Last night, at her Oktoberfest fundraiser, Councilperson Courtney Watson made it clear that she will be running for county executive in 2014. After noting that “she didn’t see any reporters in the room,” she told her supporters that the time was right with the current exec likely moving up to a “statewide office.”
There may not have been any reporters in the room but there were at least three bloggers including yours truly.
Of course it wasn’t really an official announcement, it was more like a restatement of what her loyal supporters already knew.
The nod to Ken was a little surprising, considering that these two HoCo loco pols have seldom been on the same policy page. It is also well known that Ken would prefer to see Guy Guzzone as the next exec. Though he had left before Courtney spoke she explained that it was because the exec had to be in Baltimore
This type of uncharacteristic politico nice nice always makes me a little suspicious.
Peter Franchot was at Serafinos too. I don’t know if he and Ken got a chance to catch up but he did come over and spend a few minutes with his other buddy on the council, Calvin Ball . I chided Dr. Ball a bit about his own political ambitions. Since he is so close to both Ken and Peter, could a statewide office be in his future too?
Calvin quipped that people had been pegging him for all sorts of future politico jobs lately, including Congressman. The scenario that makes that plausible is the retirement of Barbara Mikulski which entices Elijah Cummings to seek that seat which in turn creates the District 7 House of Representatives opening for Calvin. For now, he told me, he’s perfectly content with where he is and may even consider running for a third term on the council.
Yeah, whatever.
Someone said Delegate Jimmy Malone was there too but I didn’t see him. I think he was at the bar while Courtney was talking.
And speaking of the bar, Courtney noted that only in the melting pot of HoCo would an Oktoberfest event be held in an Italian restaurant.
And last but not least, see that tall guy to the left of Courtney in the picture. That’s former District 4 county councilperson Paul Farragut, the loco poltico that bought us Wine in the Woods twenty one years ago. My kind of guy.