Montgomery Dems Ramp Up for County Exec Race

Will Doug Duncan—Montgomery’s longest-serving county executive—return for a run at an unprecedented fourth term?

Duncan's political future came into clearer focus Tuesday after he met with advisers in Gaithersburg to mull the 2014 election, Josh Kurtz writes in CenterMaryland.org. The closed meeting hashed over the results of a new poll “that supposedly showed Duncan handily defeating every other potential Democratic candidate,” according to Kurtz.

Speculation has long swirled that Duncan—who served as Montgomery’s executive from 1994 to 2006 before a gubernatorial campaign that ended with him dropping out, citing clinical depression—is primed for a return to county politics.

If so, he would be joining a field that already has two prominent Democrats in the running. County Councilmen Phil Andrews of Gaithersburg and George Leventhal of Takoma Park both recently announced their intent to run for county executive, The Gazette reported. State Del. Ben Kramer of Derwood is also considering a run, depending on two-term County Executive Isiah Leggett’s decision to bow out of politics, according to The Gazette.

Leggett (D) has maintained he will not seek a third term, despite being “under a lot of pressure from people asking me to reconsider,” he said in an interview with Patch editors.

“That’s the commitment and understanding that I have with my wife. … Until and unless we have some change, that’s it, that' what I’m going to do,” he said.