Pittman Trims Deficit But Still Trails Haire In Anne Arundel County Executive Race

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD — Democratic incumbent Steuart Pittman chipped away at Republican challenger Jessica Haire's lead Friday in the Anne Arundel County executive's race. Pittman still trails Haire, who currently represents south county as the District 7 council member.

Pittman remains optimistic, however. The majority of mail-in ballots were sent by Democrats, so Pittman thinks these votes will win him a second term.

Haire led Pittman by nearly 11,000 votes after the early voting and Election Day tallies. After two days of canvassing mail-in ballots, Haire's advantage shrunk to about 6,000 votes.

The Anne Arundel County Board of Elections did not start counting mail-in ballots until Thursday. Local boards of elections had the option to tally mail-in ballots as they arrived or wait until two days after polls closed.

The county reported that it received around 46,000 mail-in ballots by Election Day. Democrats submitted about 27,000 of those ballots compared to the Republicans' roughly 10,000.

That gave the Democrats an advantage of around 17,000 mail-in ballots, meaning Pittman may have enough supporters to overcome his initial 11,000-vote deficit.

More mail-in ballots have arrived since Election Day, so these numbers have fluctuated slightly.

The county Board of Elections must continue accepting mail-in ballots until Nov. 18 as long as they were postmarked by the time polls closed on Tuesday. Officials will not certify the final election results until at least Nov. 18. Candidates may declare victory or concede before then, however.

Democrats still had a roughly 3 to 1 advantage over Republicans in the mail-in ballots received by Wednesday.

Almost 9,000 mail-in ballots came from voters not affiliated with a party. If all of those wild card votes went to Haire, the Democrats would still have about 10,000 more potential votes than the GOP.

Thousands of ballots had not yet arrived at election headquarters by that Wednesday report, so there are still more mail-in votes that could come into play.

Democrats also have twice as many outstanding ballots as Republicans. That means the Democrats have a larger potential pool of votes that could still come in the mail.

The county Board of Elections will reconvene Saturday at 10 a.m. to continue its tally. That meeting will be at the board's Glen Burnie office at 6740 Baymeadow Drive. The proceeding is open to the public.

"We are more confident than ever in our path to victory," Pittman said Friday on Facebook. "This gap will continue to shrink until we ultimately take the lead as additional mail-in ballots are counted, and will provide our campaign with a healthy margin of victory once all votes are counted. We look forward to continuing to observe the counting of ballots on Saturday, and ensure that every voter has their voice heard."

Related: Pittman Expects Victory As Anne Arundel Awaits Mail-In Ballot Count

Haire had not yet commented on social media by the time this story was published.

The Anne Arundel County Council also has two close races.

Republican challenger Noel J. Smith leads Democratic incumbent Allison Pickard by 80 votes in District 2.

In District 6, former Annapolis Mayor Mike Pantelides (R) held a 756-vote edge on incumbent Lisa Brannigan Rodvien (D) after Election Day. Rodvien has since taken a 1,379-vote lead.

It has been a busy week for Anne Arundel County election officials.

A ballot scanner broke for five hours Thursday during the first mail-in count, The Capital reported. That led officials to postpone releasing their initial mail-in results until Friday.

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Unofficial Vote Tallies

The table below shows the current unofficial vote tallies as of 4:40 p.m. Friday.

The names of incumbents are bolded and starred. Every candidate's name is linked to their campaign website. Voters can check which district they live in by using this tool.

County Executive

• Jessica Haire (R): 83,806
• Steuart Pittman* (D): 77,838

County Council District 1

• Jeremy M. Shifflett (R): 7,940
• Pete Smith (D): 9,749

County Council District 2

• Noel J. Smith (R): 8,482
• Allison Pickard* (D): 8,402
• David Sgambellone (Libertarian): 625

County Council District 3

• Nathan Volke* (R): 19,011
• Michael Gendel (D write-in): 0
• Other write-ins: 933

County Council District 4

• Cheryl Renshaw (R): 5,465
• Julie Hummer (D): 11,576

County Council District 5

• Amanda Fiedler* (R): 16,798
• Carl James Neimeyer (D): 11,334

County Council District 6

• Mike Pantelides (R): 13,460
• Lisa Brannigan Rodvien* (D): 14,839

County Council District 7

• Shannon Leadbetter (R): 16,228
• Shawn Livingston (D): 11,309

Visit elections.maryland.gov to see the results of every race in the state.

Status Of Referendums

Several jurisdictions also have local ballot questions. Here are the early tallies for Anne Arundel's referendums seeking to amend the county charter to:

• Require the Anne Arundel County Veterans Affairs Commission.
  • (121,700 yes, 21,497 no)
• Provide that no person elected or appointed to the office of County Councilmember may serve more than three full consecutive four-year terms.
  • (119,263 yes, 33,611 no)
• Require that the compensation paid to each member of the County Council be paid after consideration of recommendations of the Salary Standard Commission that are approved by ordinance of the County Council.
  • (111,859 yes, 31,487 no)
• Remove the requirement that copies of bills and notices of public hearings be posted on a bulletin board and to require that electronic copies of bills and notice of any public hearing be published to the County Council website and that printed copies of bills be made available to the public and press and that bills receive required publication.
  • (109,005 yes, 37,998 no)
• Clarify the differences between the two types of emergency ordinances allowed under the Charter and the legislative procedure that applies to each.
  • (122,735 yes, 18,274 no)
• Allow the County Council to assign additional functions, duties, and personnel to the County Auditor that are related to the finances and financial affairs of the County.
  • (107,950 yes, 35,257 no)
• Change the name of the Charter Revision Commission to the Redistricting and Charter Revision Commission and to amend the date by which a decennial Redistricting and Charter Revision Commission must be appointed by the County Council.
  • (94,950 yes, 42,479 no)
• Be gender neutral consistent with changes recommended based on a review by the County Attorney.
  • (81,343 yes, 69,913 no)

These ballot questions will pass if they collect a plurality of votes. That means they just need to secure more yes's than no's.

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