Editor’s Note: Welcome to “MoCo Politics,” a column by MoCo360 contributing editor Louis Peck providing behind-the-scenes perspectives on the political scene in Montgomery County and Maryland at large.
In 2021 and 2022, the Maryland Senate voted unanimously–by respective margins of 47-0 and 45-0–to advance a bill that took a step toward instituting special elections when vacancies occur in the General Assembly, a process now entirely reliant on appointments by political party committees around the state.
In both instances, the Senate-passed legislation was assigned to the House Ways and Means Committee, where it languished and ultimately died without coming to a vote.
This time around, there were widespread hopes within Montgomery County political circles that the outcome would be different, following a year in which five vacancies in the county’s Annapolis delegation had to be filled in a period of barely six months.
Nevertheless, 2024 turned out to be “déjà vu all over again” – to borrow the memorable phrase from baseball legend Yogi Berra – as this year’s General Assembly session adjourned Monday night after failing to pass a special election bill virtually identical to the legislation that had fallen short before.
This year’s legislative graveyard once again was the House Ways and Means Committee’s Election Law Subcommittee, chaired by Del. Jheanelle Wilkins (D-Silver Spring)–who also wielded the gavel when the legislation failed to emerge in 2021 and 2022.
Both then and now, the proposal would have required legislators appointed by a party central committee to fill a vacancy in the first year of a term to run in a mid-term special election–preempting anyone from serving for four years without having to face rank-and-file voters.
Wilkins’ reluctance to act on the measure has come in the face of overwhelming support for it among her Montgomery County legislative colleagues. This year, HB412 , authored by District 15 Del. Linda Foley (D-Potomac) and referred to the Ways and Means Committee, of which Wilkins is now vice chair–was co-sponsored by 14 of the 26-member Montgomery House of Delegates contingent.
In an interview with MoCo360 late last year, Wilkins disputed suggestions that she was singlehandedly responsible for bottling up the measure in past years. “No one person in the House gets to decide that a bill moves forward or not, and so I would not say that I unilaterally made the decision around this or any bill,” she contended, while not offering further explanation of who or what else might have exerted influence.
The reasons behind the bill’s failure to move in 2024 also remain unclear: Wilkins did not respond to multiple requests for comment during the session’s final days.
But several legislators, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations, pointed to continuing resistance to special elections legislation from within the Black Legislative Caucus-–which Wilkins also chairs, and whose membership accounts for nearly half of the 102 legislators in the House of Delegates’ Democratic majority.
To be sure, sentiments within the Black Caucus on this matter are hardly unanimous: Foley’s special elections bill included five co-sponsors who are caucus members. And when an identical bill, sponsored by District 17 Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Rockville) cleared the Maryland Senate in late February on a 43-2 vote, 13 of the 15 Black Legislative Caucus members in that chamber supported it.
However, according to multiple sources, moving to a system of special elections remains a concern among some Black Caucus members. These concerns appeared prompted, at least in part, by a belief that the current appointment system has translated into greater diversity in the General Assembly membership–notwithstanding several recent analyses indicating that the status quo has had a limited impact on this front.
Ways and Means Committee Chair Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard County), a member of the Black Caucus, also did not respond to requests from MoCo360 for comment. But when asked last month by Baltimore Daily Record why the special elections bill had not been brought up for a vote, Atterbeary responded, “My committee wasn’t that keen on it, to be honest.”
Atterbeary’s comments came just days after Kagan’s Senate-passed bill had received a hearing before the Ways and Means panel that had lasted just 2 minutes and 20 seconds–with no questions asked. However, some supporters of the bill privately disputed Atterbeary’s comments, and contended that informal whip counts suggested the measure would have cleared the committee–including support from some members of the Republican minority–had the committee leadership brought it up for a vote.
In the run-up to the 2024 General Assembly session, interest in special elections legislation within Montgomery County–the state’s most populous jurisdiction–intensified after newly-elected Gov. Wes Moore, in the first half of 2023, selected four incumbent Democratic legislators for positions in his administration. Moore’s action resulted in five separate appointments to fill the vacancies–15% of the county’s 35-member state legislative delegation–by the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) under a process prescribed by the Maryland constitution.
The pending resignation next month of District 16 Sen. Ariana Kelly (D-Bethesda) to become executive director of the Maryland Commission for Women is likely to trigger another round of political musical chairs, allowing the MCDCC to make another couple of appointments. Del. Sara Love (D-Bethesda) is widely expected to be appointed to succeed Kelly, with the MCDCC then deciding who will fill Love’s delegate seat.
“Roughly, 25% of our 188 members [of the General Assembly] have been selected rather than elected. I think it’s about democracy, and we should have more accountability,” Kagan told a media briefing last month. Kagan–vice chair of the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee, whose jurisdiction includes elections–was alluding to the current members of the Maryland Senate and House who initially arrived via appointment rather than election.
The choice that will fall to the MCDCC in the wake of Kelly’s resignation seems likely to bring that number to 45%–16 of the 35 legislators who comprise Montgomery’s Senate and House delegations.
Wilkins is among those in the county delegation who initially acquired her seat via appointment, in early 2017. Two decades earlier, current House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) also arrived in that chamber via appointment.
In contrast to Senate President Bill Ferguson, who prior to this year’s session had indicated support for moving toward special elections for legislative vacancies, Jones–as in past years–kept her distance from the legislation, according to multiple sources. She avoided voicing support or opposition to it, and some legislators who approached her about the Ways and Means Committee’s failure to act were told in response that the committee’s leadership liked the appointment process in its current form.
Supporters of the Kagan and Foley bills suggested that the proposals largely kept intact the power of political committees to make appointments, while preempting appointees from serving up to a full four-year term without standing for election; Foley described it as a “compromise” when testifying on behalf of the legislation during a Ways and Means hearing in early February.
Kagan, in legislation filed prior to this year’s session, initially made an effort to bring Maryland into conformance with three surrounding adjacent states–Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia–that require a special election be held whenever a legislative vacancy occurs.
But her original proposal ran into resistance in the Senate, due in part to cost considerations: Legislative analysts estimated a single special election to fill a vacancy in Maryland could exceed $400,000, even if mail-in balloting was utilized. Before being unanimously approved by the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee and overwhelmingly passed by the full Senate, Kagan’s bill was amended to contain the same provisions as the measure introduced in the House by Foley.
Under both the amended Senate bill and Foley’s legislation, the power to fill General Assembly vacancies throughout the legislature’s four-year term would remain in place—with the county committee of whichever party had previously held the seat retaining the power to appoint a replacement.
But the bills would have required those appointed to vacancies in the first year of the legislative term to run in the second year—when only the presidency and other federal offices, along with a handful of local offices, are on the Maryland ballot. By holding the special primary and special election for a state legislative vacancy on the same day as voting for the presidency and Congress, it addressed concerns about the cost of a separate election to fill a vacancy.
Had this legislation been in place in 2023, it would have subjected the five appointments made by the MCDCC to a special election this year. But, after receiving hearings before the full Ways and Means Committee, neither the Kagan nor Foley bills were assigned to the Election Law Subcommittee and brought to a vote.
In turn, the failure of the Ways and Means panel to act on the special elections bill complicated the prospects for passage of another piece of election-related legislation that was approved by the Ways and Means Committee, and later passed by a 135-1 vote on the House floor.
That bill, HB347, sponsored by Dist. 17 Dels. Julie Palakovich Carr (D-Rockville) and Mike Griffith (R-Harford County)—sought to inject greater transparency into the process under which party committees make legislative appointments. Included was a provision requiring party committee members who pursue legislative vacancies to recuse themselves during the process–a proposal that stirred controversy and narrowly fell short of passage in the MCDCC last year.
Palakovich Carr, who also was among the Montgomery County co-sponsors of Foley’s bill, contended her vacancy reform legislation was needed regardless of the fate of the special election measure. “I feel it’s needed whether we do special elections or we don’t do special elections–because there are going to be appointments either way. It’s just a question of how many and when they happen,” she said in a recent interview.
But some supporters of the move to special elections grumbled privately that the Ways and Means leadership had moved Palakovich Carr’s bill to cover themselves politically over their failure once again to advance the special elections measure. Consequently, there appeared to be little appetite to take up the bill in the Senate, where it failed to move out of the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee.
Although unsure of future plans to put forth special election legislation, Foley—herself initially an appointee to the House of Delegates in late 2021—declared prior to Monday’s adjournment: “I still believe we should reform the way we fill mid-term vacancies in the Maryland legislature. I think we need a more democratic process–and I hope we get there some day.”
But a move to special elections will require an amendment to the Maryland Constitution put before the voters for ratification in a general election. With legislators traditionally reluctant to put such amendments on the ballot in years in which they themselves are up for re-election, it could be another four years before Maryland has a chance to shed its status as an outlier–in a nation in which 25 states utilized special elections to fill vacancies and another 10 rely on hybrid systems involving both appointments and special elections.