Contributor Opinion By Laura Berthiaume: What I Know

This Contributor Opinion is by Laura Berthiaume.

I know the womens’ movement has reached maturity (or maybe immaturity) in Montgomery County. That is because, with all the lip service we often give to the notion of women helping women, Montgomery County’s fiercest rivalries often seem to be between female Democratic politicians. Unfortunately, in the D17 race, we are now way, way down into the mud. After three consecutive negative mailers from Cheryl Kagan, Jennie Forehand finally fired back. I do not blame her - if there is one thing we have learned on the national level it is that when someone levels a Swift Boat style charge, then you fail to respond at your political peril. Jennie did not fire the first shot or even sling the second mud ball. She did finally respond forcefully, and that seems to have triggered even worse behavior. I really was horrified at the mailer I received from Cheryl Kagan basically accusing Jennie of helping corporate interests poison children.

This between two candidates who admit they have no serious policy disagreements.

I will disclose my bias up front before getting into the pros or cons of who to vote for. I first remember meeting Jennie when I was a child: Jennie and my mother are life-long friends. By the time I was in college, Jennie had me at the polls wearing a straw hat and handing out campaign literature for a candidate she was mentoring. It was my first introduction to retail politics, and I discovered I liked it. When I decided to run for Delegate back in 2006, Jennie welcomed my desire to engage in civic life with true warmth and delight. In contract to the quick dismissal I received from so many other women (albeit some of them rivals with Jennie who just did not want her to have any allies holding office), Jennie truly seemed to embrace the notion that women should be encouraged to run and mentored when they do. Perhaps she is a little naive that way, since she tells me she once did exactly that for Cheryl Kagan, and look what she is facing now.

When I ran for Delegate, I was admittedly naive myself. Now, with some small political experience under my belt, I think I know just a few things, though perhaps only a few:

I know that Jennie knows this District inside and out. She is in touch with her constituency. She also has a mind and values of her own and when she disagrees, she does so for a reason. I personally opposed the current location of the District courthouse. In fact, I facilitated a meeting between TCAT and the leadership of the Montgomery County Bar Association to see if we could not come to an agreement to move the courthouse to the other end of Maryland Avenue. I had numerous conversations on the matter, including with Jennie. She listened to me, and then she told me her reasons for supporting the current location. She knew very well what all of the arguments were. We simply had to agree to disagree on that one. The interesting thing is, to the best of my recollection, I saw Cheryl Kagan once that entire time, at a meeting around the same time Mayor Hoffman came in and told us it was basically a lost cause. Perhaps Cheryl was very active elsewhere on getting the location moved, but if so, I never saw it or heard about it.

I know that Annapolis does not work the way we think it probably should. Good ideas fail all the time. Bad ideas sometimes pass. That is because nothing there happens in a vacuum - everything happens in relationship, both to other issues and to other representatives. I have learned it is one thing to get elected, quite another to figure out how to work with a diverse group of people in a way in which it is possible to have some positive impact on the direction things are going. You enter thinking you are going to do X, Y, and Z, and pretty soon you realize that if you can just get X on the agenda, you have worked miracles. From my conversations with various people, I get the distinct impression that Cheryl Kagan mostly never even got X on the agenda during her time in Annapolis,and when she did she somehow managed to tick people off. Jennie gets X on the agenda all the time - maybe not on the flashy issues, but on those issues she can advance given the current political leadership. And let’s not kid ourselves that Mike Miller is going anywhere, by the way, whoever wins this particular State Senate race. Now, it is OK not to get X on the agenda if you have a good reason for doing something else - say, building a rationale for systemic change. If Cheryl were running on the idea that eight years in Annapolis taught her it needs to be reformed from inside out, that is an argument I could buy. She is not running on that - she is running on the notion that she can bring people together to bring home the bacon for Montgomery County. If that is the test, then I’ll take Jennie Forehand every time because if there is one thing she has dedicated herself to, it is bringing home the bacon for Rockville, Gaithersburg, and Garrett Park. While it is true that our state delegation has failed time and time again to get our share of school construction money, but I think we have to lay that at the feet of the entire delegation as a whole and at the feet of Mike Miller, who is politically savvy enough to know how to play Montgomery County and Prince George’s County off against each other. I do not see how having Cheryl Kagan in office instead of Jennie Forehand is going to change that equation. I could probably name two or three other key County races where who wins really could make a difference, but not this one.

I know that Jennie must be terribly hurt that anyone would accuse her, a mother and grandmother herself, of betraying the health of poor children in return for campaign contributions. I hope she has the opportunity to respond to this very late, very nasty charge, made less than a week out from election day, just as early voting has really gotten under way.

I know that later today, I am going to go vote early so I that can work the polls on election day, just as I did twenty plus years ago, but this time on behalf of Jennie herself, as well as for couple of other candidates I support.

One last thing I know: I know that I am going to vote for Jennie Forehand for State Senator.

Laura Berthiaume

Laura Berthiaume is a member of the Montgomery County Board of Education.

This is a Contributor Opinion. Rockville Central encourages readers to submit such pieces for consideration — the more voices the better. Simply send them to [email protected]. We ask that all such contributions be civil and we reserve the right to edit (in consultation with the author) or reject. Contributor opinions should not be seen as reflecting opinions held by Rockville Central editors, as they are just as frequently at odds with our own views. That’s the whole point!

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