PRINCE FREDERICK — Lisa Grenis and Jana Post are on track to win Calvert County’s two Board of Education seats, and the race for the county’s third Orphans’ Court judge is close enough that late mail-in ballots could decide it.
With all 17 Election Day precincts reported, Lisa Grenis and Jana Post hold the two at-large school board seats in unofficial results from the Maryland State Board of Elections, last refreshed at 9:21 a.m. Wednesday. None of the down-ballot races below has been certified, and mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day are still to be counted.
These results cover the offices beyond the Board of County Commissioners. The Chronicle reported separately on the commissioner races, where Republicans lead all five seats.
School board
Grenis leads the nonpartisan field with 14,286 votes, or 27.6%. Post is second with 13,270. The race for the second seat is the one to watch: Dona Cox Ostenso trails Post by 1,016 votes, and Anne Jones is another 218 votes back.
| Board of Education (vote for 2) | Early | Election Day | Mail-in | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lisa Grenis | 5,748 | 7,722 | 816 | 14,286 |
| Jana Post | 5,394 | 7,161 | 715 | 13,270 |
| Dona Cox Ostenso | 4,812 | 5,815 | 1,445 | 12,072 |
| Anne Jones | 4,804 | 5,635 | 1,415 | 11,854 |
The mail-in column shows why the second seat is not settled. Ostenso and Jones each drew about twice as many mail-in votes as Grenis or Post. If that pattern holds in the ballots still to be counted, the gap behind Post would narrow, though 1,016 votes is a large deficit to close with late mail alone.
Orphans’ Court: 83 votes for the last seat
Voters choose three judges for the Orphans’ Court, which handles estates, wills and guardianships of minors’ property. Republican Leslie M. Downs leads with 18,370 votes. Behind her, Republican Ted LeBlanc has 17,106 and Democrat Rick Piereck has 17,023, a margin of 83 votes for the third seat.
Piereck has carried the mail-in count so far, 2,156 votes to LeBlanc’s 1,065. That 1,091-vote mail-in edge is what kept the race this close, and it is the reason the third seat should not be considered decided until the remaining mail-in and provisional ballots are counted.
Register of wills and the unopposed offices
Democrat Margaret H. Phipps leads Republican Mark S. Lynch for register of wills, 18,714 votes to 14,758, or 55.9% to 44.1%. Phipps outpolled Lynch in early voting and by more than 3-to-1 in mail-in ballots, while Election Day votes were nearly even. She drew about 5,000 more votes in the county than her party’s candidate for governor, Wes Moore, in a county where Republican Dan Cox carried 55.6%.
Four countywide races had a single name on the ballot. Sheriff Ricky Cox received 24,533 votes. Amanda N. Dolina for treasurer, Bob Harvey for state’s attorney and Jourdan Sturdivant for clerk of the Circuit Court, all Republicans, also ran unopposed, each drawing more than 23,000 votes.
Calvert voters also backed retaining Judge Dan Friedman on the Appellate Court of Maryland, 81.9% to 18.1%. On the three statewide constitutional amendments, the county approved Questions 1 and 2 but rejected Question 3, the congressional redistricting measure, with 56.8% voting against it.
Every figure here can still move. Local boards of elections count mail-in and provisional ballots in canvasses after Election Day, and the results do not become official until the county board certifies them. Updated counts will appear on the State Board of Elections results page, and the Chronicle’s election-night Calvert returns show how the count developed.
