BRIAN NARANJO

When the U.S. Senate went into session, a Georgetown freshman named Brian Naranjo crawled out the Senate's attic and raised the flag over the Senate. When the session closed, he brought it down.

“The view? One of the most exclusive in Washington,” he said. “Absolutely awe-inspiring.”

The flag came with his job as a Senate doorkeeper, his first opportunity in public service. It turned out to be the start of a long career: 32 years as a U.S. diplomat, across 16 assignments and seven administrations.

Now retired and home in St. Michaels, Naranjo wants to keep serving, this time at the local level, on the Talbot County Council.

“I'm not running to fight. I'm running to govern,” he said.

His list is practical, not partisan. Make sure the penny tax voters approved for public safety “actually delivers the deputies, paramedics, EMTs and 911 operators it was meant to fund,” and show taxpayers the receipt. Approve growth only when water, sewer, roads and schools can carry it, and make development pay its own way “rather than shifting those costs onto the people who already live here.” Make room for the teachers, nurses and first responders “who increasingly cannot afford to live where they serve.” Plan school funding years ahead instead of rediscovering the bill every spring.

Then there is Annapolis, where unfunded mandates land on county taxpayers. A diplomat's trade is getting results from people you don't control.

He learned that trade at the State Department, the White House and six missions abroad, including as Deputy Chief of Mission in Venezuela; Maduro expelled him in 2018 on 48 hours' notice for fighting to free an American. Through all of it, he said, “the one place in the world that I came back to repeatedly has been St. Michaels,” where he bought a home in 2011. He serves on the Talbot County Police Accountability Board, the board of the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center, and the county's Bicycling and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

Naranjo is Hispanic-American. His father's family arrived in what today is New Mexico in 1598, 63 years before Talbot County was established. In his family, the immigrant experience is Irish and comes from his mother's side: the Sweeneys.

It is an enormous family. His grandfather was a prominent New Mexico politician, and Brian, his two brothers, two sisters and 27 first cousins were steeped in local politics from an early age. A product of Montgomery County public schools, Naranjo is fluent in Spanish and has studied seven other languages.

A family that size is its own education in negotiation. So is a diplomatic career.

“As a diplomat, you don't get to choose who sits across the table from you; you work with them to find solutions,” he said. “That is exactly what I have spent my career doing, and it is what I will do on the County Council — for every resident of Talbot County, regardless of party.”