The Montgomery County Board of Elections announced Friday that the effort to place a referendum for a two-term limit on the county executive before the voters this fall is currently 626 valid signatures short of the minimum of 10,000 required to get on the ballot.
But former Montgomery County Republican party Chair Reardon Sullivan, in a social media post, hailed the development as “great news,” saying the elections board had acknowledged “that we have submitted over 90% of the signatures required to put term limits on the ballot in November.”
The Committee for Better Government, which Sullivan chairs, has until July 29 to submit additional signatures to the board. In a telephone interview Friday, Sullivan said the committee “definitely” plans to submit an additional 6,800 signatures for review by the end of next week.
In its press release, the elections board said it had “processed each submitted signature as per legal requirements” and determined that of 12,130 signatures initially filed, “9,374 submitted petition signatures were validated and 2,756 submitted signatures were rejected” – leaving Sullivan’s effort precisely 626 signatures short of the minimum of 10,000 validated signatures needed for the referendum on the two-term limit to make the ballot.
While saying his committee has worked to confirm the validity of signatures before they are submitted, Sullivan—the 2022 Republican candidate for county executive – declared he was “really happy” that the validation rate of signatures reviewed by the county elections board “was greater than we anticipated.”
At present, the term limit for county executive as well as members of the County Council is set at three terms as a result of a voter referendum enacted in 2016. Sullivan’s group has repeatedly argued that the proposed two-term limit would bring the county executive’s tenure into conformity with that of the president of the United States and the governor of Maryland.
AdvertisementThe county’s Charter Review Commission last month recommended that the limit remain at three terms for executive, but that it be a lifetime limit – which would bar a former county executive from seeking to return to the office after serving three terms and then sitting out at least one term. (Former County Executive Douglas Duncan unsuccessfully sought to return to the post in 2014, eight years after finishing the last of three consecutive terms.)
The council could vote to place on this fall’s ballot an amendment to the county charter along the lines of that being proposed by the Charter Review Commission. In a post to X (formerly Twitter) Friday, Sullivan countered, “We trust that the County Council will refrain from posting a conflicting and confusing measure on the ballot as they did with previous citizen ballot petitions.”
Shortly before the Committee for Better Government submitted its first batch of signatures in mid-June, County Executive Marc Elrich sent letters to all 24 members of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC), asking that “you oppose the [two-term limit] referendum and that we work together to convince the precinct chairs to oppose it and to then support that outcome at [the central] committee.”
AdvertisementIn its most recent filing to the Maryland State Board of Elections on June 20, the Committee for Better Government reported raising $116,000 since the end of March – with $20,000 coming from Sullivan himself, and the overwhelming majority of the remaining funds coming from the real estate and construction industry, for whom Elrich has long been a political bête noire.
Elrich, in an appearance on the Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi on WAMU radio earlier this year, said he “absolutely” planned to seek a third term.
In his letter last month to the MCDCC, Elrich characterized the effort to place the two-term limit on the ballot as “an initiative led by Republicans trying to find another way to win at the polls since their candidates can’t win.” Sullivan, who was defeated by Elrich in the 2022 general election, called such assertions “absolutely not true.”
AdvertisementIn an online video ad promoting the two-term limit referendum , the Committee for Better Government said “preliminary results” showed that 40% of those signing the petition to put the measure on the ballot were Democrats, with another 40% Republicans and the remaining 20% independent voters.
Sullivan said Friday these figures were based on an initial tranche of 5,000 signatures submitted to the county elections board. He contended that an increasing percentage in subsequent signature collection efforts had come from Democrats, and indicated he would have a more specific breakdown once the additional signatures are filed by his committee next week.
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