Fleetwood Mac – "Child of Mine" (1972)

I miss you again

I let the sunlight through my eyes

I won’t cry

In the previous 2 or 3 lines, I introduced you to Marc Elrich, the County Executive of Montgomery County, Maryland – where I’ve lived for many years.

A day rarely goes by without Elrich issuing press releases and posting photos of himself on Facebook, X, and other social media – like this photo of Elrich at a Hare Krishna festival where celebrants throw colored powder at each other:

Elrich won the first time he ran for county executive despite winning only 29% of the votes cast in the Democratic primary.  (Montgomery County Democrats outnumber Republicans by a four-to-one margin, so winning the Democratic primary pretty much guarantees victory in the general election.)

In most jurisdictions, if no candidate gets a majority of the votes cast, there’s a runoff between the top two vote-getters.  

But that’s not the case in the People’s Republic of Montgomery County, where the candidate who gets the most votes wins even if – like Elrich – he didn’t come close to getting a majority.

So we ended up with a County Executive who had been rejected by 71% of the voters from his own party.

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Elrich was re-elected to his second term by an even narrower margin.  

Once again, Elrich fell far short of winning a majority of the votes cast in the Democratic primary – most of the members of his party preferred another candidate.  

But because we don’t believe in majority rule in Montgomery County, that didn’t matter.  All Elrich needed to win re-election was a tiny plurality – which is exactly what he got.

After the 140,000-odd ballots cast in the Democratic primary that year were tabulated, Elrich ended up with 32 more votes than the runner-up.  

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!  

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After winning two such fluky victories, a humbler man would have thanked his lucky stars and quit while he was ahead.  

But Marc “I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Majority” Elrich is made of sterner stuff.  So after squeaking through the 2022 election, he immediately announced his intention to run for a third term in 2026.

“Not so fast!” said tens of thousands of horrified Montgomery County voters, who rushed to the polls at the next opportunity to approve a measure that prevented Elrich from running for a third term by a two-to-one margin.

“You’ve got Republicans who couldn’t beat me in a one-on-one election.”  Elrich whined to the Washington Post.  “The best strategy, as they knew, was to try to knock me out using term limits.”  

Which is utter nonsense.  As previously noted, Montgomery County Democrats outnumber Republicans by a four-to-one margin.  The term-limit ballot question that threw cold water on Marc Elrich’s dream of winning a third term was supported by about twice as many Democratic voters as Republicans.  

So even if zero Republicans had voted in that election, there would still have been a majority in favor of denying Elrich a third term.

It’s simple math, Marc.

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A few years ago, the Houston Astros used 151 different starting lineups – which is believed to be a record.

Fleetwood Mac fell far short of that mark, but did field nine different lineups between 1967 (when the group was founded) and 1975 (when they released their hugely successful tenth studio album, Fleetwood Mac, which probably outsold their first nine albums combined).  

Drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie were members of all nine of those lineups, but the band has had more guitarists and lead vocalists than you can shake a stick at.  

Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer were the group’s original guitarists and singers, but were eventually displaced by Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch, respectively.  Kirwan was booted in favor of Bob Weston, who bailed after two albums.  Then Welch was replaced by Lindsey Buckingham.

The late Danny Kirwan

The group had started out as an all-male aggregation but eventually added the late Christine McVie (John McVie’s wife) and then Stevie Nicks (Lindsey Buckingham’s girlfriend).

My favorite Fleetwood Mac member is probably Danny Kirwan, who made his debut on Then Play On (the group’s third studio album) and stayed around through Bare Trees (their sixth).

Today 2 or 3 lines is featuring “Child of Mine” from Bare Trees, which demonstrates Kirwan’s talents as both a songwriter and a guitarist.  

“Child of Mine” is a relatively simple composition, and Kirwan’s guitar work on the track is restrained rather than show-offy.  (Less can be more, you know.)

Click here to listen to “Child of Mine.”

Click here to buy “Child of Mine” from Amazon.