Sen. Sarah K. Elfreth (D-Anne Arundel) speaks at a house party in Severna Park during her successful congressional campaign. Photo by Josh Kurtz.
State Sen. Sarah K. Elfreth’s election to Congress last week means a coveted seat in the Senate will be opening soon — and the two Democratic delegates who represent the same district as Elfreth are expected to compete against each other to fill it.
Elfreth told Maryland Matters that she plans to resign from the Senate on Jan. 2, a day before she is sworn in on Capitol Hill to replace U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes (D) in the 3rd District, and will write to Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) confirming that timetable after counties certify their election results this Friday. That will trigger the formal replacement process, beginning with the Anne Arundel Democratic Central Committee, though it isn’t altogether clear what the timeline for filling the seat will be, though it is likely to be in January.
What is clear is that Dels. Shaneka Henson (D) and Dana Jones (D), who both represent District 30A in the Annapolis area, appear headed for a showdown to replace Elfreth. The Democratic central committee is tasked with forwarding the name of a potential successor to Gov. Wes Moore (D), who has final say.
“With the election of Donald Trump, it’s more important than ever that we ensure access to reproductive care and to other rights and freedoms,” Jones said in an interview Monday. “States’ work is ever more important.”
Henson on Friday asked Maryland Matters submit questions to her in writing about the scramble to replace Elfreth. She had not responded to those questions by Monday evening.
The anticipated Jones-Henson competition for the support of the 20 members of the central committee is expected to be intense, and possibly contentious, and could expose racial tensions and other divides among Anne Arundel Democratic activists. Henson is Black; Jones is white, and the central committee is very diverse. Both lawmakers were initially appointed to their House seats — Henson in 2019, Jones in 2020 — though they won full four-year terms on a ticket headed by Elfreth in 2022.
Assuming Henson or Jones is elevated to the Senate, that will trigger another appointment process to fill their seat in the House of Delegates.
Elfreth said she hopes the central committee procedure for replacing her is transparent and maximizes community participation.
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“This is the third appointment in District 30 in six years, and we know that process is important for public trust,” she said. “In order for the public to have requisite faith in their next senator, I hope the central committee considers a robust opportunity for public input during the appointment process.”
Dylan Behler, the outgoing chair of the Anne Arundel Democratic Central Committee — who happens to be a former chief of staff to Elfreth in the Senate — said the central committee will finalize a written procedure for the vacancy process later this week.
The last time the central committee dealt with a vacancy was in 2020, when Jones was selected to replace former Del. Alice Johnson Cain (D-Anne Arundel), who resigned for family reasons. Most current members of the central committee weren’t in place then, Behler said.
“We recognize this solemn responsibility and we are going to do our best to make a really solid, transparent process that gets public buy-in at the end of the day,” he said.
However, by the time Elfreth resigns and the Democratic panel begins the job of filling her seat in earnest, someone else will be running the central committee, which is due to elect a new leader in early December — though Behler will still be a rank-and-file member.
Abortion could be a point of contention in this race.
Jones is a vocal and steadfast supporter of reproductive freedoms — she once did political work for EMILY’s List, the national Democratic fundraising group that recruits and aids Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights, and for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“I’ve spent years crisscrossing the country working to elect pro-choice women,” she said.
Jones, 48, is the chair of the legislative women’s caucus and spent considerable time campaigning for the ballot initiative that passed overwhelmingly last week to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. She has also been a key supporter of Elfreth’s congressional bid and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention this year.
Henson angered abortion rights supporters by opposing a measure in the House during the 2022 General Assembly session to expand the number of health care practitioners who can perform abortion procedures — and then voting no when the House voted to override then-Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of the bill.
But Henson did support the bill that year and in 2023 co-sponsored the bill to put the abortion rights constitutional amendment on the ballot, and she also supported a measure last year to protect women’s health care records. She appeared with Elfreth and Jones at a rally for abortion rights supporters in Annapolis on the night in 2022 that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision, which ended the guarantee of safe and legal abortions in the U.S.
Henson, 41, is a lawyer who spent a year and a half on the Annapolis City Council before being appointed to fill the legislative seat of the late House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D) in 2019. She backed Del. Mike Rogers (D-Anne Arundel) in the crowded Democratic congressional primary this year that Elfreth wound up winning.
Henson’s bid for the Senate could also be impacted by a scathing rebuke issued by the legislature’s Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics this spring.
The ethics panel called on Henson to apologize to the public, to the speaker of the House and other legislative leaders for her involvement in funding requests for a religious organization she belongs to, which sought more than $1 million in state bond money. The ethics panel concluded that Henson’s relationship and actions created “at minimum, the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
The panel also admonished the lawmaker for an improper use of her official title in an advertisement for her law firm. A year earlier, when the information first surfaced about Henson’s ties to the religious organization and its quest for state funding, House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) forced Henson and Jones to switch committees, with Henson moving to Ways and Means and Jones transferred to Appropriations.
In the wake of the ethics committee decision, Henson released a statement that took issue with some of the findings and chided her colleagues for failing to strike a more “collaborative and constructive tone.”
Weighing Elfreth’s legacy
While the race to replace Elfreth has been anticipated for months, it won’t begin in earnest until Elfreth formally submits her resignation.
Jones said she was looking forward to talking with central committee members about her record of sponsoring 27 bills that have become law, and of bringing more than $100 million into the district. She also plans to talk about Elfreth’s contribution to the district since being elected to the Senate in 2019 and the importance of installing a strong replacement.
“Sarah Elfreth wasn’t just a skilled legislator, she was also a skilled campaigner,” Jones said. “So it’s important to talk about what we can do to keep the seat blue.”
While Elfreth won reelection easily in 2022, the 30th District Senate seat was on a Republican target list as recently as 2018 — though the area in general has trended more Democratic since then.
Jones intimidated that she would run for the Senate seat in the 2026 Democratic primary even if she isn’t appointed to the seat early next year.
Henson on her website describes herself as someone who “gets things done.” In a letter to constituents this spring, she touted, among other things passing a bill to clarify how students struggling with mental health issues can withdraw from public university programs and how they can receive refunds for doing so.
“Each action I’ve taken was driven by my heartfelt desire to extend a helping hand and uplift our community,” she wrote.
Whomever is named to the District 30 Senate seat, it will be the fifth Senate vacancy that has been filled by appointment since the 2022 election. Ten House seats have also been filled by appointment in that time.
If Henson or Jones is elevated to the Senate, their replacement in the House will be the 11th House appointee since 2022.
Right now, two names are mentioned most prominently as potential House successors: Behler, the outgoing county Democratic chair, and Brooks Schandelmeier, an Annapolis alderman.
Behler, director of legislative and constituent services at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said he did not want to comment on the potential vacancy until after Elfreth’s seat is filled. Schandelmeier, who has served on the city council since 2020, said he’s “seriously exploring” the possibility.
“I was on the fence about it for a little while,” he said. “But the election results from the other night made me more certain. Maryland needs to bunker down.”