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Our call — see the breakdown

How we research: the LiberalMind standard — every candidate gets the same deep pass — service and voting record, campaign positions, local news, questionnaires and voter guides, endorsements, public statements, filings — and both columns of the ledger print: the dirt and the credits, each at the same standard of proof. What held up is stated as fact; what did not is labeled unproven or left out. Race roster: Baltimore Banner candidate coverage, cross-checked against the Howard County general-election voters' guides — grade: compilation, with each candidate's file confirmed in the guides named below.

The race

Two at-large seats on the Howard County Board of Education are on the November 3 ballot, countywide, nonpartisan in form. Only three candidates filed — Mark Covington, Linda Frascarella and Lanlan Xu — so under Maryland practice the field was too small for a primary, and all three go straight to the general election; voters choose two. All three are political newcomers, and the Banner's reporting adds a fact voters should hold alongside the word "nonpartisan": all three are registered Democrats, and the county Democratic apparatus is actively backing two of them — Covington and Xu — with endorsements and money, while Frascarella runs without it. Roughly 42% of Howard County's total budget goes to education; these two seats vote on all of it.

The candidates

Mark Covington. Credits: the career educator in the race — a retired HCPSS principal who serves as vice chair of the school system's Community Advisory Council, so he has sat on both sides of the table these seats govern from. His endorsement file is the county's longest: the Howard County Education Association (the teachers' union), the Columbia Democratic Club, the Howard Progressive Project, the Thurgood Marshall Democratic Club, Indivisible HoCo MD, The People's Voice Ethics Ballot and a Moms Demand Action Gun Sense designation, plus a run of Democratic elected officials and campaign contributions from officeholders' committees. His own stated posture cuts against the stack behind him: "politicians and politics have too much sway in the schools," the focus should be teachers and students rather than culture-war fights like book banning, and he is "open to having discussions with anyone" — while worrying aloud that his endorsements give Republican voters the wrong impression of him. Dirt: none found. The weighing point is the one he named himself: the most machine-backed candidate in the race is also the one with a lifetime in the classrooms the board governs.

Linda Frascarella. Credits: a retired General Electric employee running the race's only apparatus-free campaign — her endorsements are two issue designations (Sierra Club; Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate) and her campaign reports no contributions tied to public figures or organizations. She told the Banner partisan politics have not played a role in this at-large race. Her answers to the county voters' guide are substantive and specific: the board's top priority is math and reading performance, built on three factors — the best curriculum available, hiring and retaining the best teachers, and an environment conducive to learning; on safety, existing policies are sound but the board should review whether parents' grievances are actually heard and acted on; on curriculum and library books, the state's high-quality-materials recommendations should be weighed with the teachers who deliver them, and trained media specialists should be supported and funded. Dirt: none found. The limits are two: she did not respond to the Banner's voter-guide questionnaire, and her file contains no education-sector experience — her case is judgment and independence, not résumé.

Lanlan Xu. Credits: the heaviest policy résumé of the three. Vice president of Health Policy at KNG Health; previously senior roles at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — deputy director in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and evaluation lead at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation — and a policy advisor and Mid-Atlantic regional co-lead for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Her education: a bachelor's from Peking University and two doctorates — German studies at Georgetown and public affairs at Indiana University. She is 49, married, with two children, and is one of the two candidates the county Democratic organization is backing. Dirt: none found. The weighing point: her expertise is health policy and federal program evaluation, not schools — though a board that spends 42% of a county budget lives on program evaluation, and hers is a career spent doing exactly that for programs far larger.

Pros and cons

Record gaps

The deep pass on this race worked: the Baltimore Banner's Howard County candidate reporting (the no-primary mechanics; the candidates' occupations; the 42% budget share), its Board of Education voter-guide questionnaire (Xu's full file; Frascarella's documented non-response), and its nonpartisanship analysis (registrations, the party's backing of Covington and Xu, both candidates' on-the-record comments); the Howard County General Election Voters Guide (Frascarella's full answers; Covington's campaign site); and the county-primary results coverage confirming no school-board primary was held. Named gaps: none of the three has a prior elected record to grade — all are first-time candidates, and their files are necessarily prospective; Xu published the least school-specific material of the three in the sources worked. Those limits are printed, not filled.

OUR CALL

ENDORSE Mark Covington and Lanlan Xu for the two at-large seats. Covington is the rare machine-backed candidate whose own stated instinct — politics has too much sway in the schools; focus on teachers and students — is the one this page shares, and his principal's career gives the board knowledge it cannot hire. Xu's evaluation career is the strongest analytic file in the race, aimed at exactly the question a school board exists to answer: is the money producing learning? Frascarella runs an honorable, independent campaign with good answers, and she is the credible third choice — but with two seats and three files, hers is the one without either the educator's depth or the evaluator's, and we do not endorse on independence alone.

This article is part of our complete Election 2026 coverage — every race, researched the same way. Read the full breakdown on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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