Politics

Battered by tax-shocked residents, county employee unions and the legions of people who regularly demand funding for their favored spending, the county council is trying to navigate a middle path that will leave no one happy but hopefully no one outraged.  It’s a rocky road to be sure, and today, we began to see some evidence of how the council is doing.

A promotional video for a new dating show, “The One,” airing later this month on TV One, features a couple Baltimoreans will recognize: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and his wife, first lady Dawn Moore. In the two-minute clip, the couple offers up their take on finding lasting love. “My advice to those who are looking for someone to settle down with: It doesn’t have to be that difficult,” the first lady says, seated beside her husband.

“We have Leisure World, and now we have Leggett World. And that is something to celebrate,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Dist. 8) joked as a crowd of dozens of elected officials and county residents gathered in downtown Silver Spring on Thursday morning. Attendees celebrated the opening of The Leggett, a 267-unit, 16-story affordable senior housing complex named for former Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett.

Just days after announcing he plans to run for Senate, Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) is launching his first major television ad buy, an early sign of how the congressman’s personal wealth can give him a jump in what is expected to be a highly competitive Democratic primary race to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D).

Comptroller Bill Henry has endorsed Zeke Cohen in his bid for city council president, marking the first major endorsement of a challenger in Baltimore’s 2024 election season. The endorsement is hardly a surprise — the two Democrats have been public allies since they served on City Council together from 2016 to 2020 — and comes just more than a year before the primary, which in deep-blue Baltimore is tantamount to the general election.

Kent Roberson, chair of the Prince George’s County Democratic Central Committee, was appointed late Thursday evening as the successor to replace former delegate Darryl Barnes (D), who stepped down in April from his District 25 seat to join a lobbying and government relations firm in Annapolis after serving in the General Assembly since 2015.

We’ve seen Gov. Wes Moore speak a few sentences in Spanish from time to time, and now he’s dabbling in another language: American Sign Language. At a bill signing ceremony this week, the Democrat highlighted one of the measures receiving his signature: the Maryland Sign Language Interpreters Act. The act creates a new State Board of Sign Language Interpreters to regulate and license interpreters. The lead sponsors were Sen. Nancy King, a Montgomery County Democrat, and Del. Heather Bagnall, an Anne Arundel County Democrat.