Haire Ahead, But GOP Race for Anne Arundel Exec Too Close to Call

With thousands of mail-in ballots yet to be counted, the Republican primary for Anne Arundel County Executive is too close to call.

Sitting County Council Member Jessica Haire leads former Delegate Herb McMillan and former Council Member John Grasso in the multi-way primary race. The winner will face Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, in the general election on November 8.

According to unofficial early voting and Election Day results, Haire has 43 percent of the vote to advance to the general election. Mcmillan has 40 percent of the vote, while Grasso sits at 12 percent.

Jessica Haire is finishing her first term representing District 7 on the Anne Arundel County Council.

Herb McMillan previously served multiple terms in the House of Delegates, representing District 30 from 2003 to 2007 and 2011 to 2015 and District 30A from 2015 to 2019.

John Grasso represented District 2 on the Anne Arundel County Council for two terms from 2010-2018, serving as Council President in 2013-2014 and 2016-2017. Grasso lost a bid for the District 32 Senate seat in 2018.

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Please note that vote counts are incomplete. Election officials still have to count mail-in and provisional ballots. For context, more than 500,000 Marylanders requested a mail-in ballot for this year’s primary, and those remaining votes are likely to be material to many contested races. However, local boards of elections cannot begin to canvass mail-in votes until Thursday, July 21. Therefore, for editorial purposes, MACo coverage will describe any races where the top runner-up remains within 10 percent of the apparent winner as “pending” and those results as “apparent.”

MACo’s election coverage and analysis rely on unofficial results published by the State Board of Elections. Official results will follow after a full accounting of pending votes. Given delays in processing an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots, MACo advises readers that any close unofficial results are subject to realignment in the days ahead.