At-large seats are on the chopping block in Prince George’s County this election

In 2016, voters approved the addition of two at-large seats to the Prince George’s County Council. A decade later, they have a chance to change their minds.

A ballot measure in the November election will ask voters whether they want to keep the council’s two at-large seats or eliminate them. District 1 Council member Tom Dernoga and Council Chair Krystal Oriadha sponsored the resolution to add the question to the ballot, which was supported by most of the council.

Oriadha has said in public meetings that the amount of funding necessary to run for countywide election can attract large donors seeking influence over elected officials. She also said the seats were created as a placeholder for people eyeing the county executive’s office.

“There will sometimes be a shift from you actually focusing on the residents of the county versus special interests and the people you need to line your pockets so that you can get elected,” she said in April during a council discussion about the ballot measure. “There’s no need for the at-large seats.”

Dernoga echoed Oriadha’s sentiments, and added his concern that the seats offer a loophole to the rule barring council members from serving more than two consecutive terms in the same seat.

“We always believed that this is nothing more than a way to get around term limits,” Dernoga told The Banner. “Are they really focused on what the public wants?”

On the surface, the question to voters is simple: Do you want countywide elected legislators? Debates have often focused on term limits and lessening the influence of large donors. But tension between two members in particular casts the measure in a different light.

Jolene Ivey, one of two sitting at-large members, believes the measure is a personal attack.

“They don’t want me on there,” Ivey said. “I’m a pain in their butt.”

Skirting term limits?

Dernoga has long been opposed to the at-large seats. He even campaigned against adding them a decade ago. The proposed amendment in 2016 was misleadingly worded, he said, and was sandwiched between questions about bond bills. He thinks it’s important for the public to have an opportunity to reevaluate the seats because they didn’t understand what they were voting on.

Prince George’s County Council members can only serve two consecutive terms in their district seats. But the addition of two at-large seats, in theory and in practice, allows them to serve four consecutive terms.

In the few years since the at-large seats were added, multiple council members have taken advantage of the opportunity to extend their terms. Council members Ivey and Sydney Harrison were first elected to district seats in 2018 and are both currently running unopposed for at-large seats after winning the Democratic primary.

From Ivey’s perspective, the at-large seats add a different and necessary perspective to the members focused on their individual districts. Plus, she said, the seats give constituents more than one council member to reach out to with problems.

Both Ivey and Harrison, the current District 9 member, have said they don’t think the ballot measure is about term limits. Like Ivey, Harrison said the effort is “politically motivated.” He believes the effort is a response to his and Ivey’s pushback of their colleagues’ actions.

“There’s a consequence for speaking out and telling the truth,” Harrison said. “I believe they’ve been punitive in nature.”

Dernoga, who originally proposed the ballot measure, said it’s not intended to target anyone. If the measure passes, the change wouldn’t go into effect until 2030. Ivey and Harrison would be able to serve their upcoming four-year terms, he explained.

Still, the tension is undeniable. And at least in Ivey’s telling, it stems from her icy relationship with Oriadha.

A rough relationship

For a short time, Ivey and Oriadha worked closely together. Ivey was even part of the group that worked to get Oriadha elected to the council.

But Ivey said things deteriorated quickly when Oriadha tried to fire council administrative employees who, in Ivey’s view, got in the way of Oriadha’s priorities.

“Things just went downhill when they went on this rampage of wanting to fire people,” Ivey said. “It just wasn’t right.”

When Ivey refused to go along with firing a council administration staff member in the spring of 2023, she said several council members discussed voting against her bid for chair, despite their previous assurances of support. Ivey said when she learned that some of her colleagues planned to tie their votes to the terminations, she turned to other members for support. She was elected chair in December 2023, but further angered some of her colleagues.

As chair, Ivey refused to appoint Oriadha and then-District 6 council member Wala Blegay — a close friend of Oriadha — to committee leadership roles, Ivey said, because she knew they had been telling community members they wouldn’t vote for her for chair.

“You don’t reward your enemies,” Ivey said.

That sentiment appears to go both ways.

Since Ivey was replaced as chair in 2025, she said she’s had a difficult time getting her bills on the agenda.

Ivey also said Oriadha cut her office’s budget, which makes it harder for her to maintain staff and host community events.

Each district office has an operating budget of $582,250 for fiscal year 2027, while each at-large office has an operating budget of $380,000, according to council documents.

Ivey also recently joined Harrison in requesting an independent audit and state investigation into their colleagues’ use of a reimbursement grant program known as “project charges.” Since taking over leadership roles on the council, Oriadha and District 8 Council member Edward Burroughs have pushed to send millions of dollars in project charges funding to nonprofits run by friends and close associates.

Oriadha declined The Banner’s repeated requests for an interview. Her staff said Dernoga’s statement about the ballot measure represented her own.

Blegay told The Banner she thinks that some council members are incorrectly making the ballot measure about themselves.

“This has nothing to do with any rift,” Blegay said. “The concerns come straight from the community.”

Community concerns

Upper Marlboro resident Demetria Whitley believes some at-large members are not adequately focused on the communities they represent.

“I think they need to get rid of the at-large seats,” Whitley said. “They mainly focus on certain areas or relax and feel like they’re not really obligated to any particular area.”

Other residents have voiced concerns about the amount of funding required to win an at-large race.

“It’s pretty clear on our national scene that money has corrupted our politics some, and that is one of my biggest concerns about the cost of running for an at-large seat,” Greg Smith, who serves on the board of Sustainable Hyattsville, said during a public hearing this spring. “It’s so expensive. It invites that kind of abuse.”

Oriadha alleged during the April meeting that liquor stores and data center developers hold sway over some council members. Ivey took that as a not-so-thinly veiled reference to some of her donors.

Concerns from the ballot measure’s supporters that the at-large seats can function as a testing ground for a county executive campaign are not unfounded. But since the seats were added in 2016, no at-large council members in Prince George’s County have become county executive — though several have tried.

Ivey jumped into the race for county executive in 2024 shortly after she won the special election for her at-large seat. She pulled out of the race shortly before the primary and endorsed Calvin Hawkins, who was the other at-large council member at the time.

Blegay, who used to represent District 6, was appointed to an at-large seat last year and also ran for higher office. Blegay lost the June Democratic primary for Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, which means she will no longer be on the council when her term ends in December.

Blegay said she thinks at-large seats can be valuable, but she’s also heard concerns from residents. She said she sought the at-large seat because she wanted to focus on issues that impact the entire county. The best thing to do is let voters decide if they want to keep the seats, she said.

“I think this is an ability to test out to see whether people are still concerned,” she said. “I believe in transparency.”

Changing representation

A small but growing number of localities use mixed systems where legislators are elected by district and at-large, according to a report from the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.

Nearby, five members of the D.C. Council are elected districtwide, while eight members are elected by the city’s wards. The Montgomery County Council has four at-large representatives and seven district representatives.

The Center for Effective Government’s report said at-large systems historically have been adopted to dilute Black voters’ power. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, some at-large systems have been ruled discriminatory by courts.

The report acknowledged that at-large elections encourage councils to consider broader perspectives, but said that district elections increase descriptive representation for racial and ethnic minorities.

Mixed systems are usually intended to combine the merits of at-large and district seats, said University of Maryland government and politics professor Kris Miler. Having both can mean there are people looking out for neighborhoods and for the whole county, she said.

As voters consider the ballot measure, Miler speculated that they likely will weigh two questions: What is the value of at-large representatives? And how long should a politician remain in office?

“I think in some ways those are both being affected by this vote, but they’re actually slightly different goals and slightly different concerns,” she said.

Without the at-large seats, council members who have been serving for two consecutive terms would have to take a break from office before they could run again.

Ivey and Harrison both pointed out that Dernoga has served on the council for more than two terms. He represented District 1 from 2002 to 2010 and was elected to the seat again in 2018.

In April, Ivey and Harrison suggested adding a provision to the ballot measure that limits all council members to two terms total. They were the only two members to vote in favor of it.

“That tells me that my colleagues don’t believe in term limits because they voted against the amendment that would say that term limits are what is needed,” Harrison told The Banner.

But multiple other council members said they are open to term limits. They just don’t want to conflate the issue with at-large seats and potentially further confuse voters.

“They should be two separate questions,” Oriadha said during the council discussion in April. “There should be balance so people can’t keep coming back and forth.”

Regardless of the results of the ballot measure, Ivey and Harrison are likely to serve another four years on the council alongside some of the same people pushing to eliminate their seats.

“Obviously, I’m opposed to it, but I’m not going to put up a fight about it,” Ivey said. “Things change all the time. We’ll have a new council by December. It’ll be different.”