Hutzell: Republicans want to beat the odds in deep-blue Maryland counties. Good luck.

Esther Wells wants to be the next Montgomery County executive. Ryan O’Connor wants to represent District 5 on the Howard County Council.

James Amah, Michael Riker and Kimberly Robinson want to represent their Prince George’s County district in the General Assembly.

The thing that unites them all — and maybe the biggest obstacle to achieving their dreams — is one loaded word: Republican.

All five are members of the state’s perpetual second-place political brand, the Maryland Republican Party. Each one is running in a county where Democrats have the biggest advantage in a statewide voter registration imbalance.

It’s 2.5 to 1 in Howard County, 4 to 1 in Montgomery, and in Prince George’s County, Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1.

Even before you calculate the deep-blue reaction to President Donald Trump and the national Republican Party, or the effect of MAGA candidate for governor Dan Cox atop the state ticket again, the numbers are a huge disadvantage to overcome.

They all have the same plan — distance themselves as much as possible from toxic parts of the national and state party.

“I think if people get to know me, they know that I’m, I’m a moderate. They know that I’m a good doer,” O’Connor said. “They know that I’m not very divisive. They know that I just fix things.”

He has the easiest Republican path in these three counties. O’Connor is running to replace the only Republican currently elected to Howard County office, David Yungmann.

District 5 is the most competitive in the county, but even there the timing couldn’t be worse. Former Republican County Executive Allan Kittleman quit the party in May, citing Trump’s influence on its character.

“Well, I mean, look, it’s his decision,” O’Connor said. “I understand his decision completely, right? As I mentioned before, there are very divisive policies.”

Democrats seem almost certain to focus on the difference between candidates with a D or an R behind their names.

So Republicans in tough local races will talk about chamber of commerce issues, lowering taxes, public safety and holding schools accountable.

Wells said she’ll position herself against Democrat Will Jawando on spending and take advantage of divisions between progressives and moderates within the majority party.

“My pitch to them is this: people over party, right, face over fear,” Wells said. “The Republican Party in Montgomery County is not the Republican Party on the national stage.”

It’s the same in Prince George’s County, where the three Republicans in District 23 are trying to become the first GOP members elected from the area in more than 50 years.

“I’m doing this because we need somebody that can help us,” said Amah, the Republican candidate for state Senate. “We need good representation.”

Even when they try to distance themselves from the president’s party — arguing their races aren’t about national issues — they can’t seem to help but align with his views.

Maybe it’s because Trump so often expresses an opinion about everything.

Wells, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, expressed empathy for people in the country without documentation but disagreed with some steps Montgomery County has taken to protect them from the federal immigration crackdown.

“I do agree that we need to close the border,” she said, “because we were seeing the safety net program collapsing, our schools being overcrowded, the hospitals being overcrowded.”

Riker, who along with Robinson hopes to replace Adrian Boafo in the House of Delegates now that he’s running for Congress, agreed with the president’s demands for voter ID and an end to mail-in ballots.

Even O’Connor found himself caught in the president’s many policy pronouncements.

One day before Trump spoke June 4 about Western Maryland coal, announcing a $700 million plan to bolster the industry, O’Connor brought up coal as part of an “all of the above” method of addressing high energy costs in Maryland.

“We’re importing over 40% of the energy into the state of Maryland,“ he said. “So we’re getting rid of coal plants, but now we’re importing energy from coal plants in the state of Pennsylvania.”

There are rural parts of Maryland where Republicans are stronger than Democrats. Two big counties, Anne Arundel and Baltimore, have big numbers of GOP voters.

Some Republicans running uphill campaigns were once Democrats but switched after seeing how the party worked in Maryland.

“I started out at 18 as a Democrat because my family was all Democrat and the instructions my mom gave,” Robinson said. “This was all she knew at the time, that we’re Democrats.”

But, in the greatest Democratic strongholds, Republicans are usually going to be outspent, outorganized and outcampaigned.

In District 23, Robinson hasn’t started campaigning. She and Riker have never met.

Both plan to convince voters one at a time, meeting them at public events and canvassing neighborhoods door to door. It seems, well, maybe hopeful is the way to put it.

They all run the risk that the party label will shut down the conversation. There is anger on all sides of the political divide.

“Some of them want to hurt you,” Amal said. “They just don’t want to hear about it.”

Wells ran for school board once, but O’Connor, Amal, Riker and Robinson are trying to win public office for the first time.

They come from all walks of life — finance, accounting, law enforcement, community volunteer and paralegal. They say the right things about wanting to run, disagreeing with the status quo.

“More and more I am hearing residents that are so sick and tired of our government just lying to them and saying we need more money, when really it’s they’re wasting our money,” Wells said.

For some, though, the contradictions, the hurdles to overcome and the reality of what they’re trying to do can seem too much.

Amal wants to help, even if his party doesn’t always want him. An immigrant from Cameroon, he struggles with the Republican message on people like him.

“Do you think I should quit?” he asked.