– ELECTION 2024 St. Mary’s School Board: The path to run for commissioner is well-worn through races for seats since 1996 elected board began

The voters have spoken. But what language were they speaking?

BY KEN ROSSIGNOL

THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

While Calvert County’s new school board members were supported by the national conservative group Project 1776, and all of them won, in St. Mary’s County, three candidates for the St. Mary’s County Board of Education, David Drys, Elena Brewer, and Brandie Edelen, all lost. What was different besides one county being north of the Patuxent River and the other on the south, heavily dominated by Republicans?

 One significant difference is that the conservative school board candidates worked with the GOP party as a team in Calvert. In St. Mary’s, the Invisible Candidate, David Drys, and parent advocate Elena Brewer failed to put forth any meaningful campaign even though both were superiorly qualified candidates compared to their incumbent opponents.

 Brewer, an eloquent speaker and firmly committed to ridding schools of the Woke DEI agenda, finally made up ground in September, while Drys appeared to suffer from the attitude of disaffection characteristic of most engineers and retired Navy captains, which makes them poor candidates and hard for voters to relate to. His credentials were impressive, and his analysis of the problems with the school system was right on the mark, but he failed to campaign. He is aptly named.

Despite a decisive GOP vote in St. Mary’s County, the outcome of the school board election was in line with the endorsements of the teacher’s union and the Democrats. The Republican Club donated to Josh Guy, a registered Republican who wooed the radical leaders of the teachers union and the Democrats, instead of his challenger, Brandie Edelen, also a Republican.

The number of Rino Republicans in St. Mary’s County is legendary, with the Rinos whipping Commissioner Larry Jarboe, the undoubtedly best county commissioner in modern times, when he attempted to win reelection in 1998. Jarboe lost the GOP primary to Shelby Guazzo and returned in 2002 to reclaim the commissioner seat in the primary and two additional terms in 2006 and 2010.

 Rino Republicans, led by former GOP County Commissioner President Barbara “Babs” Thompson and School Board Chair Karin Bailey, wife of Senator Jack Bailey, ensured that two Democrats were returned to the school board in 2024. Basically, the Rino Republicans should have to undergo a DNA test, as most are just Democrats flying the flag of what is politically convenient to take advantage of all of the new residents who are actual Republicans and don’t know the Rinos are just the current generation of the Good Old Boys who have been running politics in St. Mary’s for a long time.

Josh Guy proclaimed that being a substitute schoolteacher and a product of public schools prepared him for a seat on the board of education.

Guy even had the support of outgoing school board member Jim Davis. Davis fumed at a candidate running against him in 2016, saying he was just a 27-year-old kid with no experience who was endorsed by the teacher’s union but didn’t find it inconsistent to support an even younger “kid” to replace him on the school board. Davis, after spending eight years under the influence of the Rino Republicans, toed the line and chose the teacher’s union, the Democrats, and the Rinos. The exhausted rooster left nothing to be proud of except his vote against the million-dollar hot dog stand.

Josh Guy won his seat on the school board the old-fashioned way. He worked. It didn’t phase him when some pointed out that he lacked the experience of being a parent, having a work history teaching him values and achievements, building a resume and contacts to enrich his time as a member of the board determining public schools in St. Mary’s.

 Josh Guy is a student of politics and can recite events, people, election losses, and wins that go back a couple of decades. Clearly, his relative Commissioner Randy Guy has all of the attributes of experience, a long work history, and lots of political babble. Still, Josh Guy is a lot smarter and a better politician.

The ‘Guy’ went everywhere, saw every group, went to every function, dinner, activity, and sports event, and likely would even likely show up if someone simply pulled out a chair.

Guy’s family pitched in to help Josh win, in the style of the Dysons. He even managed to stir the old Congressman Roy Dyson out of his lazy boy in Great Mills to stand around in baggy blue jeans and a flannel shirt at the early voting center in Hollywood and greet the few people arriving to vote who might remember him from his forty years in office as a delegate, state senator, and member of Congress.

Guy’s family, his mom, and his workhorse father erected signs up and down the roadways and were even there to strike the early voting center campaign tent daily. Families sacrifice for their children.  

Josh Guy was and is a quick study. He focused on crime in schools and insisted that the tone-deaf school system and the silly superintendent, Scott Smith, who guided the approval of a million-dollar hot dog stand, answer for re-installing repeat violent offenders back in classrooms.

The sitting Governor of Maryland appointed school board members in St. Mary’s County until Senator Roy Dyson sponsored a bill to provide for the election of members of the Board of Education, which began in 1996.

 That year saw Mary Washington first win an election to the Board of Education and did so again this year in 2024, extending her tenure of a policy-making seat on the panel for three decades. Washington points to her experience as a regular attendee at school activities and giving pronouncements of a job well done to those appearing before the school board as her achievements as she puts in an entire week as an elected board member.

A BREEDING GROUND FOR COUNTY COMMISSIONER CANDIDATES

While two appointed members of the Board of Education, Larry Millison and John Lancaster, later became St. Mary’s commissioners, the first elected board contest in 1996 kicked off a real Olympic-style sport in St. Mary’s County.

RANDALL FIRST TO STEP ON ANOTHER STONE IN POLITICS FROM SCHOOL BOARD SEAT

Also elected in 1996 besides Washington were Julie Randall, Lila Ridgell Hofmeister, Mike Hewitt, and Robert Bailey. Julie Randall left the school board when she was elected President of the St. Mary’s County Commissioners as a Democrat in 1998 and went on to defeat in 2002 when she attempted to keep the post, losing to Tommy McKay.

Hewitt was a Democrat and was treasurer for Randall’s campaign. Hewitt lost the 2006 Democratic primary for commissioner president and was on the sidelines until changing to Republican and being elected St. Mary’s County Commissioner in 2014 to the first of three terms when Republican Commissioner Danny Morris decided one term was enough and decided against a reelection bid. Morris was also a former Democrat who lost a race for Sheriff in the 2002 primary to David Zylak.

The large crop of candidates for the first elected board of education in 1996 was a real gift to voters who like a wide choice. Eight candidates, including Washington, were on the ballot for District 4. They were James Antonio, Santo A. Chase, Victoria L. Falcon, Dale Ronald Hartman, Glen O. Martin, Laura Ann Martin, and John P. Rue.

Mary Washington found strong support in the black community, with Perry Rothwell as her treasurer and Francine Dove Hawkins as her campaign committee chairperson.

Real estate developer, banking, and restaurant founder Jack Rue, also an infamous columnist for ST. MARY’S TODAY and THE CHESAPEAKE, and candidate for commissioner president in St. Mary’s in 1994, was the most colorful of her competitors. While Rue kicked the bucket hard and permanently in 1998, the others have slid away into obscurity.

The affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was still a secret when Mary Washington won her first election, and it didn’t bother the voters one bit that she was still making decisions on public education 28 years later, as schools sank into failing ranges of test scores in reading and math.

Besides Hewitt running for and, after two tries, finally winning a commissioner’s race, another in the twenty-eight-candidate field of schemes and dreams of electoral conquest was Lila Ridgell Hofmeister. Hofmeister’s father, Buzzy Ridgell, was elected in 1962 as part of J. Frank Raley Jr and John H. Briscoe machine, dubbed the New Leadership, as commissioner. Hofmeister lost the commissioner District 1 (the lower end of St. Mary’s County) Democratic primary in 1998 to Joe Anderson. Anderson went on to the General Election to beat incumbent commissioner Paul Chesser.

In the 1996 Board of Education race in St. Mary’s County’s At Large seat, Julie Randall prevailed over Leonardtown businessman Thomas W. Bell Jr. Bell ran a strong second to Randall in a field of eight.

In the District 1 seat, Lila Hofmeister won over William Eglinton, an instructor at the Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship, and United Methodist Church of Lexington Park Pastor Rev. Bob Kirkley, who was an appointed member of the school board attempting to win approval from voters.

Hewitt won the District 2 spot over retired Navy Capt. John E. Brown, with 7,107 votes to 3,248 for Brown and 5,215 votes for mailing company owner John Roth Jr., along with 1330 for Gordon L. Smith Jr. Brown’s son-in-law, Anthony Lotierzo ran a lackluster race in 2024 for the school board, losing in the primary.

1996 St. Mary’s School Board Results

2024 St. Mary’s Board of Education Results