Goldberg, Sayles, Silvestre and Elrich Win Montgomery County Council At-Large Seats

Scott Evan Goldberg, Laurie-Anne Sayles, Karla Silvestre and Marc Elrich won the four at-large seats on the Montgomery County Council, according to unofficial State Board of Elections results as of 10:31 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3. Sherwin Wells finished fifth, 127,946 votes behind Elrich.

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 the 127,946-vote gap between fourth and fifth place. Results are unofficial until every ballot is counted and the county certifies them.

Four of the Council’s 11 members are elected at-large by voters across the county, under Section 102 of the county charter. Every Montgomery County voter could choose up to four of the five candidates. Full results are on the State Board of Elections’ Montgomery County results page.

The candidates

Party labels: (D) Democrat, (R) Republican. “Incumbent” means the candidate holds an at-large seat now, according to the Council’s website.

• Marc Elrich (D): 182,364 votes (22.82%)
• Scott Evan Goldberg (D): 186,567 votes (23.35%)
• Laurie-Anne Sayles (D, incumbent): 186,385 votes (23.32%)
• Karla Silvestre (D): 184,522 votes (23.09%)
• Sherwin Wells (R): 54,418 votes (6.81%)

Sayles is the lone current councilmember among the five candidates, so at least three at-large seats will go to people who are not on the Council now. At-large Councilmembers Evan Glass and Shebra Evans are not on the Nov. 3 Council ballot, and Will Jawando ran for County Executive and won, unofficial results show; see our County Executive results story.

Elrich, the County Executive, served on the Council at-large from 2006 to 2018, according to his county biography. Silvestre holds an at-large seat on the Board of Education, according to the school board’s member page.

How the field was set

In the June Democratic primary for four at-large nominations, Elrich received 66,706 votes, Sayles 57,409, Goldberg 53,907 and Silvestre 47,399, according to official primary results. Fatmata Barrie finished fifth with 46,225, which was 1,174 votes behind Silvestre. Moderately MOCO wrote about that race for the fourth nomination after the primary. Wells was the lone Republican at-large candidate in the primary.

Councilmembers serve four-year terms, and the current Council’s term ends at noon on Monday, Dec. 7, according to the Council’s website. Results for the seven district seats are in our Council district results story.

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 is received by 10 a.m. Nov. 13, under state regulations. Results for every county race are in our live results page.

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