent in the delegate contest, Alicia Contreras-Donello, picked off some key organizational endorsements – from the Sierra Club and CASA in Action, the political arm of a leading immigrant advocacy group.
In Bethesda/Chevy Chase-based District 16, two of the incumbents—Love and Korman—teamed up to form a slate. But they did not include the other two incumbents: Wolek and Woorman, who were appointed in 2023 and 2024, respectively, to fill vacancies.
Both Love, first elected to the House of Delegates in 2018 and appointed in 2024 to fill a vacant Senate seat, were considered prohibitive favorites for re-election. The key political battle for the remaining two delegate seats involved Wolek, Woorman and Tazeen Ahmad—a former president of the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County, who announced almost a year before the primary and funneled $30,000 of her personal assets into the race.
In neighboring District 18, which extends from Bethesda and Chevy Chase through Kensington and Wheaton, the three incumbent delegates—Kaufman, Shetty, and Solomon—appeared to have escaped a primary challenge until the last day of the filing period in late February.
That’s when another candidate with ties to the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County—Stein, a vice president of the group—jumped in.
Stein was reported by Bethesda Today to have approached two of the incumbents—Shetty and Solomon—in an unsuccessful effort to form a slate. Shetty alleged that Stein made “ableist” comments about Kaufman, who has cerebral palsy, during their conversation; Stein denied doing so.
According to filings with the State Board of Elections, Stein ended up spending $45,000 out of her own pocket in her bid to win a delegate seat, a part-time post that pays $55,526 annually.
Louis Peck, a contributing editor for Bethesda Magazine, can be reached at lou.peck@bethesdamagazine.com.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine