Politics

With the state reporting a nearly $2 billion budget surplus last month, a critical question for Maryland’s next governor is not necessarily going to be the common refrain of how to pay, but rather, what to prioritize paying for? “The new governor of Maryland will have to figure out what to do with the huge budget surplus,” said Sunil Dasgupta, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Campaigns usually encourage supporters to vote early. Not Michael Peroutka, the Republican candidate for state attorney general. In a video that surfaced over the weekend, a top Peroutka aide encouraged supporters to arrive two hours before the polls close on Tuesday, Nov. 8. “Vote on November 8th as late in the day as possible,” said campaign coordinator Macky Stafford. “If everyone could stand in long, long lines at 6 o’clock, that would actually help us.”

Over the last 10 months, County Council member Jessica Haire has outspent County Executive Steuart Pittman by about $600,000 in the race for Anne Arundel County executive. Since mid-January, Haire, a Republican from Edgewater, has spent around $1.6 million, including more than $516,000 in the past two months, according to campaign finance reports filed Friday.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore and his wife, Dawn Flythe Moore, walked off his campaign bus early Monday morning to cast their votes at Baltimore’s Westside Skill Center with their 11-year-old daughter, Mia. As he walked to the registration table, a poll worker told him he didn’t need to tell her his name — she already knew who he was.

The number of people voting in person during early voting is about half the number who voted four years ago, before the pandemic. With more than 3,800 people voting on Monday, the total is just over 145,000. Election officials said the increasing number of people voting by mail is the reason for the decline in early voting ballots.

When residents of Carroll County’s District 3 cast a ballot in this year’s general election, they will be the only ones who can vote in a race between a local Democrat and a local Republican. There is only one Democrat running for local office in the county, and he is running for the District 3 commissioner seat. District 3 is centrally located in Carroll and includes the City of Westminster. Two candidates are on the ballot to represent the district for the next four years — Republican Tom Gordon and Democrat Zach Hands. Hands is the only Democrat running for commissioner in any of the county’s five districts. The four other races only have a Republican candidate running.

Wes Moore could soon make history if elected Maryland’s first Black governor, and he’s not alone: Rep. Anthony Brown would be the state’s first Black attorney general. Aruna Miller, Moore’s running mate who immigrated from India, would be the first Asian-American elected statewide in Maryland. If these Democrats win — Moore has led by more than 30 percentage points in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1 — Black politicians will hold many of the top state offices in Maryland, which is now a majority-minority state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. With a victory, Moore would reclaim the governor’s office for Democrats, after eight years of term-limited Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.