Politics

Baltimore County’s incumbent state’s attorney beat back an upstart primary challenger and will move on to the November general election. On the final day of counting, incumbent Scott Shellenberger added 182 votes to his nearly 2,000 vote lead and edged out Robbie Leonard. In all, Shellenberger finished with a more than 2,100 vote lead over Leonard. But the results took more than a week and initially Leonard led the 16-year incumbent by more than 800 votes. But in the days that followed, Leonard saw his lead eroded as more than 87,000 mail-in votes were counted.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a ban on semi-automatic firearms — the weapons used in multiple mass shootings during the last three months — on a near party-line vote. With the 217-213 vote, the bill, H.R. 1808, will head to the evenly divided Senate, but it’s unlikely to advance there, as the ban would need all Democrats on board plus 10 Republicans to get past a filibuster. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has not announced if he plans to bring the weapons ban to the floor for a vote. “Each year, more children die from gun violence than any other cause,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor. “Our nation has watched unspeakable horror as assault weapons have been used in massacre after massacre.”

Montgomery County is considering whether to shift to an all-electric building standard, a decarbonization effort that would be the first of its kind in Maryland. If the proposed bill passes, Maryland’s largest county would become the third jurisdiction on the East Coast to enact this type of legislation, joining a growing number of local governments across the country, according to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Tia Hopkins’ campaign for the Democratic Central Committee has been called historic and inspiring, but the nonbinary candidate’s bid in District 40 has generated deep discussions about gender roles and equity in electoral politics. Hopkins, 33, a lifelong resident of West Baltimore, is attempting to make history as the first openly nonbinary candidate elected to the committee, which is the governing body of the Maryland Democratic Party. The term nonbinary refers to people who don’t identify with a particular gender.

Defense attorney and former prosecutor Roya Hanna is ending her independent candidacy for Baltimore state’s attorney, all but ensuring Democratic nominee Ivan Bates will become the city’s next elected prosecutor. Hanna had dropped out of the Democratic primary race in March but planned to run as an independent in November’s general election. There are no Republicans running for state’s attorney.

Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger is taking time off after his reelection effort, but is not stepping away from his role leading the county’s prosecutors, his office said Thursday. Shellenberger, 63, had decided to take time away to “detach a bit” after ballots were cast, and plans to return to the office the week after next, his office said in a written statement released hours after a news account reported him stepping away, citing exhaustion.