Republicans pulled ahead in every contested Calvert County Board of Commissioners race after all 17 Election Day precincts reported late on Nov. 3, reversing the early picture that had put Democrats ahead in two district contests and leaving the county’s board headed toward a major shakeup.
That shift is why Calvert County election results are drawing so much attention today. The five-member board sets the county’s budget, tax rates and zoning and land-use rules, and the final unofficial count showed Republican gains across the board after the Election Day ballots were added.
In District 1, Democrat Ethan Cox led Republican Commissioner Mike Hart by 36 votes in the early count, 8,140 to 8,104. By the time all precincts were in, Hart was ahead by 3,133 votes. In District 3, Democrat Michael Bennett had led Republican Commissioner Catherine M. Grasso by 8,341 to 7,826 early on, but Grasso finished with a 2,473-vote edge.
The at-large race moved the same way. Democrat Judy Pedersen held the early lead with 7,177 votes, but Republican Patti Stueckler finished first with 15,757 votes after all precincts reported, with Jason Scaggs also among the top two. The county’s five commissioners are elected countywide, though three must live in their districts and two serve at large, so the late-arriving Election Day vote can swing more than one race at once.
There was already a hint of that split in the broader county vote. Early Calvert County voters favored Republican Dan Cox over Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, 7,204 to 5,625, while mail-in voters favored Moore, 2,015 to 864. That same divide showed up in the commissioner races as Election Day ballots replaced the earlier returns.
The friction in this count is simple: the early vote pointed one way, then the Election Day precincts pushed hard the other. At 9:11 p.m. on Nov. 3, none of the county’s 17 Election Day precincts had reported. By 10:50 p.m., they had all come in and the standings had changed. By 12:39 a.m. on Nov. 4, the county count was unchanged, and the Republican leads held.
The open question is the final certified result, but the political shape of the board is already clear. Three sitting commissioners lost their Republican primaries in June, and the party’s nominees that emerged from that month — Stueckler and Scaggs at large, and Kenneth B. Lee in District 2 after Mark C. Cox Sr. lost his primary — now appear set to give Calvert County a very different board when December arrives.
