A Losing day at the polls / A Winning experience

I have never been as involved in politics as I’ve been in the past 24 months.  At my job, I’m the coordinator for public policy initiatives so I’m constantly in Annapolis, connecting with legislators, or researching bills.  The energy that I have dedicated to being effective in my job has complimented my passion for social justice and community outreach.  It’s clear to me that God allowed me to start working here so that I could be a more informed activists and well rounded ambassador for the message of Jesus of Nazareth.  Given my seminary journey and degree, I am able to exegete biblical texts.  Given my professional development I am able to engage in the political process and have developed the courage to engage politicians on a variety of issues. 

With that in mind, I dove head-first into the midterm election process determined to affect political change where I live based on the biblical mandate of social justice as prescribed by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and many other prophets. 

I decided to support Mary Washington - a sociologist who ran to be one of my three state delegates.  I was immediately drawn to Mary’s campaign because she represented for me a refreshing change to the stagnated and creatively exhausted delegates that currently claim to represent me in Annapolis.  She has strong campaign issues and has a track record of reaching out to the community.  I was so impressed by her candidacy that I did things that I have never done for a political candidate.  I went door to door for her, I donated to her campaign, I placed signs in the community, and I even showed up at the polls at 6:30AM yesterday to pass out literature encouraging voters to vote for Mary.  Despite all this, Mary lost in the primaries by a small margin.  She ran a strong campaign, but other candidates like Michael Dobson and Mike Miller drained Mary of votes she needed to unseat the incumbents.  I really believe that Michael Dobson, a former state delegate, filed to run for office at the very last minute to support his old buddies who currently serve.  Dobson’s campaign wasn’t visible in the community, at community forums he praised the incumbents, and he didn’t even have a website!  That lead me to wonder if the incumbents convinced him at the last minute to jump in the race and steal some votes from Mary.  Who knows.

But many of the candidates I voted for yesterday didn’t win.  Kweisi Mfume – lost.  Stuart Simms – lost.  As a matter of fact, all of the African American candidates running for statewide office lost at the polls.  And when you have White folks voting for White candidates and a nice slice of Black folks voting for White candidates – that’s what you get. 

For complete Maryland primary election results click here.

Related posts:

1. Faith In Action Candidate Endorsements I got a call from Rodney last week.  He was...