Where Will the Election Go from Today?

By Yin Zheng

After eight days of early voting and the final contest on June 26, the primaries in Montgomery County have ended. The massive number of campaign yard signs at polling stations was unprecedented and impressive. For County Council At Large alone, there were 33 Democratic candidates. It's astonishing how many people at the early polling stations appeared to be canvassing more votes than voting, and the panorama was extraordinary.

What blew me away the most about the polling stations was a man who came to the polls with a woman who could hardly move. After the vote, it took the man 15 minutes to get the woman into the car and put the seat down. They were the last two voters to leave the polling station.

Most of the Republican candidates had no rivals, so Republican voters had no sense of urgency about the primaries. The ratio of Montgomery County Republicans vs Democratic voters coming out to vote in the primary was roughly 1 to 8. Many voters cast their votes with emotion. The propaganda about the forced separation of undocumented children from their parents at the border led many voters to pour out their anger out at polling sites.

At the early polling stations, I had the opportunity to talk to a number of Republican and Democratic candidates, volunteers, and voters. The Democratic Party is not a monolithic party. A young independent criticized the media for pitting Democrats and Republicans against each other with their extreme left-wing and right-wing attitudes, sacrificing the interests of ordinary people.

One of the Democratic volunteers I spoke to came to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union and wondered why I registered as a Republican. I shared my past experiences, which were astoundingly similar to hers!

One of the most important lessons I learned in school in the United States was about the law. The protection of and respect for property was an entirely new concept for me. Advocating for a smaller government, fiscal constraints, and balance of payments, encouraging personal responsibility and commitment as well as diligence and creativity -- those were the ideas of the Republican Party that resonated with me.

“Equality and equity,” the catchphrase of the Democratic Party that we hear today in Montgomery County, is nothing new to us. We heard it more than 30 years ago and know that the pursuit of politically correct practices can only harm the country and its people. These concepts will not make the people rich and the country powerful.

Our painful history and dark past have taught us that only by galvanizing people and mobilizing individual initiatives can we truly lift ourselves out of poverty. Living off welfare, relying on the government and eliminating the chance to work will only influence the impoverished to be content with the status quo, do nothing, and never emerge. In the end, what everyone shares is not wealth, but poverty.

The same is true of education. Instead of figuring out the real solution for struggling students, abolishing final exams and admission criteria for magnet schools to close the achievement gap can only encourage opportunism and lead to a decline in the quality of education in schools, to the detriment of the millennial generation.

When I shared my views with the volunteers, they were fascinated. A voter (Democrat) from Bangladesh told me he had two jobs and worked very hard. He felt that hard work should be rewarded. He agreed that immigrants should obey the law. And I said to him, "Your point is actually the Republican point of view; you're more Republican than Democrat.”

Isn't that what our Chinese community is like? Although our perceptions of government, bipartisan checks and balances, family and education are close to Republican ideals, many of them still register as Democrats and campaign for Democrats.

The current county executive and nine county council members are all Democrats. The 32 representatives from Montgomery County in the Maryland legislature are all Democrats.

Where is common sense and logic? The county executive election results demonstrated that the far-left Marc Elrich was tied with David Blair, suggesting that Montgomery County was terminally ill. If the results of the midterm elections don’t change in November, Montgomery County is bound for disaster.

The primaries are over. We have four months until the November general election. Montgomery County's future is in our hands; if you still do not understand the importance of what is at stake, it is time to wake up!

Yin Zheng is a board member of the MCGOP Asian American Association.