Politics

As the Harford County Board of Elections continues canvassing, candidates endorsed by a national conservative political action group focused on parental rights in schools, are in the lead for two of the six seats up for grabs on the Harford Board of Education. Previous early voting and Election Day totals had four of the conservative group’s candidates in the lead, but mail-in ballots, which tend to trend Democratic, flipped the lead in districts B and E.

Adult use of marijuana outside of Maryland’s medical program will become legal on July 1 next year but the state’s legislative arm must still hash out rules from taxation to regulating sales from marijuana dispensaries. That means it’s unlikely that dispensaries will be able to sell marijuana to anyone at least 21 years old or older in the next seven months. The voter referendum, which passed with 66% of the vote statewide, legalizes recreational marijuana but the state legislature, known as the General Assembly, is tasked to build a framework for the industry. Details like license distribution or measuring consumer demand needs to be hammered out.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox sent a message to supporters in bold red lettering. “Go vote now by 8 PM,” his campaign said in a blast email on Election Day. “Red wave is now.” But the Republican surge never materialized nationally. Democratic candidates for state and federal offices in other states fared substantially better than in typical midterm elections.

After Wes Moore made history Tuesday to become Maryland’s first Black governor, the 44-year-old author and former nonprofit executive joined a short list of former Black governors in America, even as he prepares to govern an increasingly diverse state. After the 2020 Census, Maryland is no longer a majority-white state, with 51% of state residents identifying as non-white. Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College in St. Mary’s County, said the state’s General Assembly is currently more than 61% white.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is hitting back against criticism of his squeegee collaborative plan unveiled last week. Part of the plan calls for paying squeegee workers up to $250 a month for a year not to engage in the practice. In order to receive the money, workers must enroll in training or find transitional employment.

Maryland Republican Party Chairman Dirk Haire won’t seek reelection in January, telling GOP central committee members that the party engaged in “petty nonsense” and lacked the discipline to unite during an election in which Republicans were split between allegiance to Gov. Larry Hogan and former President Donald Trump. “For every Trump supporter who tells me I need to condemn Hogan in the name of the party, there is a Hogan supporter who tells me I need to condemn Trump in the name of party unity,” Haire told central committee members last week in an email that he provided to The Baltimore Sun.