Students can decide the outcome of the District 21 primary race for state delegate. With three open seats and nine candidates to choose from, the winners of September’s primary are likely to squeak into office on pretty slim margins. If several hundred students turn out at the polls they will probably make the difference in who goes to Annapolis and who goes home. Here’s how it works: Each voter chooses three of the nine candidates. When the votes are counted up, the candidates who came in first, second and third win. And the races can be close indeed. In the last District 21 primary in 2002, the difference between third and fourth place was only 1,246 votes.
There are only two incumbents in the race: Barbara Frush and Brian Moe. Unseating incumbents is a tough thing to do, with higher name recognition and tested strategies for getting out the vote. Frush has been a delegate for many years, is a subcommittee chair and has longstanding ties to most of the district communities. Moe is the deputy whip in the House of Delegates and a rising star close to House Speaker Mike Busch. His brother is also the mayor of Laurel. The other seven candidates are Ben Barnes, Jon Black, Mark Cook, Tekisha Everette, Joseline Peña-Melnyk and Mike Sarich and Neil Sood. For my money, you can write off Black and Everette. Black is a university student with no organization and no track record in Maryland politics. Don’t get me wrong – as a student leader I would love to see a student as a delegate. I applaud him for running and bringing attention to the issues, but realistically his chances are infinitesimally small. Everette is a local activist but is way behind on name recognition.
But calling third place is tricky. Candidates often band together in offering voters three clear choices on one ticket to increase everyone’s chances of winning. Frush and Moe have formed a slate with Ben Barnes and are running under the banner of state senate candidate Jim Rosapepe. Cook, Sarich and Everette are on a slate headed by Rosapepe’s opponent, the current District 21 Sen. John Giannetti. Peña-Melnyk stands alone. Most insiders would tell you the choice of a third running mate for Frush and Moe was a tortured process, involving a lot of guessing and breath-holding. Why would they choose Ben Barnes, a young Annapolis insider and lawyer who has never held elected office before, over Peña-Melnyk, an experienced city councilwoman and longtime ally? The smart money says they were courting Mike Miller, the powerful state senate president and a serious force in Prince George’s County politics. Miller has backed Giannetti over Rosapepe and the two incumbent delegates are smart to put a young, charismatic Miller man on their byline.
As for Giannetti’s slate, Cook is a local civic association president. He is a serious contender and could very well take the third seat in the race. Sarich, a Laurel town councilman, has the advantage of a record in part of the district that is known for getting out to vote, but again he suffers from name recognition issues in other municipalities.
Peña-Melnyk is in a tough spot. Not on a slate, she loses the advantage of residual votes from other teammates and shared financial resources. However, she carries a lot of weight in the College Park area, where she has been highly visible as an activist and city council member, as well as door knocking in high-voting Anne Arundel County sections of Laurel.
The point is this: Chances of a clean one-two-three and a distant four are slim. A tiny margin of victory means agony for the candidates, but good things for the student body. If even half the registered students actually vote during the primary, and the margin of victory is under 1,000 votes, then the days of politicians writing off the student vote are over. If we turn out in serious numbers this year, then each election from now on will bring more and more influence to the student body. With a potential voting pool of thousands, no candidate for local or state office will be able to discount the ability of campus leaders to help make or break their political career.
I urge every one to check out the candidates websites, see where they stand on the issues and get out to vote! Primary Election Day is Sept. 12 and you can vote right on the campus at Ritchie Coliseum.
Devin Ellis is a graduate student in the School of Public Affairs and is director of academic affairs for the system student council. He can be reached at ellis.devin@gmail.com.
