In the summer of 2020, when Maryland officials relaxed the most stringent pandemic restrictions, sending residents thronging to the beach, leaders in the state’s largest jurisdiction held out. Later that year, when Gov. Larry Hogan (R) moved the state further toward reopening, Montgomery County again opted out. Three months after most statewide restrictions lifted in 2021, Montgomery still kept concert venues and public libraries closed to visitors.

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       Officials, residents and health experts in deep-blue Montgomery have largely agreed that these choices helped curb covid-19 infections and deaths. But now, as midterm elections loom, a new question is dividing county leaders: Who deserves credit?

       Pandemic-era decisions are taking center stage in communities across the country. In Florida and in Virginia, politicians are sparring over what should have been done differently — in a less “dictatorial” way. But in Montgomery, an affluent suburb where 79 percent of voters chose President Biden in 2020 and lawn signs showing support for Anthony S. Fauci are commonplace, the debate revolves around who contributed more to the county’s assertive response.

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       “Going through the pandemic, I’ve been able to provide kind of a calm, centered leadership,” County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said at a recent candidate forum to disapproval from his Democratic opponents, who were eager to lay out their own contributions.

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       Home to the federal National Institutes of Health, which has helped lead the national strategy on covid-19, Montgomery has weathered the pandemic relatively well by most metrics. Nearly 90 percent of its 1.1 million residents are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data — one of the highest rates in the nation for counties of its size. Racial and ethnic disparities in vaccinations narrowed dramatically in 2021, and in recent waves of the virus, the county recorded significantly lower infection rates and death rates than neighboring jurisdictions.

       With the exception of one county briefing that was disrupted by hecklers, officials here have gotten the support of residents in fighting the pandemic. The crew of drivers that called themselves the “People’s Convoy” didn’t find many fans in Montgomery when they circled the Beltway to protest pandemic restrictions. And when a conservative talk show host called Elrich a “covidian petty tyrant,” he did little more than scoff.

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       At recent forums and in media briefings, Elrich has emphasized that he stood behind the advice of his health officer and made difficult decisions at various stages of the pandemic, from reopening to vaccine distribution, that protected the county.

       But lawmakers, including two members of the all-Democratic county council trying to unseat him, say he isn’t responsible for Montgomery’s pandemic wins. Still others argue that elected officials had a limited role to play entirely and that community leaders, along with the county’s demographic makeup — 1 in 5 workers in the county are employed by government entities and 60 percent of those older than 25 have bachelor’s degrees — secured its resilience against the virus.

       “Was the executive responsible for the success of our covid-19 response? I’d say no,” said Nancy Navarro (D-District 4), a term-limited council member running for Maryland lieutenant governor. Lawmakers pushed the executive to appropriate funds for key pandemic initiatives, she said, citing Por Nuestra Salud y Bienestar, the county’s partnership with community groups to reach Latino residents.

       “In terms of being accurate and factual about one’s record," Navarro said, “it needs to be acknowledged that the council played an outsized role."

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       Elrich faces four primary challengers in July, including council members Tom Hucker (District 5) and Hans Riemer (At-Large). Both have alleged that Elrich was “slow” in responding to the pandemic, which has infected 168,000 and killed 2,030 residents in Montgomery. Riemer said this week that lawmakers were the ones "shaking the tree to get action” on coronavirus testing and relief for businesses.

       Elrich said these remarks were “amazingly unrealistic."

       In the first year of the pandemic, Elrich said, he “took heat” for choosing to reopen Montgomery at a slower pace than the rest of Maryland, clashing openly with Hogan and suffering death threats and lawsuits. His health department was responsible for devising testing and vaccination plans, he added, and he redirected staff from other departments to execute those initiatives. He set aside many of his priorities for his first term to focus on pandemic response, he added.

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       “I give credit to the people in the county who did the things they needed to keep people safe,” Elrich said over the phone Monday.

       “But look, the government doesn’t run itself,” he continued. “The administrative branch is the branch that executes … The council doesn’t know what they’re talking about."

       The jostling for credit has intensified as the primary draws near, though Steve Silverman, a political consultant and former council member, said that given the scale of the county’s pandemic response, it’s “virtually impossible” for voters to identify the contributions of individual politicians. Because of how protracted and involved the crisis has been, however, elected officials have little else to draw on to demonstrate their leadership this campaign season.

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       Judy Jenkins, a 30-year resident of Montgomery, said she “felt comfortable” living in the county through the pandemic but doesn’t know who is responsible — the state, federal or local government. She followed guidance directly from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, she said, and assumed the county was “in step” with the federal agency. She hasn’t always voted in midterm elections but might this year.

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       “I don’t really have any reason to think [the incumbents] haven’t done a good job,” Jenkins said, walking in downtown Bethesda one recent afternoon.

       Several of the county’s biggest unions have been making the case that Elrich was centrally responsible for keeping workers safe.

       “His handling of covid was a mark of good leadership,” said Jennifer Martin, president of the county’s powerful teachers union, which endorsed Elrich’s bid for reelection last week.

       Other pro-Elrich labor groups say his administration did well in obtaining personal protective equipment for workers. Gino Renne, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1994 MCGEO, which represents county employees, said Elrich showed his recognition for the county’s essential workers with hazard pay.

       A longtime ally to labor groups, Elrich used about $78 million in the county’s federal relief dollars to fund hazard pay for workers in 2020 and 2021, significantly more than what elected officials elsewhere in the D.C. region gave out.

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       Lawmakers, including Riemer and Hucker, have criticized Elrich’s largesse, but Elrich said he stands by his decision to compensate workers for the risks they faced working in-person. In December, he called a letter that council members wrote on the issue “a bunch of garbage"; this week, he said lawmakers were hypocritical for “opining” on the hazard pay program at a time when they had still been working remotely.

       Navarro, however, said the Elrich administration wasn’t pro-active enough in trying to reach the county’s most vulnerable communities. In the summer of 2020, as covid-19 cases surged in Montgomery’s Latino communities, she worked with Council President Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) and community groups to draft the plan for Salud y Bienestar before convening an emergency meeting with Elrich to request funding.

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       “This is something that should have come from the executive directly,” she said.

       Elrich acknowledged that Navarro and Albornoz outlined the program to reach underserved Latino residents but said that even before they approached him, he had staff working on how to refine the outreach effort.

       Grace Rivera-Oven, co-founder of a nonprofit that serves primarily immigrant residents in Germantown, said that while elected officials, particularly Navarro and Albornoz, were “key partners” in the equity effort, they relied heavily on the help of churches, clinics and other community groups to distribute information on testing, hold vaccination events, and tide residents over during periods of isolation.

       “Communities of color took ownership of making sure it happened,” she said. “It’s on their shoulders that we’ve done well.”