Yesterday, I officially announced my candidacy for Governor of Maryland. After months of talking to people all across Maryland, I believe that there are limitless possibilities on how we can improve our communities if we work together. I love Maryland and I want to see it at its best. Our families and our communities deserve better. There are great opportunities to create stable, well paying jobs, improve our schools, and build safe and thriving neighborhoods in every community across Maryland.
Maryland doesn’t need to settle for just “good enough” -- we can continue to be a progressive leader amongst the nation. In Monday’s Baltimore Sun, I wrote an op-ed about my disappointment in the Supreme Court’s damaging decision that strikes at the heart of the Voting Rights Act and what we must do to guard against any encroachments on the guarantee of equal rights voting.
Since the ruling, seven states have announced plans to enact stricter voting rules. We must reject these efforts through the power of our expanded, energized and mobilized coalition of freedom fighters. The defining legacy of this decade will be that we no longer live in world where one minority community wages efforts to defend itself alone. We have transcended. We are a rainbow coalition of social justice advocates pressing for fairness, equality and opportunity for all of our neighbors.
Read more about how the architecture for this new movement was sketched in Maryland’s successful efforts to pass marriage equality and the Dream Act– a campaign that united the labor movement, progressive faith leaders, the NAACP, and the LGBT and Latino communities in purpose and mission.
Our work is far from over. But we will fight as one.
In solidarity,
Heather