For Immediate Release: Monday, December 4, 2006
Thank you, Elliot, for that introduction. And thank you also for all you’ve done for so many years to help move this magnificent facility off the drawing board and to completion.
It has been a great honor to serve as President of the Montgomery County Council this past year. I want to thank my colleagues from the last Council for giving me that responsibility.
And I want to thank the voters of Montgomery County for returning me to office in this election.
I am going to miss working with my colleagues who are leaving the County Council:
Howard Denis, one of the nicest, most decent people I’ve ever met in politics.
Tom Perez, a torchbearer for progressive politics in the County and throughout the state of Maryland.
Steve Silverman, so smart, funny, creative and dedicated to the public interest.
Mike Subin, a tireless advocate for Montgomery’s public schools and Montgomery College.
I have learned so much from each of them. I know we will remain good friends.
And let me say this about County Executive Doug Duncan. Woodrow Wilson said, “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” Doug Duncan was an agent of change. And not everyone agreed with every decision he made.
But imagine if Doug had not adopted the priorities he did for Montgomery County. Imagine if he had let Silver Spring continue its downward slide into crime and urban blight. Imagine if he had not provided county citizens with the highest quality public services. Imagine if he had not fully funded our public education goals and invested in Montgomery College and the Universities at Shady Grove. Look at this beautiful concert hall we are seated in today. Look up the street at our thriving, fully-booked Conference Center. Imagine any of these things occurring without Doug Duncan’s intellect, vision and tenacity.
Montgomery County is a stronger, better, more interesting and culturally rich place to live than it was when Doug Duncan took office. There are many reasons for that: many dedicated community leaders, many other elected officials at the federal, state and local levels. But surely the county’s top elected official deserves his fair share of the credit for this county’s success. Thank you, Doug Duncan.
Today is a day to look ahead with enthusiasm toward the new leadership of our new County Executive Ike Leggett.
Ike, Montgomery County has placed a huge vote of confidence in you. I know that you, too, will be an agent of change. And I know that you, too, will encounter challenges and criticism. The County Council wants to work with you to achieve excellent outcomes for the people we represent. We won’t always agree with you, Ike. But we respect you and we believe that we share with you a dedication to the public interest.
Montgomery County is undergoing a sustained period of change. But as President Bill Clinton liked to say, we must learn to make change our friend.
Back in 1996, I attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Bill Clinton was renominated. I was sitting in that huge United Center arena with a couple of friends of mine, a married couple. At the end of the night’s festivities -- in all the hustle and bustle and crowds -- the wife and I became separated from the husband. We searched all around, couldn’t find him. We knew, however, we’d see him back at the hotel where we were all staying. We caught a bite to eat and went back to the hotel after an hour or so to find the husband, frantic with worry and furious at both of us.
I met this friend a few nights ago and it struck me so vividly. “Why didn’t we just call each other on our cellphones?”
Of course, none of us was using a cellphone in 1996.
Look at how profoundly we have adjusted to that technological change – and others like them – over the past ten years. Now we have Blackberrys, text messaging, WiFi, camera phones, IPods, and more.
Not all of the technological changes are positive.
Mark Twain said, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.” And that was long before the Internet, before the days of bloggers, message boards and anonymous listserve postings. Nowadays, a lie can travel the world at light speed. And is it really a good thing to be connected and reachable every moment of our lives?
Nonetheless, as a community, we have adjusted to technological change. We have no choice. Google, Wikipedia, Mapquest, Adobe Acrobat – they’re all indispensable to us today, and few of us had ever heard of them ten years ago. There is no going back.
Just as we must adjust to technological change, we must also adjust to demographic change.
Our economy is opening up opportunities for those who bring their talents and abilities here from other countries. We are the largest county in Maryland, the most successful, and the most diverse county in Maryland. And those three facts are directly related to each other. People come here from other places because we are such a dynamic and desirable place to live. And by coming here, they make this county even more dynamic and desirable.
And our political system is opening up as well, to those who were underrepresented in the past.
Wasn’t it exciting to see the front-page story in the Washington Post last week about Saqib Ali, the first Muslim American to be elected to local office in our region?
Aren’t we proud today that Ike Leggett is taking office as the first African American Montgomery County Executive? Weren’t we proud four years ago when Ana Sol Gutierrez and Tom Perez took their seats as the first Latina to be elected to the Maryland General Assembly and the first Latino on the Montgomery County Council? Aren’t we proud of Valerie Ervin today, the first African American woman on the Council? And Kumar Barve, Susan Lee, Herman Taylor, Craig Rice, Nancy Navarro, and Judy Docca. We are nearing the day – not there yet, but it is near — when these “firsts” will no longer be the exception. Soon it will be commonplace for our political structure to mirror the composition of our population. I look forward to that day.
Every generation of immigrants makes its contribution to our economic life and our political life. I know that the current generation of immigrants will make our county, our state and our nation better, just as previous generations did—immigrant families with names like Sarbanes and Mikulski, Duncan and Leventhal.
We must learn to live together and welcome our differences because they make us a better, more interesting and more successful community. And because we have no choice. There is no going back.
America is not losing its culture. Immigrants come here from other countries because they want to participate in America’s culture. And what is America’s culture anyway? Pizza? Cappucino? Burritos? We have always been the great synthesizer, taking the best of other countries’ cultures and combining it with our own experience.
When I think of Montgomery County’s future, the image that comes to mind is Bethesda Row on Woodmont Avenue. Tex-Mex food at Austin Grill, Middle Eastern food at Levant, Spanish tapas at Jaleo, Pan-Asian fusion at Raku, French food at Mon Ami Gaby. All excellent, first-rate places to dine. And I think of my constituents sitting at sidewalk tables enjoying a glass of wine and each other’s company. All of us living together, working together and succeeding, together.
Doug Duncan got it. Ike Leggett gets it.
Our future will be bright if we can get ahead of the change, embrace it and master it.
And let me close with this observation. This is not a partisan gathering, but we can’t help but notice that gathered here on this stage are elected officials from only one party.
Now that Democrats are back in control of Congress and back in control of the Governor’s Mansion, a world of opportunity awaits us if we take advantage of it – and if we work together.
Voters placed their confidence in us. It was a clear partisan statement. They wanted our party in charge. Let’s not abuse that confidence by splitting up into 2, 3 or 4 sub-parties. Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt, look for the best in each other, and take it on faith that we have far more in common than we do that divides us.
The best traditions of our party call on us to care for the poor, the elderly, the sick, the homeless, the mentally ill and abused and abandoned children. Let us uphold that great tradition.
Let us build alliances with the Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and with Governor O’Malley to invest in our public schools, our higher education system and our transportation infrastructure. Let’s build a high-tech, high-wage, science-based, future-oriented economy for our state. Let’s continue to provide local leadership where the federal government has failed: on access to health care and on an energy policy that emphasizes clean, renewable energy and energy conservation and moves our planet away from the risk of climate change.
And let us work with Republicans and Independents as well. We all want the same things for ourselves and our families.
And let us forge a new partnership with our faith community. My constituents are far more likely to share their worries with their pastor than with their politician. We can learn so much about the real texture of our diverse community from our religious leadership. Let’s create a new Office of Interfaith Liaison to help our houses of worship navigate the bureaucracy and bring together our many different traditions and many different cultures, to learn from each other and develop new synergies and new partnerships.
In the words of the Book of Micah, let’s “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with Our God.” Let’s remember that we are merely instruments of His will and use well the power He has given us.
And let’s ask His blessings upon this gathering and upon the new Montgomery County Executive and Montgomery County Council.
Thank you very much.