Ten days after his wife of 18 years died, a sole Democratic candidate filed to run for Carroll County commissioner Monday, the last possible day.
Dana Dembrow, a Gamber attorney and former Montgomery County state delegate for 16 years, visited the county Board of Elections to register to run against the 10 Republican candidates already filed in the race.
His wife, Suzette, 43, died June 24 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage that occurred during a stroke she suffered two days earlier.
“I was bothered by the notion that there wouldn?t be an election,” Dembrow said, sitting with his two daughters, Crystal, 14, and Danielle, 7, in the hallway outside of the election office in Westminster. “And I decided that instead of moping in grief, I was going to run.”
But in a county where half of the active voters are Republicans and one-third are Democrats, according to statistics updated Saturday and provided by the Board of Elections, Dembrow acknowledged his chances of winning are unlikely.
“The current commissioners are doing an adequate job, but there is always room for fresh perspectives,” he said.
One such perspective, he said, would be a greater push to bring high-speed Internet access to all of Carroll County, where businesses and residents complain of patchy Verizon service and are forced to use dial-up.
“You need to have an ?R? next to your name to win in this county,” said Martin Radinsky, chairman of the county?s Democratic Central Committee.
Running as a Democrat in Carroll, he said, is like filing to run as a Republican for mayor in Baltimore City.
The majority of Carroll voters have been registered as Republicans since 1990, according to Board of Elections statistics.
But Democrats should still file as candidates so both sides can engage in dialogue about the future of the county, Radinsky said.
Dembrow was the original plaintiff in an April lawsuit against the Board of Elections that called for five commissioners elected by district rather than three elected at-large, as it had been.
Before he moved to Carroll County, Dembrow served four terms as a delegate to the General Assembly from Montgomery County.
In 2002, he was charged with
hitting his wife, but she declined to testify against him and he was
acquitted, according to the Associated Press. He lost the next election.
