Politics

Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger moved closer Wednesday to a win in the Democratic primary, with only a small portion of ballots left to count. The latest results show Shellenberger up 1,932 votes over challenger Robbie Leonard — with about 3,000 uncounted votes remaining. Vote-counting has dragged on for days due to the large number of mail-in ballots cast. While Leonard had a small lead on election night, Shellenberger gained ground as mail-in votes were tallied.

At a ballot canvass at the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections in Glen Burnie Wednesday, workers reviewed more than 5,700 provisional and mailed ballots cast in last week’s primary elections. While many federal, state and county races have been called, a few key races, including the Republican county executive primary, were still too close to call after the count finished around 6 p.m. About 7,500 ballots will be counted Friday, the last day of canvassing. Ballots will be accepted by mail until 10 a.m. Friday when counting begins.

The Frederick County Council president has a narrow lead over a first-time candidate in the closest race of the 2022 primary election in Frederick County, unofficial results show. The Frederick County Board of Elections on Wednesday completed its fourth day of post-Primary Election Day ballot counting. Election officials processed and counted 1,062 ballots. The count included mail-in and provisional ballots, which voters use at the polls when there is a question about their eligibility or registration.

With a 2025 deadline looming for states to meet aggressive federal goals for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, members of Maryland’s congressional delegation met Wednesday on Capitol Hill with two women who will be integral parts of the public-private strategy for eradicating pollution in the nation’s largest estuary. Eight of the 10 members of the Maryland delegation held a wide-ranging conversation with Kandis Boyd, the new director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay program, and Hillary Harp Falk, the new president and CEO of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

A Baltimore City Council committee will meet Wednesday afternoon with law enforcement agencies and members of Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration to hold a hearing on what city officials have dubbed the “squeegee issue.” The Public Safety and Government Operations Committee scheduled the hearing for 1 p.m. at City Hall. Squeegee workers, usually Black teens, are a mainstay of some of downtown Baltimore’s busiest street corners, offering to clean motorists’ windshields for a few bucks.

Sam Cogen, a former high-ranking deputy in the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office, widened his lead Tuesday in the race to unseat three-decade incumbent John W. Anderson. Cogen had 36,097 votes, or 51.8% of the votes, in the Democratic primary as of Tuesday morning. Anderson had 33,624 votes, or 48.2%. While the two candidates raked in nearly the same number of votes during early voting and on primary election day, Cogen has secured significantly more support from those who sent mail-in ballots. Election officials continue to tally straggler mail-in ballots.

Election workers will begin counting roughly 2,500 provisional ballots at 10 a.m. Wednesday, potentially moving the needle in Anne Arundel County primary races that remain too close to call. In all, there are 8,020 outstanding ballots — 5,459 Democratic and 2,561 Republican. A final canvass is scheduled for 10 a.m., Friday. Following last week’s canvass of 13,683 mail-in ballots, Republican candidate for county executive Jessica Haire held a lead over Herb McMillan of about 1,100 votes. While some primary races for statewide office have been called, including the Democratic and Republican nominations for governor (Wes Moore and Dan Cox, respectively), comptroller (Brooke Lierman and Barry Glassman, respectively) and attorney general (Anthony Brown and Michael Peroutka, respectively), others are still yet to be decided.