The primary set for Tuesday in the special election for a seat on the Montgomery County Council vacated by the death of former member Don Praisner could have a significant effect on the direction of the council, local experts said.
The council’s eight members are often split on issues concerning development and county relations with labor unions. The winner of the election for the District 4 seat, which includes Silver Spring, could become the deciding vote on major issues.
“It’s a big deal,” said Council Vice President Roger Berliner, D-Potomac-Bethesda.
The winner of the Democratic Party’s primary is expected to win the general election on May 19, experts said.
Four council members, Mike Knapp, D-Germantown, George Leventhal, D-at large, Valerie Ervin, D-Silver Spring, and Nancy Floreen, D-at large, have endorsed candidate Nancy Navarro, a current school board member who has been strongly backed by labor unions.
County Executive Ike Leggett and Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, D-at large, have supported Del. Ben Kramer, a businessman whose father, Sidney, was once county executive.
Four other Democrats and three Republicans are running in the primary. A Green Party candidate has already secured his party’s nomination.
Last week Navarro blasted Kramer’s voting record in a series of negative mailers that raised eyebrows in the county’s political circles.
One mailer features a picture of a sad looking girl standing behind a chain-link fence and had a headline of: “Ben Kramer sides with special interests … instead of protecting our children.” At issue was Kramer’s vote in 2008 against forcing those caught with child pornography to register as a sex offender.
Kramer’s campaign called the mailers a “distortion” of what it described as a “procedural votes.” Kramer said the fliers showed an “eleventh hour desperation” that will be “resoundingly rejected” by voters.
