Maryland’s 6th District: McClain Delaney declares victory

Democrat April McClain Delaney declared victory Friday in the tight and often contentious race to represent Maryland’s 6th Congressional District as the ongoing count of mail-in ballots showed her lead widening over Republican Neil Parrott.

The Associated Press has not yet called the race, although others, including CNN predicts McClain Delaney like a winner. She led Parrott by less than 9,000 votes with about 89% counted.

“I am deeply humbled by the trust that the people of Maryland’s 6th District have placed in me,” McClain Delaney said in a statement. She went on to say that her campaign is based on “common sense, unified leadership that puts people above politics, protects our freedoms and values, and builds a future based on unity.”

Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland Democratic Party congratulated McClain Delaney on Friday.

Parrott said on social media that vote counting was ongoing and that he was “extremely grateful for the tremendous amount of work” during the campaign.

McClain Delaney is poised to become the third Maryland woman elected to Congress this cycle, joining senator-elect. Angela Alsobrooks and elected deputies Sarah Elfreth 3rd district. For eight years, the state’s 10-member congressional delegation was all-male.

6th district is a vast, ideologically diverse swath spanning ruby ​​red counties within the state, all of purple Frederick County and the deep blue suburbs of Montgomery County. Democrats outnumber Republicans by 41% to 34%—a much smaller gap than in the rest of the state—and nearly one in four voters are unaffiliated with either party.

Days before Tuesday’s election, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its assessment of the race from “likely Democrat” to “lean Democrat,” signaling tighter competition than is typical for the race in Maryland. In recent weeks, both campaigns have received support from their national parties and PAC-funded advertising. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise campaigned with Parrott, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore followed the trail with McClain Delaney.

The 6th District has become much more competitive since 2022 redistricting, when lawmakers redrawn boundaries to exclude parts of Montgomery County.

Two-term Democrat David Trone vacated his seat in an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, taking with him the advantages of name recognition, incumbency and enormous personal wealth.

Running instead was McClain Delaney, a former nonprofit leader who had never held elected office and was not well known in the district. Her campaign also took place amid widespread dissatisfaction with Democratic President Joe Biden, under whom McClain Delaney served at the U.S. Commerce Department.

But although it was precisely these sentiments that brought Republican Donald Trump to the presidency and contributed to shift right in every corner of reliably blue Maryland, it emerged Friday that it won’t be enough to flip a seat that Trone won in 2022 by 9.6 percentage points and that Democrats have held for more than a decade.

McClain Delaney, wife of former U.S. Rep. John Delaney, said she ran for Congress primarily to protect abortion rights. She often spoke about the issue from a personal perspective, drawing on her experiences as a mother of four daughters and as someone who experienced a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy in her mid-30s.

Parrott is a former state delegate who was making his third bid to represent the 6th District, losing in 2020 and 2022 to the Throne. He argued that abortion is not a “issue” in the race because there are not enough votes in Congress to pass national standards.

Instead, he made immigration and the economy the main themes of his campaign. He supported tax cuts, border wall construction and investments in transportation improvements. On foreign policy, he advocated ending U.S. aid to Ukraine and opposed a two-state solution in the Middle East.