Commentary

Maryland voters will begin casting mail-in ballots early next month and the primary is less than 60 days away. But there is a nagging question that just about everyone in Maryland politics is asking: What’s going on in the race for governor? The lack of independent polling has left journalists, debate planners and — most importantly — voters in the dark about the Democratic and Republican primary contests that will shape the general election in November.

Like many immigrants fleeing poverty after a natural disaster, my family and I immigrated from El Salvador after the 2001 earthquakes devastated our country. With a lot of hard work, we opened a family restaurant where we all worked, and we bought houses in the neighborhood of Brooklyn to live close to each other. Baltimore became our home, and we feel we’re part of the hard-working and diverse community that lives here.

The Minneapolis Police Department will face the intense scrutiny of a federal program after a state investigation spurred by the killing of George Floyd concluded that the city’s officers stop and arrest Black people more than white people, use force more often on people of color, and maintain a culture in which racist language is tolerated. The court enforced plan, known as a consent decree, has been credited with bringing significant reform in some places but scorned by critics elsewhere as ineffective and a waste of taxpayer money.

Five years ago on Friday, Lt. Richard Collins III, a young Black man, was killed at a bus stop on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland. His murderer was a man with white supremacist ties, who demanded Richard step aside and then stabbed him to death when Richard refused. Lt. Collins was the best of America. He was a leader and a student athlete; he was kind and compassionate and had a deep desire to serve his country.

The largest increase in federal funding for Chesapeake Bay restoration in recent memory is quickly headed to on-the-ground projects where communities need them most. The announcement from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials earlier this month is cause for celebration, and reason to take careful note of what works. The Chesapeake Bay and the 18 million of us who share its 64,000-square-mile watershed face interconnected challenges.

In the broadest sense, what goes by the name “replacement theory” — the idea that American elites are conspiring to replace so-called real Americans with immigrants from poor countries — is merely a description of the American way, enshrined in tradition, codified by law, promoted by successive generations of American leaders from Washington and Lincoln to Kennedy and Reagan. There have been four, arguably five, great replacements in American history.

Do Maryland’s stewards realize that they are investing $8.3 billion to procure electricity with a probable market value of $3.3 billion? Decarbonization is an unprecedented challenge in both its political and system engineering complexity. America’s engineers have used science to build some amazingly complex systems, but their methodology is incompatible with Maryland’s political management structure. While policymakers are skilled at representing the will of the people, they lack the discipline required to set rational goals and the experience to develop complex systems.

We didn’t want this day to come. But the Maryland legislature prepared for it. The leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has made clear the extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court intends to overturn nearly 50 years of progress on women’s reproductive health. Instead of moving backward, Maryland is committed to moving ahead to improve reproductive health and rights — for Maryland women and our neighbors. As we took on these preparations, our vision was to use this unwanted opportunity to improve reproductive health outcomes.