By Gail Weiss*
When a local news magazine reported on June 27th, "This is not the year of the woman in Montgomery County,” here is what Gail Weiss wrote in response to that well-known Bethesda publication.
Yes, on the Democrat side it apparently was not the Year of the Woman in Montgomery County!
But how unfortunately one-sided and self-absorbed this Bethesda magazine is to assume that the only party worth reporting about is Democrats!
In point of fact, Republicans elected many women as the party's nominee and or to county party seats, including:
Two Republican Nominees for U.S. Congress:
Liz Matory in Congressional District 2 with 42% of the vote. Liz is a woman of color who prevailed over three male opponents. Liz is also a member of the Montgomery County Republican Party Central Committee from Legislative District (LD) 18. https://www.lizmatory.com/about
Amie Hoeber, a candidate for Congress from Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, earned 68% of the vote, over one female and two male opponents. https://www.amieformaryland.com/about
Anjali Reed Phukan, a woman of color, ran unopposed for Comptroller of Maryland, https://mscomptroller.weebly.com
Republicans also nominated many women from around the state for both State Senate and Delegate seats, including many excellent women from right here in Montgomery County such as:
Laurie Halverson (LD 15), Linda Willard (LD 18), Josephine Wang (LD 17), Pat Fenati (LD 14), Helen Domenici (LD 19) and Martha Schaerr (LD 19).
Dolores Reyes, a woman of color, was the candidate for Montgomery County Republican Register of Wills.
And 16 of the 48 Republicans elected to serve on our Montgomery County Republican Central Committee are women, the majority of whom were top vote-getters in their districts. Plus, a majority of our newly elected At-Large Central Committee members (five out of 8) are women.
The fact is that Republicans don't need to designate positions by gender in order to elect women to 33 percent of our Central Committee seats.
I hope the record will be corrected to reflect that Montgomery County and Maryland Republicans had a very substantial representation of winning candidates last Tuesday of women, as well as candidates of color.
Perhaps the Democrat Party could strive to follow our example . . .
A competitive two-party system would benefit all citizens by creating a dynamic whereby elected officials would need to compete for of our votes, as well as represent all of us, once elected.
After all, perpetuating the idea that only one party counts in Montgomery County ignores the reality of this year’s results and does not serve any of us well.
* Central Committee Member-Elect from LD 16
