In previous years I would register as a democrat in order to participate in Maryland's closed primaries, sometimes forgetting to change it back to unaffiliated afterward, and sometimes missing the cutoff for adding the affiliation so I could participate. This year I just watched and kept an eye on the primaries with the assumption that not a lot was at stake. Then I learned that one of the candidates for County Executive didn't participate in the Citizens Election Fund, though their three opponents did. And I saw the donations come in $6,000 from this organization, $6,000 from this PAC, $6,000 from this development company. The other candidates agreed to cap their contributions at $300 in order to play fair and prevent the chance that special interests and wealthy corporations would be able to exploit campaign finance law and buy their unfair share of influence. All in all the candidate who didn't have the moral center to want to play fair for the benefit of the electorate raised approx 1.3M and won the primary with a little more than 50%, but it was hardly a landslide. When I saw the turnout numbers, it was clear to me that despite winning the primary, about 88% of possible voters did not offer their approval of this candidate. Howard County is the 8th highest median income county in the country and what we have to show for it is a veneer stewardship over decades of privatization and classism. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing we've let corporate and financial interests make living and working here unnecessarily hostile on low wage earners those who can't or don't work for various reasons, working class families, and young people trying to make it on their own. I'm running for County Executive because I believe that Howard County deserves a local government that puts people over profits, implements meaningful policy instead of performance of political stunts, and recognizes that learning from the failures of the past means not that it's time to turn the page, but it's time to write a whole new playbook.
Whether it's groceries, insurance, or utilities, it costs more just to get by today than it ever has before. Economists like to blame inflation, but the truth is there's no such thing as inflation, it's just been greed the whole time.
We need to expand and enforce consumer protections, reform how we approach property taxes, implement social programs, the minimum wage should be a living wage, and tying the definition of affordability to the minimum wage and not some subjective and possibly unachievable concept like "moderate income".
Public safety vehicles that are high visibility and approachable not menacing or stealthy. Do away with automated enforcement actions that put money in the pockets of the companies that own the cameras and do little to curb errant behavior. Trained community resource personnel who can respond to support not just crisis intervention but any call where a cop with a gun is unwarranted.
It's time to stop normalizing the police presence in our schools. Law enforcement has always been able to respond to a call at a school, having cops permanently stationed in our schools along with the omnipresent camera systems harms our kids psychologically, it threatens their creativity and critical thinking when the threat of a punitive response is always looming.
The years of kicking the can down the $200M maintenance and modernization road need to end. In 1984 when each school got dozens of Apple IIe computers it showed we were leaning in to help our kids imagine a future we'd all want to live in, we now spend that kind of money on cops and surveillance systems in our schools, and we wonder why the future they imagine is more dystopian than the best Ray Bradbury ever had to offer. We owe our kids a ride to school from well paid county staff, outsourcing to a startup that provide lower quality service for more money than we had before because there's an app was a mistake. Our teachers and librarians deserve real workers rights and a real union that isn't legally blocked from going on strike if collective bargaining fails. Without our teachers our schools are just purposeless buildings, we must treat them with the dignity they deserve.
Have questions or suggestions? I would love to hear from you!
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