What was the impetus that caused such a massive, one-time influx of coordinated campaign contributions from a single neighborhood to The Calvin Ball Team last election cycle? Here is what is known:
Back in late Fall 2017 — one year prior to the election and immediately following the contentious 2017 HCPSS redistricting that Polygon 147 residents had vigorously opposed — representatives from this neighborhood requested meetings with both County Executive candidates (Allan Kittleman and Calvin Ball).
According to multiple parties involved in these meetings, representatives from this neighborhood privately asked each County Executive candidate whether they could ensure that their HCPSS polygon would not be redistricted in the future.
Then–County Executive Allan Kittleman allegedly told them that as County Executive he would not have purview over redistricting. This was not the answer that these prospective donors wanted to hear.
When Calvin Ball and his team were asked this same question, however, the residents were allegedly “told what they wanted to hear”, with the residents walking away from their meeting with Ball’s team fully convinced that if they made sizable contributions to help Ball become elected as the next Howard County Executive, their HCPSS polygon would be safe from redistricting for the foreseeable future.
Within weeks of these meetings, households from this Polygon 147 neighborhood proceeded to contribute heavily to Ball’s campaign, predominantly on two dates in December 2017 and January 2018, using their own residential addresses, their business addresses and even addresses of nebulous out-of-state entities. Each household contributed at least $1,500 (with many of the contributions conspicuously being *exactly* this amount), and the grand total ultimately exceeded $80,000 in less than two weeks.
Months later, these extremely generous, coordinated neighborhood contributors were stunned to discover from discussions with other government representatives the fact that indeed the Howard County Executive and the County Council *should not* have any purview over HCPSS redistricting and that then County Councilman Ball had apparently assured them of something that he technically shouldn’t be able to deliver (safety from future redistricting).
The words “distressed”, “deceived”, “swindled” and “misled” have been used to describe the feelings of many of these Polygon 147 residents about this concerning situation when this discovery was made.
While the Centennial Overlook neighborhood did quickly receive a partial safeguard against future redistricting courtesy of special walking paths through Centennial Park that the County established for them (giving them “walker” status to Centennial High School), it remains unclear if any special treatment ever was received either directly or indirectly from the Ball Administration as a result of their contributions to his election campaign.