Statewide primary elections are just a month away, and while it’s hard not to notice that Gov. Wes Moore and other statewide candidates are out and about, it can be difficult to find out who is on the ballot at the local and neighborhood level. Early voting runs from June 11-18 and election day is June 23.
The deadline to register for the primary is June 2, although you can register to vote on election day and cast a provisional ballot. You must be a registered Democrat or Republican to vote in these closed party primaries. In Baltimore city and for statewide offices, the Democratic Primary voters generally select the ultimate winner. In our West Baltimore State District 40 (which includes Bolton Hill), for example, 80 percent of the registered voters are Democrats. All of the incumbents are Democrats.
There are nine early voting centers. The closest is at University of Maryland Engagement Center, 16 S. Poppleton St.
So, who is running?
- FOR CONGRESS, Northeast Baltimore City Council Member Mark Conway, 36, is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume in our 7th congressional district. Originally from the Bronx, Conway has served on the council since 2020 and chairs the Public Safety and Government Operations Committee. He’s a former executive director of the Baltimore Tree Trust and former deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of CitiStat. Mfume, 77, served in Congress from 1997-2006 and again since 2020. He is a West Baltimore native who served on the city council before running for Congress and left Congress to lead the NAACP. He returned after the death in 2019 of Rep. Elijah Cummings.
Scott Collier is unopposed in the 7th District Republican primary. On his website, he calls himself “an agent of positive change, an American patriot and a Believer in the power of prayer.” He also quotes Tucker Carlson, says the 2020 presidential campaign was rigged and criticizes the “Manufactured Media and Democratic Communist Jackass Party of America.”
- FOR 40TH DISTRICT STATE SENATOR, Sen. Antonio Hayes (D), first elected in 2020, is opposed in the primary by Steven Messmer, a former math teacher and 2023 U-Baltimore law graduate who works with low-income families on probate and other legal issues. Messmer says, “My biggest priority is to stop the government from unjustly taking money from our communities. In particular, I’m going to end the tax sale…. I’m also going to repeal the inheritance tax, eliminate ground rent, and reform probate.” Hayes, 48, grew up in Penn North and serves as the chief of staff for the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. He sponsored the creation of the West North Avenue Development Association (WNADA) and has been able to bring state resources to rebuild that corridor from Coppin State University to the eastern edge of Bolton Hill. There is no announced Republican candidate.
- WE VOTE FOR THREE GENERAL ASSEMBLY DELEGATES in the 40th District and the top three vote-getters win. Incumbent Democratic Delegates Marlon Amprey, an attorney, and Melissa Wells, a union official, and another candidate, social worker Tiffany Welch, are running on a slate with Sen. Hayes that they call Team 40. The longest-serving incumbent in the 40th District, Frank M. Conaway, 60, first elected in 2006, is not on a slate and does not have a website as nearly all the other candidates do. He is part of the decades-old West Baltimore Conaway dynasty, a family that holds and has held low-level city elected offices since the 1960s. Other Conaways on this year’s Democratic ballot are Belinda K. Conaway, incumbent Register of Wills; and Xavier Conaway, unopposed incumbent for Circuit Clerk.
Others in the race for delegate include Democrats Anderson Jean, a Haitian-American who moved to Maryland from Florida five years ago; Diante Edwards, a Navy veteran and Pigtown neighborhood activist; Crystal Jackson Parker, formerly a member of the Democratic State Central Committee and now a member of the Coppin Heights Community Development Corporation; and Kevin Legacy, about whom nothing appears on the Internet.
The city is holding elections for sheriff, state’s attorney, register of wills, school board, clerk of the circuit court, 8th judicial circuit court judges and orphans’ court judges. We will endeavor to sort out candidates for those races in the June Bulletin.
–Bill Hamilton
