Will Jawando Elected Montgomery County Executive

Will Jawando has been elected Montgomery County Executive, according to unofficial results from the State Board of Elections. Jawando had 195,872 votes (78.66%) to 52,141 (20.94%) for Esther Wells as of 10:31 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Moderately MOCO is calling the race based on the vote count. About 38,534 mail-in ballots were left to count in Montgomery County as of 6 p.m. Nov. 2, according to the State Board of Elections’ ballots-left-to-count report, fewer than Jawando’s lead of 143,731 votes. Results are unofficial until every ballot is counted and the county certifies them.

Will Jawando, a Democrat, holds an at-large seat on the County Council, according to the Council’s website. Esther Wells is the Republican nominee. Wells ran for the Board of Education’s District 1 seat in 2022 and received 39.92% of the vote, losing to Grace Rivera-Oven, according to the State Board of Elections’ 2022 Montgomery County results. Results by vote type are on the State Board of Elections’ Montgomery County results page.

An open seat

Marc Elrich was elected County Executive in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, according to his county biography. In 2024, Montgomery County voters approved Question A, which cut the County Executive’s limit from three consecutive terms to two, with 67.42% voting for it, according to official 2024 results.

The county charter now bars any County Executive who has served two consecutive terms by December 2026 from starting another, under Section 202. Elrich ran this year for an at-large County Council seat and won one, unofficial results show. Results for the Council’s at-large seats are in our at-large County Council results story.

How the nominees got here

Jawando won the June Democratic primary with 52,744 votes (40.15%), ahead of Andrew Friedson with 44,520 (33.89%) and Evan Glass with 29,006 (22.08%), according to official primary results. Mithun Banerjee and Peter James also ran. Moderately MOCO explained why that primary took days to call.

Wells won the Republican primary with 6,850 votes (60.76%) to 4,423 (39.24%) for Shelly Skolnick, according to the same results.

What the County Executive does

The County Executive is Montgomery County’s chief executive officer and runs the executive branch, under Article 2 of the county charter. The County Executive can veto bills passed by the County Council, and the Council needs seven of its 11 votes to override a veto. The County Executive also appoints a Chief Administrative Officer, subject to Council confirmation.

Each year the County Executive sends the Council a proposed capital budget by Jan. 15 and a proposed operating budget by March 15, under Section 303 of the charter. The Council approves the budgets and sets the property tax rate, according to the Council’s website. The new County Executive’s four-year term begins at noon on Monday, Dec. 7, the first Monday in December, under Section 202.

What’s still to count

The Montgomery County Board of Elections resumes counting Thursday, Nov. 5, then counts Nov. 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17 and 18, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to its canvass schedule. Each session is livestreamed. The board says the dates are subject to change.

Provisional ballots are counted at a later canvass. A mail-in ballot postmarked by Nov. 3 still counts if it arrives by 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13, under state regulations. Results for every county race are in our live results page.

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