Women aim return to Maryland’s federal delegation: ‘We should have our representation’

On the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage a few years ago, there were no women representing Maryland in the country’s highest elected offices.

And by the time the 119th Congress gavels in next January, three decades will have passed since more than one woman served in Maryland’s U.S. House delegation. In that time, a half-century of federal abortion protections were overturned, and massive cultural shifts, like those around sexual harassment and abuse in the wake of the #MeToo movement, have only seen more intense public and political debates.

Maryland’s drought, however, may soon be over.

In Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries, six women won 18 of the nominations to represent Maryland in the U.S. House or Senate.

Democrats are excited about a trio they believe stands a good chance of making it to Washington — Angela Alsobrooks, who faces former Gov. Larry Hogan in the Senate race; and Sarah Elfreth and April McClain Delaney, who are looking to succeed Democratic U.S. Reps. John Sarbanes and David Trone, respectively.

Maryland’s delegation has eight U.S. House members and two senators. Eight of the 10 are white men, and Maryland has never had a U.S. senator who was Black.

“Women are 52 percent of the population. We should be holding at least six of those seats,” said Diane Fink, executive director of Emerge Maryland, which recruits and trains women to run for elected office.

On the Republican side, Kim Klacik will face Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., Michelle Talkington will go against longtime U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer in the counties of Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s, and Cheryl Riley will face U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin in Montgomery County.

Klacik lost a 2020 race against Kweisi Mfume in Baltimore’s 7th Congressional District. Hoyer and Raskin overwhelmingly won their most recent reelection bids in 2022 with 66% and 80% of the vote, respectively.

Voter registration and history in each district indicate only the Democratic women would be likely to win. Fink said she was “very optimistic we’re going to get three.”

“Three is a good start, but we’re not done,” said Fink, whose group included Elfreth in its initial class in 2013. “We need women on Capitol Hill to push issues that have been historically back-burnered by men, including autonomy over own bodies, medical decisions, child care issues, education, the environment and much more.”

The last women to serve in the state’s congressional delegation were U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, whose 30-year tenure in the chamber made her one of the longest-serving women in its history, and U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards. Both are Democrats. Mikulski retired in 2017 and Edwards left the same year after losing in the primary for Mikulski’s successor. The winner, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, is now in his second term.

Edwards sought to become Maryland’s first Black senator, a feat that Alsobrooks could achieve this year in addition to being only the third Black woman elected to the Senate from any state.

The last time two women were part of Maryland’s U.S. House delegation simultaneously was from 1993-95, when Republicans Helen Bentley and Connie Morella overlapped before Bentley left to run for governor, a position that no woman has won in Maryland. Across all of Congress, 151 women serve in the current session, an all-time high, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Mikulski supported Alsobrooks, a two-term Prince George’s County executive, and Elfreth, a two-term state senator from Annapolis, in their competitive primaries this year.

“Given that women make up 50% of the population, we should have our representation,” Mikulski told The Baltimore Sun.

“Yes, it’s about gender, but it’s also about the agenda,” she said. “For Angela, the kitchen-table issues are not an abstraction. She knows these issues up close and personal, putting a young lady in college and with her parents facing the high cost of prescription drugs.”

Fink said reproductive rights “is probably at the top” of the issues list this year.

Maryland — with Democrats firmly in control of state government — has expanded abortion protections in the wake of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a half-century of precedence of abortion rights under Roe v. Wade. A proposed amendment to Maryland’s constitution will appear before voters in November to determine whether reproductive freedom should be protected further.

Meanwhile, the prospect of nationwide abortion restrictions puts a spotlight on races in Maryland and elsewhere. On Thursday, Hogan, after securing his Republican primary win in the U.S. Senate contest, took an abrupt turn to say he would support codifying Roe’s previous protections if he’s elected. Democrats balked, pointing to Hogan’s record of vetoing bills to protect abortion access as governor.

State Sen. Shelly Hettleman, a Baltimore County Democrat, said having three pro-abortion-rights women as Democratic nominees was “incredibly important in this particular time.”

“At the end of the day, it is women’s bodies that bear the burdens of these decisions, burdens and benefits of these decisions,” Hettleman said. “We need to have folks who I think can understand that in a different way, reflected in the leadership of those who are making those incredibly important decisions.”

Hettleman said her first job in politics was working on Mikulski’s first successful Senate campaign in 1986. She briefly went to work for her on Capitol Hill before switching to then-U.S. Rep. Ben Cardin’s office. She said seeing Mikulski support Alsobrooks felt like a full-circle moment.

“It’s really thrilling,” she said. “Potentially the second woman being elected from Maryland and to have it be a Black woman to crash another glass ceiling.”