Natali Fani-González, the new Montgomery County Council president, tries not to let opportunities slip by. Born in Venezuela, she moved to Maryland with her mother as an undocumented immigrant at age 16 and worked as a house cleaner before becoming a legal permanent resident. (She’s been a citize n since 2010.) She earned a scholarship to Goucher College in Baltimore and, after graduating, worked for the immigrant nonprofit CASA, lobbying for a bill that allowed some undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public universities. Her efforts caught the eye of longtime council member George Leventhal, who encouraged her to apply for an open position on the Montgomery Planning Board. From there, she ran for an open seat on the council to represent the immigrant-heavy areas around her home, Wheaton and Glenmont. A staunch progressive focused on housing and transportation, Fani-González has scored some controversial wins on the council, such as a tax break for office-to-housing conversion and a rent-stabilization bill. I sat down with her in her modest office in the county-council office building in Rockville. It was just a few days after the US military operation to arrest Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. You were born in Venezuela and have relatives there now. Are they all safe? What do you hear from them? They feel frustrated but also this feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next. They called me around 4 in the morning on Saturday once they were hearing all the explosions and everything. We’re very worried right now. I have a degree in international relations. The history of the United States and Latin America is not one that we should feel very proud about, and it feels like we’re going backwards right now. I don’t like the Maduro regime. He continued to be present although he lost the election last time. But removing him doesn’t remove the system of corruption that we have there. How does your background as an immigrant affect your approach to politics and governing? I think that your background as an individual, no matter who you are, does impact how you see policy. In my case, I came here when I was 16 years old. I moved to the mecca of the Latino community in Maryland: Langley Park. When I was in high school, because I didn’t have a Social Security number, the only job that I could do was cleaning houses, so I helped my mom clean houses. We would take bus-es from Langley Park all the way to Chevy Chase. It would take two hours each way. That’s why I have been a strong supporter of the Purple Line. Right, if that in-the-works light-rail system had been running back then, it would have changed your life. When I arrived in 1996, they were talking about it. My first community meeting ever, I swear to you, was at the Langley Park Community Center about the Purple Line. These things are so slow. It was my mom who said, “Look, they’re talking about a train being built from here to Chevy Chase. We can get there in, like, 15 minutes.” Having that transportation experience, and you’re living in an apartment building with no rent stabilization, getting food at the church, and using clothes that were borrowed from other people, that really helped me be the person that I am today: being grateful for what I have and understanding that I’m here because I work hard, but I’m also here because people around me help me to get here. When there was an opening on the county council, at first I didn’t want to do it because it was during the pandemic, I had children in first and second grade, and I was working [as a consultant] full-time. My husband was in the same situation. My mom was dying, she had cancer, but because of the pandemic, I couldn’t place her in hospice, so I had to take care of her at home. But right before she died, she told me I should run for county council. I ran against eight people and won with over 56 percent of the vote in the primary. I’m telling you, when I’m committed, I’m all in. I knocked on over 8,000 doors. That’s the most exciting thing for me, campaigning, because you have those one-on-one conversations, and the top issue was housing affordability. Fani-González announces the Trust Act, which protects access to services for residents regardless of immigration status. Photograph by Benjamin Sky Brandt/Montgomery County Council. Now it feels like this year, more main-stream Democrats have started talking about that, partly after Zohran Mamdani’s win. He’s following our [lead] already! Free buses? We have them in Montgomery County. Rent stabilization? I did that as well. [Office-to-residential] conversions? Honey, three months ago. You’re just copying us! How would you describe your own politics? I’m very pragmatic. I don’t want people to tell me, “You are far left” or—well, nobody will ever say that I’m far right. But I just see myself like I work with everybody. When I was on the planning board, there were two Republicans, and we were one independent and two Democrats, which is very different from the county council, where everybody is a Democrat. So I was able to work closely with a couple of Republicans. That taught me that if you want to move forward, it’s not your way or the highway. You have to compromise, to bring people together. Having that attitude has made me win on these controversial issues like rent stabilization or the tax abatement for the office-to-housing conversion. I don’t have a label for myself. I am not afraid to push the envelope. I feel that I am in a position of power and you’ve got to use that power. You’ve semi-jokingly said that your name has been attached to every controversial bill in Montgomery County in the three years you’ve been on the council. Why is that? I am not afraid to push the envelope. I feel that I am in a position of power, and you’ve got to use that power. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow—I could die tomorrow. So in my mind, I take every single opportunity that is given to me and use it right away. That’s what led me to be where I am today. I came here when I was 16 years old. Didn’t speak English, wasn’t documented. And I always worked in a very strategic way since I was a child to ensure that I would get what I needed to move up—always with transparency and integrity. That also means you cannot waste time. Housing is the most controversial issue ever. Always. Many of the remedies involve convincing homeowners to, for example, support rezoning to allow more apartment buildings. Why are those kinds of things hard to do? Because people feel attached to where they live and they have a hard time understanding that, yes, you buy a house, but you don’t buy a whole neighborhood. And society is evolving. You may want to see less congestion, but that means pushing for more public transit so more people can efficiently move from one place to another in a safe way. You’re also a big cycling advocate. I see you have an award up on the wall from the Washington Area Bicyclists Association? Yeah, I got their award last year for public leadership in transportation infrastructure to ensure that people who walk, bike, roll—when I say roll, I mean people with wheelchairs—take transit and drive safely. For many decades, transportation infrastructure has been neglected. And in my district specifically, I have a whole bunch of highways in my district—they were built for cars to go fast, not for communities to live around. So it’s fixing all that, ensuring that lanes are narrow. When we place bus-only lanes, that helps with pedestrian safety because you slow down traffic, and the creation of bike lanes is another one that I fully support. I’m a cyclist. I have certain constituents who really push me against those, but I’m going to move forward. If you Google “Natali Fani-González sidewalks,” I had a huge fight about placing a sidewalk in Rockville, in my district, and I won. It was really controversial because people don’t want to shovel the snow in the wintertime. For that reason alone, they oppose it. And the sidewalk was to connect schools so kids could walk safely. It’s amazing how many people opposed it, but that’s not a reason for you not to push for them. You’ve got to have the political will to do the right thing. Otherwise, I don’t want to have this job. I’m not here to work on the easy issues that everybody feels comfortable with. I’m here to make a difference. I wanted to also ask about the immigration crackdown going on now. I wonder what kind of power Montgomery County has to resist. The first thing I did once I became council president was introducing the Trust Act. It’s ensuring that we codify that the local police will not act as immigration agents. We are a welcoming community, and I think Montgomery County is strong when we see immigrants as people who contribute. I’m the only immigrant on the county council. I’m here to make this community better. I think we should be a role model nationwide, and that’s why my first act as council president was to introduce that bill. What’s one thing you want to accomplish in 2026? I want to make sure people can feel that they can not just live in this county but they can live in this county with quality of life. To me, that’s number one: affordability. It’s not just about saying we’re a welcoming community. Being a welcoming community means being able to live with dignity. So I want to be seen and remembered as somebody who worked hard to ensure that you’re going to be able to afford where you live. Related How a DC Immigrant Resource Center Is Tackling the Second Trump Administration This article appears in the March 2026 issue of Washingtonian.The post From Undocumented to Elected: A QA With MoCo’s New Council President first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less