With Election Day two weeks away, Will Jawando Montgomery County Executive 2026 candidate & County Councilmember from Silver Spring makes his case to county residents in an exclusive interview with TANTV NEWS Editor in Chief & Host of the TANTV Civic & Political Voices Adedayo Fashanu: working people first, developers last.
A County at a Crossroads
Montgomery County, Maryland is one of the wealthiest, most educated, and most diverse jurisdictions in the United States. But in June 2026, it is also a county in crisis. Schools are cutting hundreds of jobs. Nearly 10,000 federal workers have been laid off since DOGE began. Rents keep climbing. And ICE enforcement operations are fracturing immigrant families across Germantown, Wheaton, and Silver Spring.
Into that storm steps Will “Yemi” Jawando — at-large Montgomery County Councilmember, civil rights lawyer, author, father of four, and candidate for County Executive. With the June 23rd Democratic primary just two weeks away, Jawando sat down with TANTV Editor-in-Chief Adedayo Fashanu for a wide-ranging conversation on housing, schools, data centers, immigration, and what kind of county executive he would be. The full interview aired on TANTV’s Civics & Political Voices network. For a full breakdown of where all five Democratic candidates stand heading into the primary, see TANTV’s deep-dive: The Race to Lead Montgomery County.
Born Here. Built Here.
Jawando’s story is Montgomery County’s story. He was born and raised in Silver Spring to a Nigerian father who emigrated from Lagos in 1970 and a mother from a small town in Kansas. When his parents divorced at six, he stayed with his mother — and the family moved five times before he reached eighth grade, chasing affordable housing in one of the most expensive suburban markets in America.
“I’ve experienced a lot of things that a lot of people who are struggling have dealt with,” Jawando told TANTV. “People are crying out for affordable housing, for an equal justice system, for not being deported as immigrants — and these are touchpoints that I can relate to personally and have worked on”.
He earned scholarships to Catholic high school and then college and law school. He went on to work at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, serve in the Obama White House and Senate, and work alongside Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Congress. In 2018, he was elected to the Montgomery County Council as an at-large member. He is now 43, married 20 years to his wife — Jamaican-Bermudan by way of New York — and the father of three teenage daughters and a seven-year-old son. His 2022 memoir, My Seven Black Fathers, drew national attention for its frank account of growing up biracial and working-class in suburban Maryland.
Housing: The Three Ps
Ask Jawando about his signature issue and he doesn’t hesitate: housing. He frames his entire approach around what he calls “the three Ps” — produce more affordable housing, preserve existing affordable stock, and protect renters.
“Whether you’re a low-income renter, a senior in a house that’s worth a lot but you can’t afford the property tax, or a young person trying to move here — everyone has the affordability issue,” he told TANTV.
He championed Montgomery County’s rent stabilization law — the first permanent rent stabilization ordinance in Maryland — which caps annual rent increases at the lower of CPI+3% or 6%. Since its passage, the number of properties classified as “troubled” — those with mold, roaches, mice, and habitability violations — fell nearly 70% in a single year, because landlords seeking rent increases were forced to fix their buildings first.
Jawando also discussed just-cause eviction protection — a policy requiring landlords to have a valid legal reason before refusing to renew a lease. “Nearly 40% of county residents are renters. These are their homes,” he said. That bill requires state-level action, where Delegate Janelle Wilkins has been pushing the legislation for several sessions. On the renter protections front, TANTV has tracked parallel council action: Montgomery County also recently advanced a bill requiring landlords to give 14 days’ notice before executing an eviction — one of several layers of renter protection the council has stacked in recent years. Jawando pledged to bring full executive advocacy to move just-cause protections forward at the state level.
Data Centers: We Don’t Want to Be First. We Want to Be Right.
One of the race’s most debated policy positions is Jawando’s proposed two-year moratorium on new data center building permits in Montgomery County.
In Virginia, he told TANTV, nearly half of all electricity now goes to data centers — already driving up utility costs across the region. A proposed facility in northern Montgomery County would draw 300 megawatts of power, producing more carbon emissions than a small city.
“Once they’re built, you can’t unbuild them,” he said.
He also flagged a glaring tax inequity: under current law, a data center in Montgomery County pays the exact same property tax rate as a single-family home — regardless of size, power draw, or profit. Fixing that requires state legislation, and the General Assembly does not reconvene until January. That timing, Jawando argues, is precisely why a two-year pause is necessary. Notably, Montgomery County is also home to X-energy, the Gaithersburg-based advanced nuclear company that completed a landmark $1 billion IPO on Nasdaq in April 2026 — a reminder that the county’s energy future extends well beyond data center debates and into a rapidly growing clean energy economy.
“A six-month pause wouldn’t even get us to the legislative session,” Jawando told TANTV.
Also read & Watch our interview with Maryland Congressional Candidate Wala Blegay on Power Bills, ICE, Arms to Israel and Gaza
Schools: The Budget Is Broken, and He Knows It
As chair of the County Council’s Education and Culture Committee, Jawando is at the center of MCPS’s budget crisis. The school board recently voted to eliminate 415 positions to close a $36 million shortfall — with no new school construction projects currently in the design phase for the first time in 50 years.
Jawando did not sidestep his role. He explained that the school board had requested $180 million more than the prior year. The council funded everything but $36 million. At one point, the projected gap was more than $90 million — which would have forced layoffs of roughly 1,200 employees.
On the tax question, he broke with outgoing County Executive Marc Elrich, who proposed a 6% property tax hike to close the gap: “People are struggling right now. We have a flat, regressive property tax. Raising it hits seniors and working people the hardest”.
His alternative: cut over $70 million from county agency base budgets — a plan he said no other council member put forward in full — while growing the tax base and asking the wealthiest to contribute more through progressive taxation. “As county executive, I will propose budgets that fund the schools. We’re going to have to ask the wealthiest among us to do more”.
Federal Workers: The DOGE Crisis Hits Home
Montgomery County is home to the NIH, the FDA, NIST, and dozens of other federal installations — making it one of the most federally concentrated counties in the nation. Since the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative launched, the county has absorbed the loss of approximately 9,900 federal jobs. The broader DMV picture is even starker: as TANTV reported in March 2026, the DC region shed more than 72,000 federal jobs in 2025 — the largest regional job loss in the entire country.
“First, thank you for your service,” Jawando said when asked what he would tell displaced workers. “I’m a former federal worker. I worked at the U.S. Department of Education — which is now almost completely gone”.
As TANTV previously documented, this isn’t about trimming bureaucratic fat — DOGE didn’t cut waste, it cut your neighbors. Jawando’s council has responded with concrete programs: Mobilize Montgomery, a workforce development center specifically for fired federal workers offering specialized training and private-sector job connections; priority hiring legislation giving laid-off federal employees a guaranteed interview for county government jobs; and Feds to Eds, which channels former federal workers into education roles — directly connecting the jobs crisis to the school staffing shortage.
Jawando was clear-eyed about limits: “We will never be able to totally supplant the money that came from the federal government. But you have to know what you have, what you don’t have, and have a plan — and then win in November to flip the House and Senate”.
ICE, Immigration & the County Values Act
Montgomery County’s legislative response to ICE enforcement has been among the most aggressive in the country under Jawando’s leadership. He sponsored the Unmask ICE Act and co-sponsored the County Values Act — both introduced January 20, 2026. As TANTV reported at the time, the County Values Act requires a judicial warrant for ICE to access non-public county facilities and bans enforcement activity in county-owned parking lots and garages. The full package of county legislation went further: in April 2026, the council also unanimously passed the ICE Out Act, banning private ICE detention centers from operating anywhere in county limits.
Critics called these bills unconstitutional. Jawando, a civil rights lawyer, pushed back directly.
“Prior to 2024, ICE never wore masks. They just started doing this — to terrorize people,” he said. “A judge in California with their unmasking bill ruled you are not impeding their job by asking them not to wear a mask”.
On the Trust Act’s legal footing, he was equally firm: “It is clear in the Constitution — we do not have to do their job. Our law enforcement’s job is to keep our residents safe. A third of our residents are foreign-born”. Maryland moved in the same direction at the state level: a new Maryland law now bars local police from serving as de facto ICE agents under 287(g) partnerships. For residents who want to know their rights during enforcement operations, TANTV has published a full Know Your Rights guide on ICE checkpoints across the DC region.
When asked about Trump administration threats to withhold federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions, Jawando said the county has already been auditing all federal grants for vulnerability — with programs including permanent supportive housing, Medicaid, Title I education funds, and library and healthcare grants all flagged as at risk. His bottom line: “They’re already here. They’re already cutting grants. The time now is to stand up.”
Gaza, the MIDC & Governing a Divided Community
Jawando addressed the most politically charged issue in the race — his public stance on Gaza and Montgomery County’s prior funding of the Maryland Israel Development Center (MIDC).
He confirmed he is the only council member to have formally called for a ceasefire, which he did in early 2025. “I didn’t see that war as benefiting either side. Both people were being harmed.”
On the MIDC, Jawando noted the organization was not funded in this year’s county budget, and that his office found no hard evidence linking its funds to offensive weapons production. He stood by his stated principle: “I don’t think we should be involved in funding any organization where money is going to the production of offensive weapons anywhere in the world.”
He framed his executive role simply: “My main job is to make sure the residents of Montgomery County are safe and have what they need — regardless of where they come from”.
The $1.3 Million PAC Attack — And Who’s Really Behind It
The race’s financial dynamic has become a story in itself — and the numbers are confirmed by multiple sourced reports.
The Super PAC “Affordable Maryland” — funded by developers, builders, private equity, and out-of-state real estate interests including entities linked to Boston Properties and Equity Residential, one of the nation’s largest apartment building owners — has spent $1.3 million in attack ads targeting Jawando. The CEO of Equity Residential publicly attacked Montgomery County’s rent stabilization law after it passed. Combined with opponent Andrew Friedson’s private fundraising, that outside spending left Jawando outspent nearly four-to-one over the last five weeks.
Jawando is unfazed. “They don’t attack you unless they think you are a threat,” he told TANTV. “They’re worried I won’t do their bidding.”
Separate from the PAC, the Working Families Party PAC — which received $115,000 from Jawando’s U.S. Senate campaign account — filed reports showing $72,159 in independent expenditures in support of Jawando as of late May 2026.
Despite the financial barrage, the most recent Hart Research poll finds Jawando tied for first at 26%, with Friedson at 26% and Glass at 25% — all within the margin of error. Jawando told TANTV bluntly: “They don’t attack you unless they think you are a threat. They’re worried I won’t do their bidding”.
He participates in Montgomery County’s public financing system, which bans corporate and PAC money in exchange for public matching funds, and has qualified for the maximum $870,170 in public match — the first candidate in the race to do so. His endorsers include Maryland Governor Wes Moore, U.S. Senator Angela Alsobrooks, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, MCEA (the teachers union), and over 40 organizations.
He contrasted himself sharply with opponent Andrew Friedson, who is using private financing and has raised more than $2.2 million: “Many of the people funding the Super PAC are funding Friedson. He’s tied to those interests.” On Evan Glass, Jawando was more measured: “He kind of sees where the wind is blowing and then decides.”
What’s Next
Early voting runs June 11–18 in Maryland. Same-day registration is available. The Democratic primary is Tuesday, June 23, 2026. Only registered Democrats can vote in the closed primary.
The winner inherits a county budget approaching $8 billion, a school system in financial distress, a federal jobs collapse, and an immigration standoff with the White House — all on day one.
Jawando’s closing message to TANTV viewers was direct: “Independent media is really important. We have to reach people in as many places as possible. And the most important thing is that everyone is ready to vote”.
Visit his campaign at willjawando.com or follow him at @WillJawando on all social platforms.
This interview was conducted as part of the TANTV Civic & Political Voices Network — designed to connect civic leaders, public officials, and trusted community voices directly with the residents they serve. Network members include Wanika Fisher, Ethan Wechtaluk and more… Watch the full interview at tantvnews.com and on YouTube.
