The Republican nominee heads into November facing a nearly 60-to-1 fundraising gap and an incumbent whose handling of the Adamstown data center fight has become the defining issue of the campaign.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Frederick County voters will decide in November whether Jessica Fitzwater gets four more years running county government, or whether Jeff Holtzinger gets a chance to do it his way. The matchup became official on June 23, when Holtzinger, a former Frederick mayor, beat fellow Republican Diane Fouché in the GOP primary. He now moves on to face the Democratic incumbent in a race that has been shaped almost entirely by one issue: what to do about data centers.
MDBayNews previewed this race back in February, before the primary field was set. With the general election matchup now locked in, here is where things stand.
How Holtzinger won the primary
Holtzinger, a civil engineer and attorney who served as Frederick’s mayor from 2005 to 2009, defeated Fouché by roughly 14 points, according to unofficial results reported by Maryland Matters, taking about 57 percent of the vote to her 43 percent. Fouché, the county’s former director of procurement, had built her campaign around a harder line against data center expansion and had also been in the middle of her own dispute with the county: she was fired from her procurement post in late 2025 and later filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, alleging she was let go for refusing to approve a contract tied to a Fitzwater political ally, according to WYPR. That suit is a matter of public record but remains a legal allegation, not an established fact.
Fitzwater ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and moves straight to November.
No public polling yet
As of this writing, there is no independent, publicly released poll of the Fitzwater-Holtzinger matchup. County executive races rarely draw the kind of paid polling that statewide contests attract, and neither campaign has published internal numbers. The best available gauge of the race right now is the fundraising record and the two candidates’ performance at recent public forums, both discussed below.
On money, Fitzwater has an overwhelming head start. State campaign finance records show her committee has raised $629,947 and spent $337,297 since the start of the current four-year election cycle in January 2023, through her most recently filed report, which covers activity into early June 2026. That leaves her with an estimated $292,650 on hand. Her all-time committee total, dating back to her 2018 County Council run, is close to $1.3 million raised.
Holtzinger, who entered the race in mid-January, has raised $10,343 and spent $4,195 through his most recent filing, leaving him with roughly $6,148 on hand. That works out to Fitzwater holding better than a 60-to-1 advantage in money raised so far this cycle, one of the largest disparities in a competitive Frederick County race in recent memory. Holtzinger’s next report, covering the summer months, is due ahead of the general election and will be the first real test of whether his primary win translates into fundraising momentum.
“That works out to Fitzwater holding better than a 60-to-1 advantage in money raised so far this cycle.”
The issue that will not go away: data centers
“If this election has a defining fight, it is over the 2,615-acre Critical Digital Infrastructure Overlay Zone.”
If this election has a defining fight, it is over the 2,615-acre Critical Digital Infrastructure Overlay Zone the County Council approved near Adamstown in December 2025, and what has happened since.
A citizen group, the Frederick County Data Center Referendum Committee, gathered more than 20,000 signatures, well past the roughly 15,000 needed, to force a public vote on the zoning map. Data center developers and several individual property owners sued to keep it off the ballot. A Frederick County Circuit Court judge ruled in June that the zoning ordinance was not the kind of law subject to referendum under the county charter, and separately found the petition itself legally deficient because it did not clearly reproduce the ordinance’s maps. The Maryland Supreme Court upheld that decision on June 30, closing off the referendum path for good this cycle.
Fitzwater’s administration responded within days. Supporters framed the eventual pause on new applications as a reasonable, if belated, acknowledgment of public concern. Critics, including members of the referendum committee, argued it did not go far enough and came only after the courts had already closed off a citizen vote on the underlying zoning.
Separately, records the county released in mid-June under a court order, stemming from a 2022 public records lawsuit filed by the Sugarloaf Alliance, showed that Amazon Web Services representatives had a hand in shaping the county’s earlier critical digital infrastructure zoning code, and that at least one county planner had raised internal concerns about keeping that involvement quiet. Those records concern the county’s original 2022 zoning framework rather than the 2025 Adamstown overlay directly, but they add to the broader credibility questions swirling around how the county’s data center policy has been made. The county has not publicly confirmed Amazon’s role, though the released documents make it difficult to dispute.
The pause itself, which halts new data center and substation applications through Dec. 31 while the state completes its own impact study, has drawn criticism over timing. Fitzwater signed it on July 1, about a week after the June 23 primary and one day after the Supreme Court’s ruling, according to Maryland Matters. Frederick County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Rick Weldon was blunt about the sequence, saying the county executive was “reading the tea leaves and reacting” only after voters had already weighed in. Fitzwater has said the decision reflects the scale of public concern shown by the referendum signature drive rather than the primary results. The same day, she signed a second executive order requiring data center developers to register with the state’s new large load customer registry, created this year under the Utility RELIEF Act, before advancing through county review. County officials also say the existing Quantum Frederick campus has generated more than $50 million in tax revenue to date and has helped fund agricultural preservation and transit projects, and that talks toward a formal community benefit agreement for that campus have resumed.
“The county executive was ‘reading the tea leaves and reacting’ only after voters had already weighed in.”
The June primary delivered a verdict of sorts on the issue in its own right. County Council President Brad Young, seen locally as the face of the council’s vote to expand the Adamstown zone, lost his at-large primary. In District 1, which includes Adamstown, Democrat Louisa Conklin won her primary after campaigning explicitly to reverse the council’s zoning expansion. Former council member Kai Hagen has argued the incoming council is now likely to lean against further data center growth regardless of who wins the executive’s race in November.
Concerns specific to Carroll Manor Elementary School, which sits close to the Quantum Frederick campus, have also surfaced through official channels rather than social media. Frederick County school board president Dean Rose and vice president Rae Gallagher sent a letter to Fitzwater, the County Council, and state officials in mid-July asking for a permanent buffer around the school and continued air quality and noise monitoring, noting the nearest planned data center building would sit within roughly 2,000 feet of the campus. The county added an air quality monitor at the school in late June in response to community concerns, one of several now installed in the Adamstown area. The county’s own published list of community benefits tied to the data center zone also includes berm and tree buffers for the area, a commitment that, as of this writing, residents and school officials are still pressing the county to show has been fully delivered.
Taken together, it is not hard to see why data centers have become the county executive’s most politically exposed issue. Fitzwater owns the current regulatory framework, the overlay zone, the pause, and the community benefit negotiations that followed. Holtzinger, while not running as an outright opponent of data center development, has staked out a more skeptical position on infrastructure capacity and long-term budget reliance on the industry.
“Fitzwater owns the current regulatory framework, the overlay zone, the pause, and the community benefit negotiations that followed.”
Where the candidates actually agree, and disagree
The clearest side-by-side look at the two candidates so far came at an August 10 candidate forum hosted by the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce, together with the Frederick County Building Industry Association and the Frederick County Association of Realtors. Both campaigns participated, and the Chamber, which does not endorse candidates, published a detailed recap the following week.
A few takeaways stand out:
- Data centers: Both candidates said they support keeping development concentrated in the existing zone rather than letting it spread countywide. They differed on oversight. Fitzwater pointed to the Critical Digital Infrastructure ordinance, the pauses on new applications, and ongoing community benefit negotiations with developers. Holtzinger pushed harder on infrastructure limits, specifically water and sewer capacity, and said he opposes building future county budgets around data center tax revenue, warning the industry’s economics could shift.
- Property taxes and spending: Holtzinger described his approach as closer to zero-based budgeting, requiring departments to justify funding rather than assuming last year’s budget plus more. He named rising property tax bills, particularly for seniors, as a top concern. Fitzwater pointed to the county’s AAA bond rating and said departments are already required to show how spending aligns with measurable goals.
- Growth and school capacity: This produced the sharpest disagreement of the forum. Holtzinger opposed loosening the county’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance standards, which tie new development to available school capacity, arguing that weakening them would let overcrowding get worse. Fitzwater said a single countywide standard may not fit every area and expressed openness to regional standards and mobility fees in places the county wants to encourage housing.
- Housing affordability: Fitzwater cited a new county housing division, more than 150 planned affordable workforce rental units at the county-owned Prospect Center, and expanded senior tax credits. Holtzinger said government has limited power to fix affordability directly and pointed instead to faster permitting review and private-sector incentives.
- Common ground: Both candidates supported expanding career and technical education and closer ties between Frederick Community College and local employers, and both named economic diversification, keeping the county from over-relying on any single industry, as a priority.
Separately, an August 10 forum hosted by county Republican-aligned groups drew informal, self-reported reactions from attendees on social media, with some describing Holtzinger favorably on preparedness and command of the issues. Those posts reflect the views of individual attendees at a partisan-affiliated event, not an independent assessment, and should be read with that context in mind.
What to watch before November
- Whether either campaign releases internal polling, which would be the first real data point on where the race stands.
- The next round of campaign finance filings, due later this year, which will show whether Holtzinger has closed any of Fitzwater’s fundraising gap.
- Developments in Fouché’s wrongful termination lawsuit against the county, which could resurface as a campaign issue even though she is no longer on the ballot.
- Whether the county’s temporary pause on new data center applications, set to run through December 31, becomes a live issue again once the state’s impact report is released.
- Whether the county follows through on the berm, tree, and monitoring commitments it has already published for the Adamstown area, and whether the community benefit agreement talks around Quantum Frederick produce anything concrete before November.
- How a County Council reshaped by the primary, with Brad Young out and Louisa Conklin in, changes the working relationship either Fitzwater or a future Republican executive would have with the legislative branch.
- Whether Holtzinger can turn his infrastructure-and-spending message into a genuine contrast, or whether Fitzwater’s fundraising advantage and incumbency prove decisive in a county that backed her by less than a point in 2022.
“Frederick remains one of Maryland’s most competitive counties.”
Frederick remains one of Maryland’s most competitive counties, and this race will be a real test of whether that competitiveness extends to countywide office in a midterm-adjacent year, or whether four years of incumbency and a financial head start are enough to hold the seat.
Sources: Maryland Campaign Reporting Information System (MDCRIS) contribution and expenditure filings for Friends of Jessica Fitzwater and Friends of William Holtzinger, downloaded August 19, 2026; Maryland Matters primary results coverage (June 24, 2026) and its July 13, 2026 reporting on the primary’s effect on Frederick’s data center politics; Frederick News-Post primary and Amazon records reporting; WYPR reporting on the Republican primary field and the data center referendum ruling; Maryland Supreme Court per curiam order and opinion in In re Frederick County Data Center Referendum Committee (June 30, 2026); Frederick County government press releases on the data center application pause and the Carroll Manor air quality monitor; the Maryland Daily Record’s July 2, 2026 report on the executive order; GovTech/News-Post reporting on the Frederick County school board’s July letter regarding Carroll Manor Elementary; Frederick County’s published data center community benefits list; Frederick County Chamber of Commerce’s August 17, 2026 recap of the August 10 County Executive candidate forum; MacRo Commercial Real Estate’s May 2026 analysis of the primary field; and MDBayNews’ prior reporting on the race, published February 26, 2026.
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