Who Is Your State Senator?
Not Just a Pop Quiz.
Early voting in Maryland’s state primaries begins on June 11. We live in Bethesda and this will be our first local election since moving here a year ago. In anticipation and for insight I asked a group of friends whom we know to be civic minded if they could name their member of Congress, state senator, state delegates, county executive, and County Council members.
Who, I wondered, might be their choices among those who were serving?
Representative Jamie Raskin, a formidable House Democrat whose opposition role in the Donald Trump years has been consistently important, was admired by most of those questioned. The other answers were fragmentary to nothing at all — clueless, really.
These are all taxpayers and homeowners; several have children in county schools. They are knowledgeable about national and international issues because of their careers and readership of major publications. Most of them have been voting for decades.
So what did I learn from the quiz?
If, as the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say, “All politics is local,” then the reality is that too many of us are essentially disengaged from the politics of where we live. That is, if not a complete surprise, definitely a problem with consequences.
Let’s focus on one aspect of this finding: The lack and depth of meaningful media coverage of the election. The League of Women Voters distributes a Voter’s Guide by mail to people who are registered. We have received a small number of campaign circulars and endorsements. We don’t watch local television news and so are spared the advertising, much of which is meant to disparage candidates anyway.
The Banner is Maryland’s most important statewide news organization and has added coverage of Montgomery County. As the Baltimore Banner it was launched in 2022 by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit established by Stewart W. Bainum Jr. It produced a state voter guide for this election which got 70,000 page views in the first weeks and hundreds of new subscribers.
The CEO is Bob Cohn, whose impressive resume includes leadership of The Atlantic and The Economist. The editor in chief is Audrey Cooper, who had previously been editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and New York’s public radio station WNYC.
Coverage in the Banner has received a George Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize. There are now one hundred journalists, with bureaus around the state. Cohn’s numbers for subscribers are 82,000, with revenue coming from philanthropy (primarily the Venetoulis Institute), subscriptions, and advertising, with a smaller amount coming from events.
By every measure, the Banner is off to a great, ambitious, and determined start, with an emphasis on start.
Based on my quiz alone, I can’t claim to know the extent of indifference or ignorance about state and county politics across the broader population. But the truth is that there is little coverage in the major media of anything about Montgomery County.
Missing are stories across the range of what constitutes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in twenty-first-century America, including education, sports, crime, and culture. We live in a place about which we largely know less than we know about the shenanigans down Pennsylvania Avenue.
I have read what there is on the elections, and I’ll make decisions that will be more guesses than a sense of the candidates, aside from Raskin and the leader of the ticket, Governor Wes Moore, the charismatic Democrat on many lists for the presidential contest in 2028.
Here’s a capsule history of what journalism in Maryland used to be. The Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun were the major state newspapers, with an understanding that they would essentially divide circulation among the counties. In 1968 and 1969, when I was a Maryland reporter for the Post, the county bureaus were well staffed with energized young reporters and the statehouse team was respected and influential. The Washington Star was the afternoon competition.
A major Montgomery County weekly was one of a string of newspapers that surrounded the District of Columbia in Maryland and Virginia. (Bob Woodward scored his first scoops in the Montgomery paper.) Smaller cities and towns had newspapers as well. Peter A. Jay and his wife, Irna, for example, owned the paper in Havre de Grace after leaving the Post, and Peter wrote the Sun’s most admired column for years.
My solution is a notion called “Back to the Future.” I have written that the Washington Post can restore its diminished profile by reframing itself as a global and metro paper, serving the region of 6.5 million people who no longer have any comprehensive news source — this in the capital region of the nation!
Moreover, Maryland’s advertisers, subscribers, and philanthropies should not have to be badgered into supporting the Banner, which can expand only with more money. It is in their interest in every way.
There is more than enough money in this metropolitan area to support the Post, the Banner, and other worthy journalistic efforts that come along. Jeff Bezos sure knows how to make, spend, and lose money. (I wonder what that exploded Blue Origin rocket cost?)
Just for the record, the only full answer I got to my pop quiz came from a friend in my neighborhood. He put the issue of state senator, et al., into the AI program Claude.
Your address in Bethesda, MD places you in U.S. Congressional District 8, Maryland Legislative District 16, and Montgomery County Council District 1.
Federal Level
Congressional Representative: Jamie Raskin (D)
State Level (Maryland General Assembly)
State Senator: Sara Love (D)
State Delegates: Marc Korman (D), Sarah Wolek (D), and Teresa Woorman (D)
Local Level (Montgomery County)
County Executive: Marc Elrich (D)
District Council Member: Andrew Friedson (D) (District 1)
At-Large Council Members: You are concurrently represented by the four county-wide at-large members:
Gabe Albornoz (D)
Shebra Evans (D)
Evan Glass (D)
Will Jawando (D)
That is the right answer.
But it is useless data unless you know something worth knowing about these folks when you cast your vote.
