Howard Denis is a big baseball guy. So when he’s explaining his surprising loss last week in the Montgomery County’s Council election, he steps back a second and talks about his overall statistics, not one solitary loss.
In 12 elections over the past 40 years, he’s gone six and six.
That includes slugfests to eventually serve almost two decades in the Maryland Senate and a victory six years ago in the only special election ever in Montgomery County to gain his highly coveted council seat. Most recently, he struck out, losing that slot to Democrat Roger Berliner.
“I don’t take it personally,” Denis said Monday from inside his barren Rockville office. “The reaction I’ve gotten before, during and after the election even from people who did not support me, was that they don’t have any hostility toward me.”
Yet, in the end, the Democratic tidal wave that swept the nation swept liberal-minded Montgomery County, too.
“It’s funny. Half of our work is land use, and I’ve been praised for my work on the issue,” Denis said. “But this election came down to land use in Iraq.”
What makes Denis’ defeat even more interesting is what it will do to the council. For the first time since 1991, only Democrats will be the prime decision-makers in the county. Back then, the streak without Republicans lasted from 1983 on for the next eight years, and then voters opted to divide the council into districts “to give Republicans some sort of a chance,” according to Denis.
Council President George Leventhal, one of the handful of Democrats re-elected to office last week, said he predicts that the absence of a standout conservativevoice in the government won’t make a huge difference.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a partisan vote in this county,” he told The Examiner on Tuesday.
But Leventhal said he does believe Denis, whom he calls a “real local politician,” will leave something behind. His fellow council member has made some substantial changes for Bethesda and Chevy Chase, the council president said, including setting standards to prevent the phenomenon of “mansionization,” in which homes are built excessively large, and championing the Imagination Stage family arts center.
