Gaithersburg Mayor Jud Ashman is a man of many convictions.
In 2024, Mr. Ashman endorsed April McClain Delaney for Congress in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District.
The same year, Mayor Ashman endorsed Angela Alsobrooks for U.S. Senate in the general election, telling the AFRO that he was “all in” for the woman who had just beaten David Trone in Maryland’s Senate Democratic primary, 53% to 43%, despite Mr. Trone’s $62.9 million in self-funding.
Jud even took a public pot-shot at the tone of the Republican campaign – Larry Hogan, explicitly – saying the “name-calling” and “personal attacks” were “not befitting.”
Jud Ashman, in other words, had no trouble finding words in 2024.
I want to disabuse readers of the notion that I’m operating on some moral high ground. I’ll likely vote for Jud Ashman for County Council. Jud represents pretty much what I believe should happen in Montgomery County. He’s a moderate, or some version of it. I’m a registered Unaffiliated voter, a moderate, a technocrat. There is no moral high ground.
Jud Ashman is a Man Who Has Never Been Shy
To fully appreciate the exquisite comedy of Mayor Jud’s current silence, you need to understand this: He’s not a cautious politician; he’s certainly not a politician who plays it safe or avoids controversy.
Jud Ashman is the opposite of politically cautious.
He’s a registered Democrat (because he has to be in Montgomery County) who was formerly a Republican. He switched parties in the mid-2000s, disenchanted with George W. Bush’s presidential administration. Jud wasn’t part of the Coalition of the Willing.
But when former Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan ran for reelection in 2018, Jud Ashman didn’t just quietly pull the lever for Larry. No, Jud wrote an entire op-ed in Maryland Matters titled “A Democratic Case for Supporting Larry Hogan,” urging his fellow Maryland Democrats to cross party lines.
Ben Jealous was never going to win that race. However, Jud was so earnest about supporting Mr. Hogan for a second gubernatorial term that Montgomery County Councilwoman Laurie-Anne Sayles, a Gaithersburg City Council member at the time, threw public shade at Jud in the same publication.
Mr. Ashman hosted a rally for Mr. Hogan at the Barking Mad Cafe in Gaithersburg that election cycle. Maryland Matters reported Jud’s get-together for Hogan was the largest pre-election rally for a Republican candidate in Montgomery County in 20 years. A Democrat organized the biggest GOP event in the bluest county in Maryland in two decades.
NPR quoted Ashman praising Larry Hogan’s economic record. I think it’s fair to say that Jud Ashman became the poster child for “Democrats for Hogan,” the bipartisan coalition that Mr. Hogan deployed to win a second term in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two-to-one.
Jud Ashman told his political party (Democratic) they were wrong and publicly campaigned for Maryland’s Republican governor. He took his op-ed hits from his Democratic colleagues, stood on a stage with a GOP banner behind him, and went on national radio to explain why.
He did all of this because he believed it was the right thing to do, and he didn’t care who it upset.
Ashman’s Political Switch-a-roo
In 2024, Mayor Ashman did it again in the other direction: he told Maryland Matters he would not be supporting his friend, Larry Hogan, for U.S. Senate, even though Jud enthusiastically backed Hogan for governor six years ago.
“Federal office is different from state office,” Ashman explained. You know, I’m just a Western Maryland boy with a public school education, but I’m sure glad Jud cleared that up.
“A vote for Hogan is a vote for the Republican Party taking over the Senate, and I’m not going to be a part of that,” Mayor Ashman said, as a cartoon-sized toilet flushed in the background.
Mr. Ashman publicly endorsed Angela Alsobrooks in the general election that year and appeared at a Maryland Democratic Party press conference in Annapolis alongside Governor Moore. He spoke on the record to several media outlets, which quoted him by name as he transparently explained his position.
So here is the portrait: A man who wrote op-eds bucking his own political party and hosted GOP rallies in deep blue territory. Jud Ashman, a loyal Hogan ally to the end, reversed course and explained exactly why his allegiance has shifted to Ms. Alsobrooks from Mr. Trone.
Jud Ashman is a man who endorsed April McClain Delaney in the 2024 election cycle.
And he’s a man who has never, in his entire public career, had any difficulty telling you exactly what he thinks and why. That man now has $3,000 in his campaign bank account – from the Trone family. But ‘ol Jud can’t seem to form an opinion about a congressional race that his own constituents will vote in.
What changed?
Six Trones, Six Checks, One Very Quiet Gaithersburg Mayor
According to filings in the Maryland Campaign Reporting Information System (MDCRIS), six members of the Trone family each contributed $500 to Gaithersburg Mayor Jud Ashman’s Montgomery County Council District 3 campaign:
- David Trone
- June Trone
- Robert Trone
- Julia Trone
- Michelle Trone
- Natalie Trone.
A single family moved $3,000 into the account of a Montgomery County Council candidate. While the candidate markets a fundraising model based on small-dollar contributions from ordinary residents, this coordinated effort suggests a different reality.
To be clear, none of this is illegal.
Montgomery County’s public financing program caps individual contributions at $500 per election cycle for publicly financed candidates, with the county matching small donations to amplify grassroots support. The whole point of the system is to reduce the influence of concentrated wealth in local races.
A traditional candidate can accept up to $6,000 from an individual. A publicly financed candidate in Montgomery County accepts up to $500 and receives taxpayer-matched funds in return. The six Trone family members gave Jud the maximum amount allowed by law. Technically, there is nothing to see here.
Technically.
When they created the public financing system, Montgomery County officials perhaps failed to account for a billionaire’s family coordinating a six-person strategy to funnel $3,000 into one candidate’s account. This concentration of wealth contradicts a system built for $25 and $50 donors.
The architects built the program to keep big money out.
Like A Scene From Veep
There is a scene in HBO’s Veep that might as well be a documentary about this arrangement.
Former President Selina Meyer, played by the ever-so wonderful Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is in Oslo when she runs into Murman, the Georgian president who was “reinstalled by the Russians when they invaded Georgia.”
Murman pitches Selina an idea: What if he gave former President Meyer a few bucks to help win her election? The former fictional president, suddenly discovering her principles, erupts with patriotic indignation.
“America does not stand for foreign interference in our elections! Who do you think that I am?”
Murman backs off and strikes up a new topic: real estate. Mr. Murman wants to buy Selina’s Palm Beach house for $114 million. The transaction routes the money from the Seychelles to Malta and back again before reaching her. At that point, Selina lets her moral objections vanish entirely.
“Needless to say, real estate is a different animal,” she purrs.
Selina doesn’t reject Murman’s deal on principle; she rejects it on timing. “Your timing is horrendous,” she tells him. It’s the same money. It’s the same person. It’s the same influence. Reclassifying the transaction allows the parties to ignore the ethics rules entirely.
The Trone family just needed to split the check into six. David Trone cannot write Jud Ashman a $3,000 contribution because that would violate the public financing system that exists to prevent wealthy donors from dominating local elections. That would be the campaign donation – but the six Trones can each write Mr. Ashman a check for $500; suddenly, it’s not concentrated wealth at all.
Six individual acts of civic engagement that just so happen to come from the same family, at the same time, to the same candidate, for the maximum allowable amount.
A Brief Timeline for the Amnesiac
In 2024, David Trone vacated his CD-6 House seat to run for U.S. Senate. Jud Ashman endorsed April McClain Delaney to replace Mr. Trone in Congress. Mr. Trone lost the Senate primary to Angela Alsobrooks. Jud Ashman then endorsed Angela Alsobrooks in the general election, publicly declaring himself “all in” for the woman who beat Trone.
Then, in December 2025, David Trone announced he was challenging Mrs. McClain Delaney in the 2026 Democratic primary. April McClain Delaney responded that the 6th District “is not a consolation prize.”
Also in December 2025, Jud Ashman announced his campaign for the Montgomery County Council District 3 seat. He opted into the public financing system. Six (6) Trone family members promptly wrote checks to their friend, Jud.
And then a strange thing happened: the man who could not stop talking about CD-6 in 2024 stopped saying things out loud about the CD-6 race.
You don’t need a math degree to understand that 2+2 = 4 – or is it $500 + $500 + $500 + $500 + $500 + $500?
Jud Ashman’s Alsobrooks Endorsement: A Comedy in Three Acts
U.S. Senator Angela Alsobrooks has endorsed Jud Ashman for Montgomery County Council this cycle.
That was nice of Senator Alsobrooks – especially when Jud went out of his way to endorse David Trone in the 2024 Democratic U.S. Senate primary.
Angela Alsobrooks – the woman who beat the $62.9 millon-dollar-man, the woman Jud Ashman publicly championed after endorsing her opponent in the primary. Angela Alsobrooks, the woman whose victory over David Trone was, in part, an undeniable repudiation of the idea that a billionaire could buy a United States Senate seat in Maryland.
Yes – that Angela Alsobrooks endorsed Jud Ashman for the Montgomery County Council.
But wait, isn’t David Trone’s family funding Jud Ashman’s bid for County Council? And why is Jud Ashman now pretending these two facts can coexist without anyone noticing? The mayor simultaneously cashes checks from the Trone family and wears the political endorsement of the woman who ended David Trone’s Senate campaign.
Politics is weird.
Mr. Ashman has somehow positioned himself as both the beneficiary of the Trone family money and the political ally of the person who defeated Trone.
The System Working Exactly as Intended (for David Trone)
Mr. Ashman’s $3,000 from the Trone family is not an isolated transaction; it’s part of a broader pattern documented by A Miner Detail: in the 2025-2026 cycle, the Trone family has distributed $113,550 across 50 recipients, with roughly 65% of it concentrated on officials who live in or represent the 6th Congressional District.
Trone family money flows to Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater ($24,000), who has since endorsed Mr. Trone over April McClain Delaney. It’s the same family cash that funds state legislators, county council members, and municipal officials across the district. And almost none of them have said a word about the CD-6 primary.
The Trone family’s deployment into Montgomery County’s publicly financed races is particularly elegant, as is a perfectly executed grift.
You can’t write a $6,000 check to a publicly financed candidate; the maximum is $500. But you can write six $500 checks from six family members and deliver $3,000 in concentrated influence to a single candidate in a system built on $25 and $50 contributions from schoolteachers and small-business owners.
Total Wine and Montgomery County
Total Wine & More maintains its headquarters at 6600 Rockledge Drive in Bethesda, Maryland. As the largest independent retailer of wine, spirits, and beer in the United States, the company operates roughly 240 stores nationwide, generates $2.3 billion in annual revenue, and employs over 10,000 people.
David Trone and his younger brother, Robert Trone, founded the company. Total Wine still cannot open a store in Montgomery County. America’s largest independent liquor retailer anchors its operations in a county where local laws bar it from selling its own products.
During the 2015 headquarters dedication in Bethesda, Robert Trone stood before the crowd and challenged the status quo: ‘There’s still no Total Wine in Montgomery County. I hope that’s something we can get together to change.”
And the reason Total Wine can’t operate in its own home county is Montgomery County’s government-run liquor monopoly, a system so antiquated that the Washingtonian called it “Soviet-style” and the Washington Post called it “unbreakable.”
Montgomery County is one of the only local jurisdictions in America where the government operates as the exclusive wholesaler of all alcohol and runs the only retail stores where residents can buy spirits; this bizarre system has been in place since Prohibition ended in 1933.
The system probably survives because the county employees’ union, MCGEO, fights to protect the roughly 350 government jobs in the county’s liquor warehouses and stores, and elected officials are terrified of crossing them. County Executive Marc Elrich supports the monopoly, but term limits now force him to abide by a two-term limit. Currently, Elrich is running for the County Council.
Reform efforts have died repeatedly in Annapolis because members of the Montgomery County delegation will not take the political risk.
You Know What The Trone Family Is Buying
The Montgomery County Council has the most direct authority to disband the county’s liquor monopoly.
If you have a moment, take a close look at those six $500 checks the Trone crew gave Mr. Ashman’s County Council campaign.
You know what the Trone family bought.
Jud Ashman is a self-described fiscal moderate, a former Republican. He’s a small-business owner who went on NPR to praise Larry Hogan for making Maryland “a better place to do business.” Mr. Ashman wrote in his Maryland Matters op-ed that the most important issue facing the state was its business climate. And this is not a man who would look at a Soviet-era government liquor monopoly and say, “Yes, this is working beautifully.”
If the question of reforming or privatizing the county’s alcohol system ever came before the Montgomery County Council, Jud Ashman would almost certainly vote to disband it. The Trone family invests in a County Council candidate who, by every ideological signal, would vote to crack open the one market in America that the largest liquor retailer in the country cannot enter: in its own zip code, in Montgomery County (Maryland).
MoCo has over 1 million people with a median household income above $117,000 – but where are the Total Wine stores? They can’t exist here. The only thing standing between the Trone family and what would presumably be one of the most lucrative retail locations in Total Wine’s national portfolio is a County Council that has never had the votes to reform the monopoly.
Six checks, five hundred dollars each – to a publicly financed candidate running for one of eleven seats on that council.
You know what that buys.
The Trone Family’s Support for Jud Ashman – Their Guy
Let’s be precise about what $3,000 does not buy.
The Trone family’s cash doesn’t buy Jud Ashman’s vote on any future matter before the Montgomery County Council. Their money doesn’t buy Jud’s endorsement of David Trone. And there is no evidence of any explicit quid pro quo; this story does not allege one.
What $3,000 buys, in this context, is silence.
In a competitive congressional primary where your constituents are the voters, Jud’s silence is worth considerably more than $3,000. Mayor Ashman is asking CD-6 voters to send him to the County Council. He’s asking for our trust, for our support. He’s campaigning on his judgment. He’s pointing to his leadership.
But what is Jud saying about CD-6?
Who’s he backing?
Has he told us?
In 2024, the mayor had no such hesitation. Do you remember when Jud enthusiastically endorsed April McClain Delaney?
I remember.
He also endorsed Angela Alsobrooks publicly and told reporters he was “all in.”
In 2018, Jud wrote op-eds, hosted Republican rallies, and went on NPR to explain why he was backing the other party’s governor. He has never, in two decades of public life, lacked for an opinion or the courage to share it.
The only variable that changed between then and now is a checkbook – specifically, six checkbooks.
It turns out the man who had the guts to host the biggest Republican rally in Montgomery County in 20 years did not have the guts to maintain a position he held two years ago once the Trone family started writing checks. Somewhere between the Barking Mad Cafe and the MDCRIS filing, maybe Jud’s courage went missing.
The Man He Wants to Replace Just Endorsed McClain Delaney
There is one more detail that makes Jud’s silence almost physically uncomfortable to observe.
He’s running for the Montgomery County Council District 3 seat currently held by Sidney Katz, who is term-limited and cannot seek reelection. Mr. Katz is not just any outgoing councilmember – he is the former mayor of Gaithersburg. He held that job from 1998 until 2014, when he left to join the County Council. Gaithersburg’s City Council selected Mr. Ashman to succeed Councilman Katz after he vacated the Gaithersburg mayor’s office.
On March 9, 2026, Sidney Katz publicly endorsed April McClain Delaney for Congress; the endorsement was posted on the congresswoman’s campaign’s Facebook page, accompanied by a full statement and a graphic bearing his name and photograph.
“April McClain Delaney has proven she’s got what it takes to serve this community, and she does it with integrity,” Katz said. “I’m proud to support April because I know she will work tirelessly for the people she represents.”
The man whose seat Jud Ashman wants had no trouble picking a side. And the man whose career Jud Ashman has followed found the courage. Sidney Katz, who served Gaithersburg and Montgomery County for over four decades, looked at the CD-6 primary and made a clear decision.
His protégé?
Jud Ashman looked at the same Democratic primary. He counted his Trone-family cash and developed amnesia.
Did Gaithersburg Know We Were Electing A Lame-Duck Mayor?
One more thing, while we’re here.
On November 4, 2025, Gaithersburg voters reelected Jud Ashman as their mayor with roughly 73% of the vote.
I voted for Jud. We gave Jud another four-year term. During the campaign, Jud acknowledged he had been encouraged to run for the District 3 Council seat. He told voters he had “not reached a decision.”
He was planning to run for a while.
If Mayor Ashman wins his County Council bid in November, he’ll leave the mayor’s office roughly one year into the four-year term that 73% of Gaithersburg voters just gave him. The City Council would then appoint someone to serve until a 2027 special election. Yamil Hernández seems like he’s auditioning for the mayor’s job.
So the residents of Gaithersburg elected a mayor who was already planning to leave. Now, Jud won’t tell us where he stands on the 6th Congressional District race.
The Question Jud Ashman Could Answer
Mr. Mayor, you endorsed April McClain Delaney in 2024. You endorsed the woman who beat David Trone for Senate. You accepted $3,000 from six members of the Trone family for your County Council campaign. You are running in a district where your constituents will vote in the CD-6 Democratic primary on June 23.
Do you still support April McClain Delaney for Congress, Mayor?
If you do, say so.
Your constituents deserve to know where you stand, and frankly, $3,000 is a pretty modest asking price for a man’s principles.
If you don’t, say that too. Political conversions happen. People are allowed to change their minds. But if you’ve changed yours, voters deserve to know whether the change was intellectual or financial. And if you refuse to answer, then the silence is the answer. It’s always been the answer. It’s the only answer $3,000 can reliably purchase.
You wrote a whole op-ed for Larry Hogan, Mayor Ashman. Sidney Katz, the man whose seat you’re running for, found the words just last week.
Surely you can manage a sentence about April McClain Delaney.
Ryan Miner is the founder and editor of A Miner Detail, a Maryland political news publication. Contact: ryan@aminerdetail.com
