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Presented with hard data on hunger, housing insecurity, childhood poverty and mental health, Mr. Montgomery chose not to engage with the suffering of nearly 40% of Talbot households struggling to meet basic needs. Instead, he attacked the representative of TFN for acknowledging racial disparities and for daring to include transgender people in the human conversation. That is not leadership. That is projection.

Mr. Montgomery accuses others of “bias,� yet he arrives with his own rigid ideological script already written. He dismisses community data as “progressive,� while advancing a singular moral theory that poverty can be solved simply by promoting traditional family structures. That view conveniently ignores economic reality, health care access, wages, housing costs, disability, addiction, and the countless circumstances that families do not choose.

And let us be honest: Montgomery has made a pattern of singling out LGBTQ people — especially transgender residents — as symbolic villains in his culture war. It is a familiar political move: punch down, then claim neutrality.

What is especially jarring is the timing. We enter the holiday season — a time supposedly dedicated to charity, humility and care for the least among us — yet the message from Mr. Montgomery once again seems to be that only one type of family, one type of identity and one type of life experience is worthy of recognition in Talbot County.

The subtext is impossible to ignore: if you are not part of the privileged, straight, cisgender, religious conservative-leaning power structure, your struggles are suspect, your data is “biased� and your existence is political.

Which raises a fair question: If this is how Mr. Montgomery spends his political capital now — attacking food security networks and DEI book clubs — what comes next? A renewed push, perhaps with like-minded allies like Lynn Mielke, to once again restore the Talbot Boys monument to the courthouse lawn under the banner of “heritage� and “neutrality?� The pattern suggests that symbolic grievance matters more than material suffering.

Mr. Montgomery is entitled to his opinions. But the people of Talbot County are also entitled to ask whether those opinions reflect compassion, reality or simply comfort with a world where power already looks like him.

And when one public figure recently sneered that certain minority citizens “garbage,� many of us recognized the sentiment immediately — because for too many residents, that is exactly what this kind of politics feels like.

Talbot County deserves leaders focused on solving hunger, housing and hardship — not manufacturing cultural enemies while real families suffer and fall further behind.

KEITH ALAN WATTS

Tilghman