Haire leads Pittman in race for Anne Arundel executive
Republican County Council member Jessica Haire performed better among Election Day voters in the race for Anne Arundel County executive, building a lead of nearly 11,000 votes Tuesday over incumbent Democrat Steuart Pittman.
With thousands of mail-in ballots still to be counted, the closely-watched race is still very much up in the air. Despite Haire holding a sizable lead, Pittman said in a message to cabinet members Wednesday morning that he expects to prevail when mail-in ballots are counted in the coming days.
“The math suggests that I will be reelected to a second term,” he wrote in the email. “I look forward to communicating with each of you in the coming days about the opportunities before us.”
Haire, a first-term legislator from Edgewater, currently holds a 10,863-vote margin over Pittman. Election workers will begin to count more than 45,600 mail-in ballots on Thursday morning. More ballots are expected to arrive at the elections board headquarters in the coming days. Mailed ballots will be accepted so long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
Haire did not return calls Wednesday to comment on the current status of the election. At a Tuesday night election party at Glory Days Grill in Edgewater, she used less certain terms than her opponent.
“It feels good to be done,” Haire said. “I ran a good race and the numbers will be what they will be. At this point, I’m running on adrenaline and coffee.”
Eight days of early voting in Anne Arundel County resulted in 38,925 residents casting their ballots ahead of Election Day. Pittman garnered more votes during that stage — 20,653 to Haire’s 17,880.
Haire won Election Day voting, 62,777 to 49,141, giving the Republican an overall lead of more than 7 percentage points, 53.5% to 46.3%. About 0.2% cast ballots for a write-in.
Although multiple court rulings have cleared the way for mail-in ballot counting to begin ahead of Election Day, the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections, which is majority Republican, announced last month that it would not begin counting mail-in and provisional ballots until Thursday. Anne Arundel is the largest jurisdiction in Maryland that did not count any mail-in ballots prior to Election Day.
After Thursday, additional canvassing days are scheduled for next week on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, as well as a canvass of provisional ballots next Wednesday.
“The Anne Arundel County Board has determined that, based on its experiences in the most recent elections (including the July 19 gubernatorial primary), it has the appropriate resources available to canvass all mail-in and provisional ballots within the 10 day window between Election Day and the Nov. 18 certification date and therefore early canvassing of mail-in ballots will not be required,” the board said in an Oct. 15 news release.
Of the 45,638 mail-in ballots received by the Anne Arundel Board of Elections as of Tuesday evening, more than 27,300, or about three-fifths, were cast by Democrats, and 9,800, or just over one-fifth, were cast by Republican voters.
The remainder were cast by about 8,400 voters not affiliated with the two major parties, who Haire will have to rely upon to hold ground against Pittman.
County Elections Director David Garreis said 100 volunteers, divided into 50 bipartisan teams, will count roughly 15,000 mail-in ballots per canvassing day.
After polls closed Tuesday night, Haire and Pittman retreated to their respective election night parties to thank their supporters and watch returns come in.
About 100 Haire supporters gathered at Glory Days in Edgewater, dining on buffet food and drinking from an open bar. Among them was Bill Kraus, a retired Air Force colonel, who said he supported the one-term legislator “because she is a problem solver.”
“She has the kind of attitude to reach across the aisle to get things done,” Kraus said. “I think that’s what we need right now.”
Around 100 Pittman supporters milled about a ballroom at the Waterfront Hotel in Annapolis, dancing to music and listening to a parade of Democratic legislators speak as they awaited the incumbent’s arrival.
Field organizers and campaign volunteers said they were happy to celebrate with Pittman and the other Annapolis Democrats.
“They value working-class people, they value lifting all people and taking care of one another and they value a woman’s right to choose,” said Jessie Dunleavy, who knocked doors for Pittman and several other Annapolis-based Democrats. “They care about human beings.”
Around 10:30 p.m., Pittman took the stage to raucous applause and expressed confidence.
“I know that there is not a path for my opponent to win this election unless all the Democrats decided to vote Republican all of a sudden,” Pittman told party attendees. “But I just don’t think that would happen, but we do have to wait until all those votes are counted because that is how the system works, and we respect the system.”
“I love this job and I am going to keep this job,” he added.