From the Editors

We write in this Special Issue to endorse our colleague David Montgomery with respect to his candidacy for a seat on the Talbot County Council.  While he is an editor of this publication, he has recused himself altogether from this endorsement.

We have known David for many years and during all that time we have appreciated his love of Talbot County, its unique rural character, its history, its people, and its institutions.  He has been steadfast and consistent in his political views and he has not trimmed them or altered them to suit any particular constituency. He has always been collegial, and a good and respectful listener with respect to the views of others.  He also brings to his candidacy the insights of a very experienced and accomplished economist, a toolkit of skills that would be unusually valuable on the Talbot County Council during the next term.  His background in economics makes him unusually sensitive to the below the surface cost of rapid overdevelopment in Talbot County and the enormous tax burdens that such overdevelopment could inflict on long-term residents of our County, including tax increases to support new schools, new roads, and new infrastructure, among other things.  

David has long supported our local law enforcement establishment against the threat of local and not so local disturbances.  He has also demonstrated a long-standing concern for the integrity of our local educational institutions and the threat to those institutions presented by the current fad of “wokeness” and other similar actual or threatened developments in our schools.  Talbot County is one of the oldest counties in America and blessed with a rich historical background.  That lengthy and complex history includes the good (for example, Frederick Douglas), the bad (support in some quarters for slavery), and the ambiguous (young men from Talbot County fought on both sides of the civil war, including at the Battle of Gettysburg).  

David has long been of the view that we should treat all aspects of our Talbot County history with an appropriate degree of sensitivity and that we should not simply rewrite that history every few decades as and when the political winds shift.  In this sense, David is a literal conservative who aspires to conserve what we have had and do have.  He would be a responsible steward and servant of the county and not a servant of any particular faction. 

We think he is worthy of your vote in the upcoming Republican primary, and we urge you to give him every consideration. His candidate page provides additional detail about his views on specific issues. His Facebook page is more interactive and there David responds from time to time to comments about him, although  quite strangely, Facebook has not allowed him to advertise his endorsement by right to life supporters.