Montgomery County minorities see an opportunity in state Senate opening Instead, the process of filling western Montgomery's District 15 seat has exposed long-simmering tensions in a county transformed by rapid demographic change. Although the opening is only for the balance of an unexpired term that will end after the 2014 elections, it has become a rallying point for an ambitious immigrant political class seeking to convert economic success into access to elective office. "The delegation doesn't look like the county looks," said Karen Britto, who formerly chaired the county's Democratic Central Committee. Montgomery is a "majority-minority" jurisdiction; 48 percent of the county's 1 million residents are white, according to 2012 Census Bureau estimates. But just 13, or 24.5 percent, of 53 elective offices in the county are held by minorities: seven of 24 state delegates, three of nine County Council members, two Board of Education members (an eighth, student member is elected by students only) and County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). The county's Democratic Central Committee has scheduled a Sept. 10 vote on a recommendation to Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), who will make the appointment. But within days of Garagiola's June 5 announcement, most of Montgomery's Democratic leadership, including Leggett, closed ranks behind Del. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery), a white three-term incumbent and one of District 15"s three state delegates What especially vexed minorities was an announcement by the District 15 Democratic Caucus - the core group of active Democrats in that area - that it had endorsed Feldman. In fact, only the caucus's executive committee had agreed to support Feldman. "If you have a caucus, you ought to caucus," said Jason Tai, an Asian American lobbyist and Potomac resident of District 15, who likened the process to old-style Chicago politics. There are tens of thousands of registered Democrats, and this was the first I'd heard about the caucus supporting a particular Democrat. Timothy Whitehouse, the caucus co-chair, said the announcement should have made more clear that it was expressing only the position of the group's leadership. But he said he was comfortable with the endorsement of Feldman, calling him an effective and popular legislator. He added: "There will be an election coming up next year, so the caucus leadership felt it would be a mistake to appoint someone who had not been an elected official." But to Britto and other Democrats, the automatic movement toward Feldman felt like a business-as-usual anointment that ignored the county's altered demographic landscape.