Chen / McCoy voter here. One thing to just put context in on here is that this is a BOE election, so the scope of what they affect is limited compared to say county council, and two, whoever wins is part of a larger council.

I'm center/a little left leaning, which means I often dislike parts of both DNC and GOP candidate’s platforms. This BOE was no exception. Pretty much my strategy every time I vote is prioritizing what is the most important to me combined with who I think can win.

1. Focus on school building infrastructure and the academics,and not getting caught up in the rest of politics (Again, these candidates are for BOE and NOT county council. What they do is limited.)
2. I’m generally against redistricting/ bussing. (Mostly because redistricting can cause the value of your home to swing wildly and I am hoping to move to a different home within HoCo in the next few years, and I think everyone here knows how much homes are here.)
3. I’m generally in favor of having SROs. (In addition to specially trained mental health staff. Aka do both strategies) I think overall HCPD has a pretty good relationship with the community and they provide essential services.

I am generally in favor of LGBTQIA+ and do not see a point to book bans, however, in this case it wasn’t high enough on the priority list compared to the other issues. I’m not really on the ‘Equity’ bandwagon for this one because it would likely promote redistricting. Chen hits the 3 biggest priorities for me. McCoy is better than Newberger as McCoy is currently undecided on SROs. Adler didn't stand a chance as she puts a ton of ‘culture war’ vibes out.

Chen did an excellent job at hiding their extremely conservative standpoints. Their comments on FARMs is incredibly telling and deeply rooted in severe prejudice. Unfortunately, that didn’t get enough attention.

He was the on call for ours. He was very nice and kind when we made the 3am “ITS OUR FIRST AND WE THINK ITS STARTING” phone call. I’ll never forget it. When we got there he was great and got us settled in for the “let’s see if we send you home to wait” check, but got called into a difficult delivery, and by the time he was done, Dr. Kwong was on duty, who was the most professional and businesslike doctor I have ever encountered and I mean that in the best way possible. She delivered our daughter. And it was great.

Chef’s website was deliberately vague, and he seemed to have the weakest background in education. I definitely got vibes he was trying to coast in with an Asian last name.

My MIL was seen at JHU regularly. She made her normal appointment and walked my wife up to the desk and said, “This is my daughter, she’s pregnant and she’s taking my appointment.”

Knowing my MIL, I’m not surprised that there was a spirited discussion, but I’m also not surprised my wife was thereafter a patient.

Dr Francisco Rojas (with JH Community OB/Gyn). I met him at the end of my (complicated, almost fatal) pregnancy, when he was covering for my regular OB (over Memorial Day weekend) while I was inpatient but prior to delivery. I liked him so much that I really wished I could switch to him right then. He was practical, knowledgeable, and level-headed. He even let me have a shower!

Fast forward about four years, and I was in the market for either an ablation or a hysterectomy. I looked him up and showed up at his practice to discuss things. He remembered me. He was just as great as previously.

Highly recommend.

I'm very happy with Capital Women's Care in Fulton. Also expecting my first.

I only saw advertisements for Chen. I didn’t see ads from anyone else.

I used JH for my first and switched to the downtown practice at 8 months pregnant because I was so fed up with them. This was years ago, but I’d try CWC first!!

Capital woman's care

I'm with CWC right now and have been happy. Tried to get in with JHU when I was ten weeks and they ahd literally zero appointments. Someone was supposed to call to fit me in and no one ever did.

Definitely an odd split. I suppose maybe because McCoy/Newberger were seen as a “duo” that some people may have split their vote a bit, figuring they wanted a little more conservative balance without the extreme of Adler (CRT, really?). I can’t remember where McCoy stood on SROs. Newberger was quite adamantly against them, and maybe that swung some votes away.

There is a Howard County Mom Hub group on facebook. I recommend joining and searching for this topic. It’s asked a lot there. I have used Signature so I can’t comment on the two you’ve listed. But for what it’s worth, I probably would not use them again for a future pregnancy. Good luck!

You don't vote for Bind On Equip. Bind On Equip happens whether you like it or not.

Hard to do party affiliation when it's not listed in the ballot.

It may be too early to count on Chen winning. There are massive amounts of mail in ballots left to count and he is trailing hard in them.

A good portion of Chen’s voters who share his ethnicity “bullet” voted for him only. To a lesser extent that happened with McCoy. The bullet voting was to the degree that it out the two of them over the top. It’s understandable that people want to vote in a way that gets the representation. Rank choice voting would allow them to give their favorite candidate a boast while also voting for their other candidate choices.

It’s pretty disappointing tbh. I’m worried about our LGBTQ students with that conservative voting bloc

Adler got way more negative press than Chen. There’s probably a pretty significant chunk of people who aren’t interested in the wild culture war stuff that Adler offered, but are receptive to other conservative themes on unions, redistricting, and student achievement.

Yeah I think Chen's outreach to Asian communities and his intentional withholding of the scary specifics of his agenda worked to get him the seat. Then Chen sign in front of Hunan Manor always made me disappointed.

There's also a lot of rich republican or republican-leaning people who have been really against redistricting and he appeals to that block.

My thought process was that progressives focused hard on Adler’s far right views and conservatives focused hard on Newberger’s progressive views so voters might have been reluctant to vote for either of them. Chen was very good at concealing that he is a conservative guy. Everything I saw that he posted was just so generic and vague. Other the redistricting, pretty much all his positions are just generic promises that anyone could get behind. It would take further digging that most voters don’t do to realize that Chen does not have the best view of the less well off of that he is incredibly dismissive of the issues facing LGBTQ students.

People vote for last names that are closer to the beginning of the alphabet. A candidates will get more votes than Z candidates.

People voting for ethnicity vs party affiliation.

There is one in every neighborhood, an OCD addiction to either the weed wacker or leaf blower. Hours a day, several days a week.

Apparently Chen raises ducks - fun factoid learned heading in to vote