Howard County Council candidate Jean Xu doesn’t like labels like conservative, liberal or moderate. Lately, people seem determined to assign her one anyway.

In October, the first-time candidate’s campaign accounts posted photos of her smiling at downtown Columbia’s No Kings rally. She published a letter in The Baltimore Sun criticizing school book bans.

Neither seems to have calmed speculation on Howard County social media about Xu’s party affiliation.

A 2016 news article reporting that Xu voted for President Donald Trump surfaced in a private Howard County Facebook group on liberal issues. Someone in the group flagged that she made a $100 donation to Tudy Adler, a 2022 school board candidate who later led Howard County’s chapter of the conservative Moms for Liberty, according to screenshots shared with The Banner. Others noted Xu publicly opposed a Howard County sanctuary bill.

In a separate, open Facebook group for Howard County conservatives, questions were raised about Xu’s motivations for running as a Democrat as well as her bond with liberal Councilwoman Liz Walsh. Members of the group blasted Walsh for raising the flag at the county government complex to full staff after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Xu is seeking Walsh’s District 1 seat as the Democratic councilwoman runs for county executive in 2026.

Xu said she never voted for Trump and denied giving any interviews in 2016 saying she had. The journalist who interviewed Xu didn’t respond to questions about it.

Her online critics never directly asked her what she thinks about national politics, Xu said.

Since emigrating from China and becoming a naturalized citizen in 2000, her party affiliation has shuffled between Republican, independent and Democrat. That fluid affiliation allowed her to vote in key races, she said, and to serve on Howard County’s Board of Appeals, which must include a mix of political parties.

Offline and knocking on doors in Ellicott City, Elkridge and Dorsey’s Search, Xu said she is talking with voters about hyperlocal issues like building a new high school, smart development keeping pace with the county’s infrastructure investments and the nuisance of deer.

“That’s what the local officials should be about,” Xu said.

The intense interest in Xu’s campaign illustrates how some voters are using national politics as a bellwether for evaluating candidates in local races in 2026.

Xu is one of three Democrats running for District 1, with time for more individuals to join the race before the Feb. 24 deadline. Former Army officer James Handley and emergency room doctor Kevin Chin launched their campaigns earlier in the year.

Handley thinks Xu owes voters a detailed explanation about her past politics. He said he welcomes former Trump supporters with open arms but has reservations about Xu.

“The timing of her alleged conversion is a little too convenient for me,” he said. “It was ‘Oh, here’s an open seat where I live,’ that appears to be the catalyst.”

In a statement, Chin said Democratic voters are looking for candidates who are clear about what they stand for.

“We need elected officials who have been steadfast and truly share the progressive values of our party and county,” he said.

Walsh, who nominated Xu to the county’s Board of Appeals, has come to her defense online. When voters questioned why Xu switched her party affiliation from Republican to Independent, Walsh said it was her idea.

“I’m calling people who I think are best qualified to serve in that role,” Walsh said. “This isn’t nefarious.”

Kelly Klinefelter Lee, president of the grassroots Howard Progressive Project, questioned the values and judgement of a candidate who donated to an individual associated with Moms for Liberty. After all, the County Council controls the school system’s purse strings, she said.

Xu has been active in Howard County for years. She founded the influential Chinese American Parent Association, which campaigned successfully to get Lunar New Year added to the Howard County School System’s holidays in 2016.

Xu recounted her political awakening during this time in a series of eight blog posts written in Mandarin on the association’s website. She asked why Jewish holidays were on the school calendar but those celebrated in Asian cultures were not. The experience taught her the value of coalition-building among Jewish, Muslim and other community groups, she wrote.

Xu said she was networking when she first met Tudy Adler at a hospital fundraiser. Adler made a generous donation and Xu remembered it later when she learned of her run for the school board. Xu donated in kind to Adler and said in hindsight she could have done more research.

Maryland campaign finance records show Xu has donated small sums over the years to local candidates across the political spectrum — Republicans like former County Executive Allan Kittleman and Councilman David Yungmann as well as Democrats like Sen. Katie Fry Hester, Councilwoman Deb Jung and Del. Jessica Feldmark.

Research shows that Asian Americans’ partisan loyalties are less entrenched than U.S. voters as a whole, said Janelle Wong, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland.

“That makes these voters one of the few constituencies that hasn’t dug into partisanship,” she said. “They’re sort of up for grabs.”

Although Asian Americans overall tend to lean Democratic, more Chinese Americans identify as independents. And those independents are breaking slightly toward the Republican Party, Wong said.

A second Trump administration has put pressure on Howard County. Leaders estimate 11% of residents are federal workers, who are facing the effects of widespread cuts and the government shutdown.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have met behind closed doors with County Council members and County Executive Calvin Ball to talk about detaining incarcerated people who are suspected of entering the country illegally for up to 48 hours past their scheduled release so that immigration agents can pick them up.

A Howard County law prohibits county employees from assisting with immigration enforcement. The County Council voted 4-1 to approve the Liberty Act in 2020, and voters upheld the law in a 2022 referendum.

Xu said she opposed early versions of the bill because she believed no one had consulted with the immigrant community about what they wanted. She objected to some of the bill’s language, she said, but couldn’t recall specifics.

Xu said Trump has stoked animus toward Asian American immigrants by calling COVID-19 the “China virus.” She described his immigration enforcement as “a disaster” and said some Chinese Americans she knows are scared to travel or send their children to school without documents.

Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans in Howard County. Yungmann, the jurisdiction’s only elected GOP official, doesn’t believe a Republican can easily win any council district. But party lines can blur on hyperlocal decisions.

Take land use, Yungmann said. People might oppose development efforts out of concern for the environment, population density or overcrowding in schools.

“None of those three things are Republican or Democrat,” he said. “Everybody should just try to meet the candidates and hear where they stand on issues and not let party guide how you vote in local elections.”

Xu said she’s knocking on doors every day to talk with residents about what matters most to them. She didn’t expect so many questions about her party affiliations.

“It’s a free country,” she said. “They can label me. But I think D1 voters are very informed, very smart.”