How Democratic teamwork broke the GOP’s grip on a Frederick County district

Yes, there was a blue wave that lifted Democratic candidates. But the Democrats in Frederick County who engineered multiple flips in the General Assembly want you to know something else: They worked for it, too.

For the first time in more than three decades, voters in much of the rural section of the county are sending three Democrats to represent them at the State House in Annapolis.

Lara Westdorp defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Folden in the state Senate. And in the House of Delegates, Democrats Jerry Donald and Andrew Duck won two of the three seats currently held by Republicans.

Only Republican Del. Jesse Pippy hung on in the district, winning the third delegate position.

Two other districts that contain a portion of northern Frederick County, 2A and 5, were won by Republicans.

“From the very beginning, it was all a grassroots campaign. It was all a community effort,” Westdorp said.

“We didn’t let it go. We were knocking doors in the heat,” said Donald, the top vote-getter in the House of Delegates’ District 4.

The doughnut-shaped district surrounds the City of Frederick — that’s the 3rd District — in southern Frederick County. District 4 includes small towns and rural areas that had been reliably Republican since the 1990s.

In some past elections, Democrats didn’t even field a full slate of candidates.

“For awhile I was concerned we wouldn’t even have three people,” Donald said of the House of Delegates race.

Ultimately, there were four Democrats, which led to a competitive primary that got candidates moving early and whittled the blue team to three nominees for the general election. Those three — Duck, Donald and Alleria Stanley — banded together with Senate candidate Westdorp as well as county council and nonpartisan, but ideologically aligned, school board candidates.

The candidates worked among themselves to coordinate their door-knocking efforts, a tried-and-true campaign strategy. When they walked the streets and knocked on doors, they carried each other’s campaign literature and shared each other’s campaign messages.

Altogether, the aligned candidates hit some 23,000 doors. By splitting up turf and spreading each other’s literature, they collectively covered the entire district. There are few neighborhoods with high-density housing in the district, Westdorp said, so it takes a long time to get around to all the voters they hoped to convince to come out for Democrats.

While campaign coordination is common in some parts of the state, Democrats in Frederick County hadn’t previously pulled it off to the degree they did this year.

“I’d never seen that before,” Westdorp said. “Everyone stays in their lane and does their own thing. We built our own little political machine.”

By the time that other entities — like the Maryland Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign — came in to help, the grassroots machine was working well, Westdorp said.

“We were cooking with gas, we got this,” she said.

That help was welcome, though. The little machine also got help from a slate put together by Democratic lawmakers in neighboring District 3, and another slate created by Democratic women senators.

The Democratic women senators raised about $175,000 and put more of that money behind Westdorp than any other candidate. The Frederick Progress Slate founded by the District 3 lawmakers added tens of thousands more to the District 4 lawmaker candidates.

The Democratic caucuses in both the state Senate and the House of Delegates also chipped in with financial and logistical support.

The influx of cash into the race helped with mailers and advertising. Meanwhile, as Election Day approached, the advertising for the Republican candidates turned negative.

Donald said he was on the receiving end of mailers for Republicans that said he supported more data centers; in fact, he voted against data center expansion on the county council.

Del. Kris Fair, a Democrat who represents District 3 and has worked on campaigns for years, said he was impressed with the effort of the neighboring District 4 candidates.

“What we saw was a massive coordination effort for door knocking, for calling, for releasing information to the public through mailers, online advertising, all of that,” Fair said. “They were able to effectively use all the tools.

Fair said the hard work paid off because Frederick County residents want “a more effective voice in Annapolis.”

Donald, a retired social studies teacher who spent three terms on the county council, said bringing home state money to the county will be among his top priorities.

Democrats have so much control at the State House and the district was represented by Republicans, he noted. By being part of the party that holds power, “I’m inside the tent” and more able to win money for the district, Donald said.

On election night, the first results that were posted showed the Republicans ahead. But the Democrats didn’t fret.

As mail ballots and provisional ballots were counted over the next week and a half, the count shifted in Democrats’ favor. First, it was clear that Westdorp beat Folden. Then Donald and Duck pulled into the top two spots for three delegate seats.

Pippy, one of the incumbents who is also the no. 2-ranking Republican in the House of Delegates, entered the final day of vote tallying Friday with a hold on the third seat by 275 votes over Democrat Stanley in fourth place.

At the Frederick County Board of Elections, Pippy spent much of Friday pacing back and forth across the room, observing teams of election judges reviewing the final ballots for hours on end.

At the end of the night, he’d racked up countless steps and enough votes to secure the GOP’s only victory in District 4.

Four years ago, Pippy cruised to victory as the top vote-getter in the district. The nearest Democrat was more than 6,000 votes behind.

His winning margin this year? 127 votes.