Before the Endorsement: Jawando’s Senate Committee Gave $115,000 to Working Families Party PAC

By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews

Editor’s Note: After publication, MDBayNews became aware that Montgomery Perspective reported in November 2025 that Jawando’s Senate committee contributed $115,000 to the Working Families Party PAC prior to the WFP endorsement. MDBayNews independently reported this finding, along with additional details on the committee chain and shared vendor connections.

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Will Jawando has built his Montgomery County Executive campaign around a simple message: he is the candidate of small donors, grassroots organizing, and public financing. Federal records tell a different story about how he secured one of his most important endorsements.

In the spring of 2025, as Jawando was preparing his county executive run, his federal Senate campaign committee contributed $115,000 to the Working Families Party PAC — a federal political action committee affiliated with the progressive third party. The Senate committee transferred $15,000 in March 2025, followed by $100,000 in April 2025. That committee raised $1.3 million during Jawando’s 2023 Senate bid before he dropped out, and has been spending down its surplus ever since.

Five months later, in September 2025, the Working Families Party endorsed Jawando for Montgomery County Executive at a press conference in Silver Spring, joining with Progressive Maryland to announce joint support that included a commitment to canvassing, a digital program, and other campaign activities on his behalf.

The Jawando campaign did not respond to initial questions from MDBayNews.

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A High-Dollar Path to a Progressive Endorsement

The Working Families Party is not a passive endorser. When it backs a candidate, it brings organizational muscle — field staff, digital infrastructure, and in some cases independent expenditure activity through affiliated Super PACs.

Progressive Maryland, which announced its endorsement alongside WFP, has a history of playing aggressively in Montgomery County elections through independent expenditures. Its board includes representatives of major labor organizations, including SEIU locals, UFCW, CASA, and MCGEO. An endorsement from both organizations at once represents a significant alignment of progressive institutional power behind a candidate.

That power came five months after Jawando’s Senate committee wrote a $100,000 check.

There is no evidence the donations were made as an explicit condition of the endorsement, and the Working Families Party has not responded to questions. Under federal law, contributions from a campaign committee to a federal PAC are legal. But the size and timing of the contributions — $115,000 across two months from a dormant Senate campaign account, followed by a major organizational endorsement — raises questions Jawando has not addressed publicly.

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The Contradiction at the Center of His Campaign

Jawando has repeatedly pointed to his participation in Montgomery County’s Public Election Fund as evidence of a different kind of politics. The program was designed to reduce the influence of large contributions and amplify the voices of small donors. Jawando has raised more than $400,000 through the program from over 1,200 contributors, with an average donation of roughly $62.

But his committee’s political spending tells a different story. Federal records show Jawando’s Senate campaign committee gave $115,000 to the Working Families Party PAC — more than his publicly financed committee has spent on any single category of campaign activity. That money came from his federal Senate campaign committee — the same dormant committee that raised $1.3 million during his 2023 Senate bid and has been spending down its surplus ever since — and is therefore not subject to the PEF program’s restrictions.

The public financing program limits what donors can give to Jawando. It does not limit what Jawando can give to others.

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A Pattern Across Multiple Accounts

This story is part of MDBayNews’s ongoing coverage of Jawando’s campaign finances. Earlier this week, MDBayNews reported that Jawando has operated parallel campaign committees — a publicly financed committee and a traditional committee funded by $6,000 maximum contributions — and that both committees share vendors with his federal Senate campaign committee and his leadership PAC, Will of the People PAC.

Federal records reviewed by MDBayNews show that Will of the People PAC received a $5,000 transfer from Jawando’s dormant Senate campaign committee in February 2025, contributed $5,000 to his state traditional committee in March 2025, and has paid SB Digital — a vendor also paid by three other Jawando committees — for digital fundraising services.

Together, the picture is of a candidate who has embraced public financing as a campaign message while sustaining a parallel financial ecosystem of traditional committees, a leadership PAC, a dormant federal campaign committee still cutting checks — and now $115,000 from that federal committee to an organization that endorsed him five months later.

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What the Endorsement Is Worth

The Working Families Party and Progressive Maryland endorsement, announced September 3, 2025, came one day after Jawando’s campaign announced it had qualified for public matching funds. The joint press conference featured tenant leaders, local elected officials, and community advocates, and both organizations pledged active support in the field.

Whether the $115,000 in contributions from Jawando’s Senate committee to the WFP PAC influenced the endorsement decision is a question none of the parties involved has answered. What the records show is that the money came first.

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Federal campaign finance data cited in this story is drawn from filings with the Federal Election Commission. Committee contribution records are publicly available through the FEC’s campaign finance disclosure database.

This is part of MDBayNews’s ongoing series on Maryland campaign finances. Read our earlier reporting: Jawando Taps Public Financing — and a Parallel Big-Money Committee

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Addendum, April 9, 2026: Federal Election Commission records obtained after publication show that the $100,000 contribution to the Working Families Party PAC on March 31, 2025, was one of the final disbursements made by Jawando’s Senate committee as it wound down operations. The committee filed a termination report covering July 1–15, 2025, which the FEC accepted on July 16, 2025. The committee closed with a cash balance of $24.20. Among its final acts before closing: the $100,000 payment to the WFP PAC, a $5,000 contribution to Jawando’s state traditional committee — “Friends of William Jawando” — on March 11, 2025, and a $1,000 contribution to Tishaura Jones for Mayor. The committee’s deliberate distribution of remaining funds to the WFP PAC prior to closing adds context to the timeline previously reported. MDBayNews’s earlier characterization of the committee as holding an unspent surplus was based on incomplete FEC data that did not include the 2025 filings.

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