Candidates Calibrate Positions On Growth

Issue Dominates Races For Executive, Council

Council member Steven A. Silverman, right, is facing two other Democrats, a Republican and an independent in the race for county executive. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)

The five candidates for Montgomery county executive include a former chairman of Maryland's Democratic Party and a former clerk for a Giant grocery store.

The crowded field of candidates for the nine County Council seats is just as eclectic: There is a 22-year-old intelligence analyst, a 68-year-old businessman, a church pastor and an electrical contractor.

But all 36 men and women hoping to become the county's next leaders have one thing in common: They have vowed to better manage growth.

"I think we're at a tipping point," said Marc Elrich, 56, a county school teacher and member of the Takoma Park City Council running at large for a County Council seat. "We're either going to decide we're going to be more serious in how we grow or this thing will run away and we'll be back in a place buried in traffic ."

The primary is Sept. 12, and the general election will be Nov. 7.

In the race for county executive, the two front-runners, both Democrats, are presenting themselves as moderates on growth.

In his two terms as a County Council member, Steven A. Silverman has championed the "smart growth" strategy, which encourages development around Metro stations. This year, for instance, he pushed for the construction of more than 6,000 housing units around the Shady Grove station. But his critics say he has too often sought to place housing in neighborhoods that could not sustain it. They also criticize him for accepting campaign donations from developers.

Former council member and former Maryland Democratic Party chairman Isiah "Ike" Leggett was often viewed as a moderate on growth during his 16 years on the council. He voted against the Friendship Heights master plan in 1998 because he believed it would bring too much housing. In Silver Spring, he opposed the construction of a megamall because he believed it would bring too many cars.

But there were times he made what some consider pro-growth decisions. In 1999, for example, he joined Silverman in voting against the elimination of a policy known as "pay and go" that allowed developers to pay a fee to build projects even in areas under a growth moratorium.

As the primary nears, Silverman has sought to blur the line between himself and Leggett.

"The record clearly reflects that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between Ike and me in our voting records on growth," Silverman said in a recent interview.

Leggett, meanwhile, is marketing himself as a slower growth alternative to Silverman. Take the Shady Grove master plan. In a recent interview, he said he would have preferred 4,000 or 5,000 housing units around the Shady Grove Metro station.