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Democratic mayoral nominee state Sen. Catherine Pugh giving her acceptance speech April 26, 2016
WBAL via YouTube screenshot
While all eyes were on the predictable results unfolding from Tuesday’s so-called Acela primaries, three major statewide, congressional and local races quietly unfolded that redefined the trajectory of modern African-American politics … at least for the foreseeable future.
Tuesday started off with much hope that Maryland—home to one of the nation’s more powerful hubs of black political activity, and still fresh from wave-making unrest just over a year ago in Baltimore—would usher in a sea change in which old guards were replaced with new ones.
It didn’t happen that way … at all. In the end, a dominant black Democratic machine, aligned with a Democratic establishment, sent a loud and clear message: We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
But they didn’t get there without a lot of drama that turned the once sleepy, generally middle-class state of many government workers into a fascinating hotbed of nasty black political fights. Here are three of them.
In Baltimore, the Empire Stays Put
Baltimore, still licking its wounds, appeared to seek new leadership in a field of Democratic mayoral candidates so crowded you lost count. Convicted former Mayor Sheila Dixon’s street appeal was boosting her in polls. Young next-gen firebrands like Councilman Nick Mosby, Twitter sensation DeRay Mckesson and nonprofit advocate Calvin Young were very visible. Councilman Carl Stokes, while old-school, was still adequately loud and defiant. Folks wanted to feel as if something different was bubbling underneath Baltimore’s unpaved potholes and gentrifying Whole Foods stores.
Black city leadership was on trial for missteps in the post-Freddie Gray landscape. Smart observers even whispered that the field’s two white candidates—wealthy David Warnock and attorney Elizabeth Embry—both had the chance to become the next Martin O’Malley, with either one benefiting from split black votes and fed-up white voters.
In the end, the city’s tight Democratic machine made sure that establishment candidate state Sen. Catherine Pugh won. All that noise about a black millennial uprising? Young folks barely vote in primaries, much less college students worrying about finals. And Baltimore’s poor also viewed the candidates from a distance, unconvinced that anyone was up to the task.
Ironically, while Philadelphia-area-born Pugh represents the West Baltimore hood rocked by rocks and fire a year ago, she was the candidate gobbling up the most business-lobby cash. The National Black Caucus of State Legislators chair leveraged nationwide connections, called in business-community favors and locked in healthy endorsements for Pugh from street-credded politicos like Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Mosby (who eventually dropped out). With the city being overwhelmingly Democratic, Pugh is a November shoo-in.
But in the aftermath of an expensive race, questions linger about whether she’ll be any different from outgoing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, or any more empathetic to the needs of Charm City’s poor.
Not the Black Senator Black Maryland Wanted
The U.S. Senate hasn’t had a black female senator since Carol Moseley Braun left office in 1999, so lots of folks assumed that Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), a scrappy lawmaker from upscale Washington, D.C., suburb Prince George’s County, would win in Maryland. Hailey Wallace in Black Enterprise, sipping the Kool-Aid, wrote about how “Donna Edwards Could Make History Today.” Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times finger-painted a tight race in which Edwards had a strong shot. Former NAACP President Ben Jealous, who was thinking about a Senate run himself at one point, put all his chips on the four-term congresswoman.
Groggy from endorser’s remorse, Jealous—among others—is probably thinking that he should have gone ahead and run.
To an overconfident Edwards leaving her House seat behind, it must have looked all good. Outgoing Sen. Barbara Mikulski (who had been quietly grooming Rawlings-Blake until Baltimore unrest dashed that plan) had long said that she wanted a woman to replace her. Bernie Sanders signs were showing up in front yards, so an upset against establishment favorite Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) seemed natural.
Black folks were nearly half the electorate in the last really hot Democratic primary in 2008. Black women are 53 percent of the state’s black population. Black folks in the state hungered for Maryland’s first black senator after multiple tries (at least that’s what they told Edwards), and national friends were toasting the idea of two black women in the Senate this year: Edwards and California’s Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris.
But Edwards was never exactly the black senator black Maryland was looking for.
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