Let’s stop pretending. Montgomery County is a community in quiet crisis. The streets aren’t as safe as they used to be. The tax burden grows heavier every budget cycle. And the men lining up to tell you they can fix it are the very same ones who helped break it. Evan Glass and Will Jawando have had years on the Montgomery County Council to demonstrate their leadership. They have. And that track record should disqualify both from ever running this county.
The case for Esther Wells doesn’t just rest on who she is. It rests equally on what they are.
Start with public safety. Montgomery County residents watched helplessly as carjackings spiked to 99 incidents in 2023, up from just 19 in 2019. That is not a blip. That is a five-year collapse in public order.¹ During that same period, homicides rose by 93 percent.² Crimes against persons increased 17.8 percent since 2019, and property crime jumped more than 21 percent.³ All while the county’s police department hemorrhaged officers and the council that presided over it debated whether cops belonged in schools.
Will Jawando didn’t just watch. He led. In July 2020, he voted to reassign 12 of the 23 active school resource officers from Montgomery County Public Schools. Then, in November of that same year, he introduced a bill to remove all SROs from schools entirely and redirect those funds toward “restorative justice” programs.⁴ And before all of that, he went on record in a Washington Post interview declaring, “That’s what ‘defund the police’ means to me. And I support it. I do.”⁵ He used the hashtag on social media. He told The Hill that defunding meant reallocating police budgets. He never meaningfully recalibrated. Now he wants to be the county executive.
Evan Glass sat alongside him through most of this. He voted for the same $6.7 billion budget in 2023 that included a property tax rate increase, despite resistance from residents who were already being squeezed.⁶ He voted unanimously alongside Jawando for the $7.6 billion fiscal year 2026 budget, a record spending plan funded in part by an income tax rate increase approved by the council.⁷ Year after year, the answer from this council has been the same. Spend more. Tax more. And when things get worse, blame someone else.
Meanwhile, the Montgomery County Police Department is running on fumes. As of early 2025, there were 166 sworn officer vacancies. Police Chief Marc Yamada stated plainly that even at full staffing, Montgomery County’s ratio of one officer per 1,000 residents would still fall below the national average of 2.5 officers per thousand.⁸ The department lost 194 officers over five years. The 911 Emergency Communications Center carried a 43 percent vacancy rate at one point.⁹ Response times crept upward. Officers burned out on mandatory overtime. And what did the council prioritize? Policing advisory commissions. Use-of-force restrictions. A Racial Equity and Social Justice office is consuming $1.6 million in the FY26 budget while patrol positions sit empty.¹⁰
This is not leadership. It is ideological cosplay at the expense of real people.
Esther Wells understands something Glass and Jawando apparently do not. The government has to work before it can be generous. She is a Certified Public Accountant with a Master’s in Taxation from Northeastern University and leads the state indirect tax department at a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. She has spent her career finding waste, identifying inefficiency, and delivering measurable results.¹¹ She is the president of the Montgomery County Taxpayers League. She is a mother of two, including a son with autism who attended Montgomery County Public Schools. She is not a politician who stumbled into public finance. She is a finance professional who chose public service.
Her platform is grounded in what Montgomery County actually needs. She wants zero-based budgeting and comprehensive audits of the $7.6 billion county budget to expose waste and mismanagement. She wants to cut county operating costs by roughly 20 percent through automation, restructuring, and AI-assisted services. She wants to fully staff the police department, restore school resource officers, and strengthen enforcement of juvenile justice. She wants to strip away the regulatory barriers that have made Montgomery County a punchline among developers and employers.¹² And she wants to reduce the tax burden on residents who have been treated as an unlimited revenue source by a council that never met a budget increase it didn’t like.
At a recent candidate forum in Wheaton, Wells was direct. She pledged to work closely with Police Chief Yamada, to fully fund the department, and to ensure adequate staffing.¹³ No hedging. No asterisks. No talk of reimagining or reallocating. Just a commitment to give law enforcement the resources they need to do their jobs.
That is the kind of clarity Montgomery County has been starved of for years.
Some will say the math is daunting. Republicans don’t win in Montgomery County. Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than four to one. But the math changes when voters examine the record rather than the registration. Taxes are higher. Crime rose sharply during the pandemic years and into the early 2020s. Police are understaffed. Schools are struggling. The same council members who presided over all of it are now asking for a promotion.
Esther Wells is asking voters to look at the results. So is this column. Look at them honestly and ask yourself: do you want more of the same, administered by the same people who gave it to you? Or do you want someone who has spent her entire professional life fixing exactly the kind of fiscal and operational mess that Montgomery County has become?
The June 23 primary will determine the Democratic nominee. The November general election will determine the county’s direction. Montgomery County voters of all parties owe it to themselves and their neighbors to take Esther Wells seriously. The county’s future is too important to be handed back to the people who helped damage it.
Endnotes
1. “Crime Keeps Rising,” Montgomery Perspective, February 5, 2024. https://montgomeryperspective.com/2024/02/05/crime-keeps-rising/
2. Montgomery County Council Public Safety Memorandum, January 31, 2024. https://montgomerycountymd.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=169&event_id=16031&meta_id=171079
3. “Crime Increased in Montgomery County for Third Straight Year,” WTOP News, February 6, 2024. https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2024/02/crime-increased-in-montgomery-county-for-third-straight-year-data-shows/
4. “Will Jawando,” Wikipedia, updated February 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Jawando
5. “Will Jawando, Montgomery County Council Member, Grapples with ‘Defund the Police,'” The Washington Post, June 20, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/will-jawando-defund-police/2020/06/19/aa3f5126-abfc-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html
6. “Montgomery County Council Passes Budget with Property Tax Increase,” DC News Now, May 25, 2023. https://www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-news/maryland/montgomery-county/montgomery-county-council-passes-budget-with-property-tax-increase/
7. “Montgomery County Council Approves $7.6 Billion Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget,” Montgomery County Government Press Release, May 22, 2025. https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Dept=1&Item_ID=47107
8. “Montgomery County Police Recruitment and Staffing Levels Remain a Concern at Start of 2025,” FOX 5 DC, January 2, 2025. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/montgomery-county-police-recruitment-staffing-levels-remain-concern-start-2025
9. “The Police Staffing Bomb,” Montgomery Perspective, March 18, 2024. https://montgomeryperspective.com/2024/03/18/the-police-staffing-bomb/
10. “Montgomery County Council Approves $7.6 Billion Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget,” Montgomery County Government, May 22, 2025. https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Dept=1&Item_ID=47107
11. “About,” Montgomery County Taxpayers League. https://www.mctaxpayersleague.org/about-mctl
12. “Esther Wells for County Executive,” VoteForEsther.com. https://voteforesther.com/
13. “County Executive Candidates Discuss Regional Issues at Wheaton Collective Forum,” Bethesda Magazine, March 30, 2026. https://bethesdamagazine.com/2026/03/30/county-executive-candidates-wheaton-collective-forum/
Kip Stone is a contributor for Direct Line News a project of the Montgomery County Republican Club.
Direct Line News is a Maryland-based free-access publication committed to the Republican reform tradition.
About The Author
