Two Republicans. Two Democrats. One newspaper. Same conclusion.

On Saturday, I published the math on every locked-up county race in Howard County — five out of six positions effectively decided by Democratic primary…

This is not a partisan post. It is a documentation post. On Saturday, May 2, I published a piece on this site titled "41,771 voters decided Howard County in 2022. Here's who picks your next leader in 2026." It walked through the registration math: in a county of 242,459 registered voters and roughly 343,000 residents, five of six county level positions — the County Executive and four of the five County Council districts — will be effectively decided on June 23 in the Democratic primary, because no Republican candidate filed for any of them. I laid out who voted in 2022 (41,771 Democrats), who's locked out in 2026 (115,661 voters — 47.7 percent of the electorate), and the disengagement spiral that's making it worse every cycle. Twenty four hours later, the Baltimore Sun published a piece that reached the same conclusion — but only about the top of the ticket. Their headline: "In Howard County, only Democrats will get a vote in race for top spot." Their reporting: because no Republicans filed for County Executive, the next County Executive will be chosen by Democratic primary voters on June 23. The first time since 1986 that the race for Howard's top office has lacked Republican competition. The Sun got one of the five locked up races. I had already written about all five. I am not saying the Sun read my post. I am saying that the math was sitting there, the data was public, and a reasonable observer looking at Howard County's electorate in May 2026 was going to land on the same conclusion. I just got there one day earlier and covered more ground. But the Sun's piece is part of a bigger pattern, and that pattern is what this post is actually about. Because over the past several months — and especially the past week — four people from across the political spectrum have all…