It’s impossible to approach the Democratic primary for Baltimore County executive without thinking about the last Democrat to win that job, the late Kevin Kamenetz. It’s not that we believe voters should consider which of the three major Democratic candidates in the race he would have supported — we have no idea who that would have been — but rather that they should focus on the evolution of Baltimore County that he, through his own evolving career, represented.
In the last 25 years, the region’s principal suburban jurisdiction has rapidly diversified. Its infrastructure has aged. Inequality of means and opportunity has spread. Old industries have died away. Homelessness and other social problems have proliferated. And the old equation in which leaders could count on constant development to fund the county’s needs is no longer working.
Kevin Kamenetz, first elected in the good old “b’hoys” days in Towson, recognized by the end of his career that sticking with the easy politics of the past was a recipe for a poorer future. Democrats need to pick another candidate this year who understands the new challenges Baltimore County faces and has the political courage to face them. Former Del. John A. Olszweski Jr. is the right candidate for Baltimore County’s future.
Mr. Olszewski was born into East Side Democratic machine politics — his father, the former county councilman John A. Olszewski Sr. was a last vestige of the labor union-Democratic club dominance in Dundalk — but he has become his own man. The first member of his family to go to college (in fact, he eventually earned a PhD in public policy), he became a teacher and a member of the House of Delegates who not only backed labor-friendly causes but who would provide a crucial vote in support of marriage equality.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by the Editorial Board over at the Baltimore Sun
