What’s the future of development in northern Baltimore County? Voters will decide.

The future of development in northern Baltimore County depends on whether District 5 voters believe Councilman Nino Mangione — whose grandfather was a multimillionaire real estate magnate — will preserve their land or whether he is too cozy with developers.

The Republican incumbent, who was appointed to replace Wade Kach in May, has pledged to protect land north of the Urban-Rural Demarcation Line. His opponents, Democrat Shawn McIntosh and independent Cory Shaffer, say he can’t be trusted.

“Nino Mangione is taking money from developers,” McIntosh said at a Sept. 30 candidate forum. “Will he be beholden to developers? I think so.”

Mangione — who declined to participate in this story — rebutted McIntosh’s claims during the candidate forum. He has repeatedly targeted his opponent for her decision to use public financing — which comes from taxpayer dollars — to fund her campaign.

District residents, including those at the forum run by the Hanover Road and Boring Community associations, are preoccupied with how their future council member will manage developers’ interests and whether that representative will change the fabric of the exurban communities they call home.

Each candidate is vying to represent 97,000 residents between Cockeysville and the Pennsylvania state line. The area is the county’s most decidedly purple. Voter registration data shows about 40% of the district’s 75,000-plus registered voters are Democrats, 36% are Republicans and 24% are unaffiliated or registered with another party.

For a dozen years, Kach, Maryland’s longest-serving Republican, led the district. He dedicated his tenure to preserving land and water while preventing projects that could threaten them, such as solar farms, 70-mile-long transmission lines and housing.

A high schooler who attended the forum inside St. John’s Western Run Parish asked the candidates how they would protect the district from development.

“Am I going to come back to Hereford one day and see a city?” she said.

Mangione, McIntosh and Shaffer have tried to reassure voters that they won’t pursue projects or approve policies that turn farmland and countryside into major metropolitan areas.

A Trump admirer

Mangione, 39, is a familiar face in Maryland politics. His family is well known in Baltimore. After his grandfather, Nick Mangione Sr., became a prominent real estate developer, the elder Mangione purchased WCBM-AM 680 — a conservative talk-radio station that catalyzed his grandson’s politics.

A former state representative, Mangione served seven years in the Maryland House of Delegates before mounting a campaign for Baltimore County Council last year.

After Kach retired in May, the district’s Republican Central Committee — consisting of two voting members — chose Mangione out of seven applicants to fill the vacancy.

Mangione vows to fight “against the ‘WOKE’ policies of the radical left” and has said President Donald Trump is the person he admires most in the world.

This year, The Banner reported that Mangione’s campaign paid Kelley Rogers, a felon and Maryland political operative, $121,500 for political advice dating to 2023 — just months after Rogers was released from prison.

Campaign finance data shows Mangione has raised more than $600,000 to fund his run for Baltimore County Council, although he had less than $90,000 on hand by mid-October.

Last month, the councilman voted for legislation that provides the Lutherville Station redevelopment project — a proposed 325-unit mixed-use apartment complex — access to future state funding over residents’ objections.

The controversial, seven-year campaign to transform the run-down shopping center next to a light rail station has alarmed residents who fear it will attract crime, lead to overcrowded local schools and change their community.

“Unfortunately, you have to make tough decisions even when it’s not popular because you’re bound by development and zoning rights,” Mangione said during the forum.

At a council meeting last month, Mangione said he is negotiating with Lutherville Station’s developer, Mark Renbaum, to classify the project as a planned unit development. He said the zoning classification would provide the community with additional, unnamed benefits.

According to campaign finance data, Lutherville Station LLC, the business entity behind the redevelopment project owned and operated by Renbaum, has contributed $5,000 to Mangione’s campaign since January 2026. The developer also has personally contributed $3,000 to Mangione’s campaign since January 2025.

In a July 2025 interview with The Banner, Mangione said the county needs to embrace “reasonable, smart growth.”

“For me,” he said, “it comes down to: Will that development enhance the property value? Will that stay within the character of the district?”

Community first

Throughout the fall, McIntosh has knocked on doors, left Ring camera voicemails and handed out pamphlets and brochures with the promise of a progressive future for District 5.

“I think that Baltimore County has for too long been driven by special interests, and that’s just not what I want to do,” the 61-year-old said. “I want to be community driven.”

Campaign finance data shows McIntosh has raised over $127,000 in public financing. The Democratic challenger hasn’t accepted donations from political action committees, labor unions or businesses.

That’s what separates her from Mangione, she said.

“What you see is what you get,” McIntosh said while door-knocking in the Pine Valley Valleywood neighborhood in Lutherville-Timonium.

Her goals, she admits, are lofty: make the county more affordable, pare the budget, ban data centers, restructure the zoning system, protect the URDL and center residents in conversations about development.

The mother of five said Baltimore County is known for being developer driven and that Mangione would only further cement that reputation.

In turn, Mangione has attacked McIntosh in a series of AI-generated fundraising emails, Facebook and Instagram posts for using matching public funds to bolster her small-dollar donations.

“Taxpayer dollars funding a political race. The selfishness here is unreal,” he wrote in a Facebook post. ”Join me in telling greedy Shawn McIntosh to stop using our tax dollars."

McIntosh said, if her opponent wins, she is convinced the same powerful businesspeople and developers who donated to Mangione’s campaign will push the council member to prioritize their profits over constituents’ concerns.

“Strip mall after strip mall, storage facilities galore, car washes galore, all along our commercial corridors,” she said.

The public health policy wonk and executive director of nonprofit Sugar Free Kids Maryland said she is committed to weighing the community’s concerns against the county’s needs and balancing both priorities.

“I don’t see a D or an R behind my constituents’ names,” she said. “They are my constituents. It doesn’t matter to me D or R. My job is to represent them. That’s my job.”

An independent candidate

Shaffer, 38, wants voters to put an independent candidate on the Baltimore County Council.

He spent months at grocery store parking lots along York Road and the Cockeysville branch of the Baltimore County Public Library collecting the 1,000 signatures required to get his name on the ballot.

It’s also where he connected with residents struggling to afford their lives.

“It’s this really chicken-and-egg issue where we’re spending 40 hours a week working for the basics of what we need to survive,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of time and energy left to fight for our community.”

The father of three used to be in pharmaceutical sales before he opened a mental health clinic. He said he wants to build a county that his daughters won’t be priced out of. However, redevelopment projects such as Lutherville Station need to benefit the community beyond housing.

Shaffer said he does not think the recent legislation Mangione sponsored — which allows Renbaum to pursue state financing for Lutherville Station once construction is approved — puts residents at the forefront of the conversation.

“We’ve given away a lot of our leverage over this time,” he said.

Feckless leadership, he added, comes from the constraints of a two-party system.

“Somebody runs because they don’t like what the other party is saying,” Shaffer said. “Because we only have those two options, so many voters are so used to doing what they’re doing.”

Campaign finance records show Shaffer had raised less than $3,000 through mid-October. If he doesn’t win, he said, he’ll run again next time.