By MDBayNews Staff
TOWSON, Md. — Baltimore County voters approved a lot more than new district lines when they passed Question A in November 2024. They set off the most sweeping remake of county government in decades. The County Council is growing from seven members to nine, its first expansion since Baltimore County adopted charter government in 1956, and when the new council takes office this December, no more than three members of the current council can possibly return. Only two of the seven members elected to the current term, Democrat Michael Ertel and Republican David Marks, are actually seeking another full term; a third, Republican Nino Mangione, is a sitting council member only because he was appointed in June to fill a resignation, and he’s now running for a full term in a different, renumbered district.
“Only two of the seven members elected to the current term are actually seeking another full term.”
An executive seat nobody expected to be open
Baltimore County’s current executive, Kathy Klausmeier, was never elected to the job. She was appointed in 2025 to finish out Johnny Olszewski Jr.’s term after he won a seat in Congress, and she said from the start she wouldn’t seek a full term of her own. That left the county’s top office open for the first time in years, and it drew a crowded, expensive Democratic primary.
Councilman Julian Jones, a Woodstock Democrat and retired Anne Arundel County firefighter who has served on the council since 2014, won that primary with 38% of the vote over a field of four rivals, including fellow council members Izzy Patoka and Pat Young. Jones spent more than $2 million over the course of the campaign, according to the Baltimore Banner, and entered the fall with roughly nine times as much cash on hand as his Republican opponent, Patrick Dyer, an investment firm owner making his first run for office.
Jones would be the first Black man to lead Baltimore County government; a Black woman, D’Andrea Walker, briefly served in an acting capacity for a few days during the 2025 transition, and Klausmeier herself is the office’s first female occupant. The county’s recent political history and current registration numbers give Democrats a substantial structural advantage in the fall race: as of the state’s August 2026 count, Baltimore County had 309,116 active registered Democrats and 139,487 Republicans, a ratio of better than two to one, and the last Republican to hold the county executive’s office was Roger Hayden, who served from 1990 to 1994.
Two other countywide races are worth a shorter mention. Democrat Sarah David unseated five-term incumbent State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger in the June primary, a genuine upset, and faces no Republican opponent in November. And Democrat Clyde Boatwright faces Republican Michael Burke for sheriff, one of the few countywide races with candidates from both parties on the ballot.
Why the council looks so different
Of the seven council members whose terms expire this year, only two are actually seeking reelection to the new nine-seat council.
Three sitting Democrats, Julian Jones, Izzy Patoka and Pat Young, gave up their council seats to run for county executive. Jones won; Patoka and Young didn’t. Republican Wade Kach, who represented the old District 3, resigned in May 2026, and the council appointed Nino Mangione, then a state delegate, to serve out the remainder of his term. Mangione was sworn in June 1 and, within weeks, won the Republican primary for the new District 5 seat, meaning the county has had two different people sitting in Kach’s old chair inside of two months.
Republican Todd Crandell, who represented Dundalk and the county’s southeast side for over a decade, announced early this year that he would not seek another term. Crandell had spoken publicly about a difficult stretch that included a widely reported 2024 incident at his district office during what police described as a mental health crisis, and told the Baltimore Sun he wanted to focus on his sobriety and recovery. He said serving the district had been an honor.
That leaves Democrat Michael Ertel, the outgoing council chair, and Republican David Marks as the only members of the current council who were elected to their seats and are seeking reelection, both unopposed in their own primaries. Mangione, the appointed District 3 incumbent now running for the new District 5 seat, is also on the ballot and could end up as a third returning face, but he’s serving on borrowed time in a seat he never won an election for.
“Three sitting Democrats, Julian Jones, Izzy Patoka and Pat Young, gave up their council seats to run for county executive.”
“The County Council is growing from seven members to nine, its first expansion since Baltimore County adopted charter government in 1956.”
The new nine-seat map, district by district
- District 1 (Catonsville/Halethorpe area) — Open. Former Councilman Pat Young left to run for executive. Democrat Paul Dongarra, a businessman who ran on smart-growth planning issues, faces Republican Rheagan Kindle, the county GOP’s treasurer, and unaffiliated candidate Joseph “Joe” Hooe, a longtime southwestern Baltimore County resident who collected enough signatures to make the November ballot.
- District 2 (Randallstown/Reisterstown area) — Open. Former Councilman Izzy Patoka left to run for executive. Democrat Ruben Amaya, the 25-year-old president of Young Democrats of Maryland, faces Republican James Amos.
- District 3 (McDonogh/Owings Mills area) — Open. Democrat Makeda Scott, a former chair of the county school board, won her primary decisively and faces Republican Chike Anyanwu, who has twice run unsuccessfully for the House of Delegates.
- District 4 (Pikesville/Stevenson/Ruxton area) — Open. Former Councilman Julian Jones left to run for executive. Democrat Karson Kamenetz, 24, won his primary with about 64% of the vote and would become the youngest person ever to serve on the council. He’s the son of the late County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who died in office in 2018 while running for governor; the elder Kamenetz represented much of the same area for 16 years before becoming executive. Karson Kamenetz faces Republican Gary Schuman.
- District 5 (northern Baltimore County, Kach’s old base) — Open in practice, though technically defended by an appointed incumbent. Nino Mangione, appointed to the council in June after Wade Kach’s resignation, won the Republican primary and faces Democrat Shawn McIntosh, who ran unopposed for the nomination, along with an unaffiliated candidate, Cory Shaffer, who also petitioned onto the November ballot representing the district’s northern Baltimore County territory.
- District 6 — Incumbent Democrat and outgoing council chair Michael Ertel, unopposed in his primary, faces Republican Christine Vondersmith.
- District 7 — Incumbent Republican David Marks, unopposed in his primary, faces Democrat Caridad “Cari” Santiago. Marks previously represented the old District 5; the new map reassigns him to District 7.
- District 8 (new seat) — Democrat Sharonda Dillard-Huffman won a three-way primary and faces Republican Josh Sines.
- District 9 (new seat, drawing in part on Crandell’s old Dundalk-area turf) — Democrat Arkia Wade won a four-way primary and faces Republican Tim Fazenbaker, who also won a multi-candidate GOP field, plus unaffiliated candidate Donna Eve Radtke Sekora, a 40-year Dundalk resident and local business owner. Crandell had endorsed a different Republican, J.D. Urbach, who lost that primary to Fazenbaker.
Why it matters
“This isn’t a story about a partisan wave. It’s a story about structural turnover happening all at once.”
This isn’t a story about a partisan wave. It’s a story about structural turnover happening all at once. Council expansion itself was born from a bipartisan deal: in 2024, then-Chair Izzy Patoka needed Republican votes to put the nine-member council before voters, and an initial nine-district map acceptable to Republicans was part of that compromise. After voters approved expansion, a redistricting commission and another round of council negotiations produced the actual map governing this election, which the council adopted by a 5-2 vote in September 2025. That final map is expected to produce a 5-4 partisan split on the new council, a notably better ratio for Republicans than their share of the county’s registered voters, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one overall. Republicans backed the original 2024 compromise in part because they argued it offered fairer representation than a map a Democratic council majority might otherwise have drawn on its own.
What to Watch: Whether a council with seven brand-new or newly reassigned members governs any differently than the body it replaces, and whether a Jones administration, if Democrats hold the office as the county’s registration numbers suggest, changes the county’s long-running debate over housing density and development that has divided his own council colleagues from Gov. Wes Moore’s administration.
Sources: Maryland State Board of Elections and Maryland State Archives 2026 primary and general election candidate lists and returns for Baltimore County (elections.maryland.gov; msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/36loc/bco/elect); the Maryland State Board of Elections’ August 2026 monthly voter registration activity report (elections.maryland.gov/pdf/vrar); the Maryland Manual On-Line’s Baltimore County Council legislative branch page and its list of former Baltimore County executives, including the record of Wade Kach’s May 2026 resignation, Nino Mangione’s appointment, and Roger Hayden’s 1990-1994 term; the Baltimore Banner’s coverage of the council expansion referendum, the 2025 redistricting fight, the Jones-Dyer county executive race and campaign finance filings, the Karson Kamenetz profile, and its report on independent candidates Joseph Hooe, Cory Shaffer and Donna Eve Radtke Sekora; WYPR’s coverage of the council expansion vote, the 2024 redistricting compromise, and district-confusion issues during candidate filing; the Baltimore County Council’s own record of the September 2025 redistricting bill’s 5-2 passage; the Baltimore Sun’s reporting on Todd Crandell’s decision not to seek reelection, as covered by Fox Baltimore and the Dundalk Eagle; the AFRO’s coverage of the council’s September 2025 redistricting vote; Baltimore Brew’s unofficial and updated primary election results; and the Daily Record’s and Maryland Matters’ coverage of primary election night results across Maryland’s large counties.
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