Fourteen years ago, Baltimore County voted in two female County Council members at the same time — a first. Cathy Bevins was elected to represent the east side and Vicki Almond, the west.

Only three women had ever been on the council before them, so the 2010 election seemed to mark a change. Bevins and Almond anticipated that many more women would follow to help govern Maryland’s third-most-populous county.

But no women have been elected since. And by 2022, both had left the council.

“I thought that Cathy Bevins and I had opened the doors and said, ‘Hey ladies, come on in,’ ” Almond said. “I thought we had made these great strides on the Baltimore County Council, and then it went back to the same old, same old. How can that be?”

The Baltimore County Council is a boys’ club. Six White men and one Black man represent a county of 850,000 residents that is growing more diverse every day. Twenty-five years ago, about 75 percent of county residents were White. Now, it’s closer to half.

Yet local elected leadership has looked stubbornly the same. Since the creation of the seven-member council in 1956, there have been 60 representatives — 92 percent of them male and 98 percent of those men White.

Baltimore County has never elected a woman of color to the council, nor have there been any Hispanic or Asian members. There have been only two Black members, both from the same district.

All 14 county executives, including five who came up through the County Council, have been White men. The halls of the council offices tell the story: 18 group photos of almost all White men in varying styles of the business suit.

Baltimore County is on track to become a majority-minority county, Census data show. About 30 percent of its residents identify as Black, about 9 percent as Latino, and 7 percent as Asian. And, of course, about half of its residents are women.

Evidence of the county’s rich diversity is everywhere. Within four blocks of the County Council chambers in Towson are Jamaican, Nepalese, Vietnamese, Mexican and Japanese restaurants, as well as a Latino grocery store. So many Nepalese immigrants have settled in Baltimore County that the Department of Parks and Recreation designated a cricket field for their leagues to play.

Women from Baltimore County have made their mark in state politics — just not after coming up through the County Council.

In 2019, Del. Adrienne A. Jones, who represents Baltimore County, became the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates. The county’s representation in Annapolis includes seven other women delegates and three women senators, including Mary Washington, the first openly gay Black woman elected to the Maryland Senate in 2018.

The homogeneity of the Baltimore County Council has not gone unnoticed by the men who lead it. The council voted in July to place a measure on the November ballot to expand the council by two members, which its sponsors said was a way to make itself more diverse.

And the lack of council diversity has not gone unnoticed by the women who testify before it. The jocular banter among councilmen may not mean to be exclusionary or patronizing, but it can sometimes feel that way, according to several women who have found themselves in that situation.

“I work really well with this council,” said Yara Cheikh, president of the Baltimore County Board of Library Trustees and an advocate who has frequently testified in the chamber. “However, I am aware that any time I come before the council, my perspective is that of a woman, and that I’m bringing something new to them — a perspective they don’t have.”

Opening doors

The men on the council have argued to residents and in interviews that they represent women. After all, they have wives and daughters, they say.

But Almond said she and Bevins, both Democrats, brought a different perspective and set of skills.

Almond, now 75, was a veteran multitasker as a mother and volunteer at her children’s parochial school, where she became parish administrator. While running the parish, she still made sure lunches were made, rides were procured, doctors’ appointments were scheduled. She earned the respect of Reisterstown community leaders with her organizational skills and dedication.

Getting the respect of her male colleagues, though, was a harder climb.

“I think of myself as a very nice person who wants to get along, and I think at the beginning that was taken as a sign of weakness by the men on the council,” she said. “I had to rearrange my way of thinking and acting so as to still keep my sense of self, but to be stronger.”

She lost her bid for county executive in 2018, she believes, because the county wasn’t ready for a woman to lead it.

Despite its increasing diversity, the culture of Baltimore County remains hidebound horse country where sons often follow fathers into top jobs.

County Executive Johnny Olszewski, a Democrat whose father was a longtime councilman, is favored to win in the November general election for a seat in the U.S. Congress. The council needs an interim county executive until the 2026 election. Almond has been mentioned, but she said she prefers to spend her energy on her grandchildren and her community.

Olszewski, first elected in 2018, has appointed women to lead several departments. He hired a Black woman to serve as his top aide — the first to hold such a position in the county’s history — and hired another Black woman to replace her when she retired. The Baltimore County Schools superintendent is a Black woman, as is the chair of the county’s Board of Education.

Mulling another run

Kathleen Beadell’s career arc resembles Almond’s. The longtime real estate agent, age 64, is president of the Greater Timonium Council, the mother of two grown children and a well-known community advocate.

She has said she will run for council as a Republican if incumbent Wade Kach retires, as expected, before the next council elections in 2026.

Decades of real estate negotiation have instilled in Beadell the power of “nice,” though she admits she lives up to her nicknames “Killer Kath” and “Tough Kath” on occasion. She said she wants to protect green space and farms in northern Baltimore County and advocate for smart development that doesn’t overwhelm schools in Timonium.

If a county council is supposed to be a group of people closest to the public, they need to come from the public. All of the public, she said. “A woman can be very effective on the council because she brings a whole bunch of perspectives that sometimes a man — a businessman, a father, a brother, a son — doesn’t have.”

In 1998, Beadell lost the Republican primary for a council seat to Wayne Skinner, a White man.

“Back then, I felt idealistic, and I felt like I could save things,” she said. “Now, I go into it with my eyes wide open, knowing that it’s going to be hard.”

The most recent Baltimore County election, in 2022, saw a record number of Black candidates for council, in five of the seven districts. Women also ran in multiple races. Of the diverse candidates, only Julian Jones, an incumbent, won.

Jones said he is uncertain that expanding the council will increase diversity; voters chose the seven men.

“Democracy is messy, and no one can say the people we have were not duly elected, and that citizens have choices,” he said.

A ‘walking coalition’

State Sen. Mary Washington has represented Baltimore County residents since last year, after redistricting shifted her city district to include some county neighborhoods.

Washington, who has a Ph.D. in sociology, said she noticed differences in the two constituencies right away. In the county, she said, the attitude from politicians seemed to be that residents were lucky to get any kind of benefit from their government.

“I come with the expectations that communities have the right and the ability to fight to get what they want,” she said. “It took a little while for them to believe me, that I would fight for them.”

Washington likes to say she is a “walking coalition” as the first openly gay Black woman in the Maryland Senate and a professor with a working-class background.

“All those things that I am were stigmatized and seen as less-than,” she said. “But I was raised, and I know, that all of these things give me a more attuned perspective to a greater swath of people.”

In Washington’s first term, in 2014, she learned that incarcerated pregnant women had to give birth shackled to a hospital bed. She put in a bill to change the law, and Maryland became the 20th state in the country to ban the practice.

Women legislators tend to be more focused on “in the weeds issues” within larger issues like health care, child care education, domestic violence, gun control and prison reform, said Diane Fink, executive director of Emerge Maryland. Whereas a male legislator might focus on school redistricting, a woman might look at working conditions for teachers, she explained.

Her organization prepares women to run for office through a five-month, 75-hour program, but Baltimore County hasn’t been interested in participating with her program.

“I could not convince them that an organization that trained women to run for office was necessary,” Fink said. “It surprises me when year after year, I would go back in, and lay some groundwork for the advancement of women, and I would just keep getting rebuffed.”

Keeping up the pressure

Nancy Goldring never thought much about diversity on the council until she met Washington.

Goldring is president of the North East Towson Improvement Association, which represents Historic East Towson, a Black community. Her family has fought many developments that have gobbled their green space: a highway bypass, a Baltimore Gas and Electric substation, and a Black and Decker parking lot.

Recently, she has been trying to stop an affordable-housing development just outside the border on one of the area’s last green spaces. Goldring thought she lost the fight until Washington, who was recently redistricted to represent East Towson, began offering other avenues to investigate whether the project will comply with environmental regulations.

Washington sponsored bond bills for East Towson’s planned Road to Freedom Trail and for improvements to a park honoring Goldring’s grandmother.

“Mary Washington didn’t just give us hope. She gave us results. She just has a completely different approach,” Goldring said. “ She is constantly looking at ways to move the needle forward in favor of historic East Towson.”

Neighbors have asked Goldring to run for council, but she said she would rather look after her small community than minister to all 80,000 residents in a council district.

As for another Black woman running, Goldring wishes any candidate luck. Despite the demographic shifts and the two new seats, she’s not hopeful.

“Not much has changed in decades,” she said of the council. “It feels like it’s intentional, to keep things just as they are.”

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