Maryland’s newly drawn voting map left the 4th District even bluer than it was earlier than, which is saying one thing. Whoever wins the celebration’s July 19 main is a shoo-in to win the overall election for a seat being vacated by Rep. Anthony Brown, a Democrat working for Maryland lawyer normal.

This contest doesn’t activate ideology. Each Mr. Ivey and Ms. Edwards are steadfast liberals, though there are shades of distinction between them, their stances on Israel being one. (Mr. Ivey, usually supportive, has obtained main donations facilitated by the political motion committee of the primary pro-Israel foyer, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Ms. Edwards has at instances tilted towards the Palestinians.) Each assist expanded health-care protection and paid household depart; an array of steps to advertise gun management and police accountability; and hard measures to grapple with local weather change.

Each are forthright advocates. In earlier races, now we have endorsed every of them. The telling distinction, primarily based on their information, is that Mr. Ivey has a observe document of advancing his agenda by way of pragmatic, efficient head-knocking and compromise. Against this, Ms. Edwards, her coverage experience however, has too typically insisted on a purist political strategy — statements of precept untethered from getting issues achieved. (She can be a former Publish contributing columnist.)

It’s helpful to revisit Mr. Ivey’s extremely profitable tenure because the state’s lawyer in Prince George’s, one of many state’s greatest prosecutor’s workplaces. Over eight years within the job, by way of 2010, Mr. Ivey overhauled an outfit left in shambles by his predecessor and turned it into an efficient, reform-minded workplace. He made a precedence of home abuse, searching for robust sentences for abusers and highlighting the issue within the county; established applications to divert first offenders reasonably than lock them up for minor crimes, and to assist ex-offenders reenter society after incarceration; and launched aggressive prosecutions towards violent gangs, cops who used extreme drive and mortgage fraudsters.

Neither is Mr. Ivey a stranger to working successfully on Capitol Hill, which he discovered firsthand, earlier than working for workplace, as a senior aide to key members of Congress. His breadth of expertise could be an asset for the district, whose agenda features a long-term effort to land a brand new campus for the FBI to switch its antiquated, crumbling downtown headquarters.

Nobody doubts Ms. Edwards’s intelligence, integrity and idealism. But throughout her eight years on the Hill, she typically antagonized colleagues in Congress, together with by spurning hard-fought compromises that fellow Democrats had negotiated. These included commerce offers and a invoice to broaden monetary disclosure for company spending on political campaigns. Many colleagues, together with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, declined to assist her in unsuccessful races for the U.S. Senate, in 2016, and county govt of Prince George’s, in 2018. Her congressional workplace was extensively thought to be unresponsive to constituents who wanted assist, an issue that, to her credit score, she has pledged to appropriate if reelected.

In Mr. Ivey, the 4th District has a better option.