By Dayvon Love
For decades, the Democratic Party has been moving politically to the right. Recently, however, there has been an expansion of the left wing of the Party, largely attributed to the emergence of Bernie Sanders. The outcome of the 2024 presidential election has inflamed the tensions within the Party between the moderate wing of the party and the progressive wing. This clash has manifested itself in Maryland’s local political landscape.
I wrote in 2022 on Maryland Matters about the choice that is before the Democratic Party regarding its electoral strategy. Over the last few election cycles, the Democrats have abandoned a focus on deep investment in courting Black voters, and instead pursued multiracial (mostly White), suburban voters described generally as soccer moms who were former Republican voters but are repulsed by Donald Trump. I wrote that with the election of Wes Moore as governor of Maryland, our hope was that the Party would increase investments in turning out the thousands of Black voters who typically do not participate in elections because of how poorly the Democrats have been at delivering for working-class Black people.
This would require that the party begin to deliver on policy in ways that it had not before. This means policies like automatic expungements for non-convictions, allowing people incarcerated for more than 20 years to have their sentences reviewed by a judge (known as The Second Look Act), taxing wealthy corporations as the basis for economic redistributive policies, reducing unnecessary contact that young people have with the juvenile/criminal justice system, pursuing a reparations policy in Maryland and other kinds of policies that speak directly to the conditions of working-class Black people would need to be prioritized.
These are also the kinds of policies that would alienate the voter base the Democrats have been more actively pursuing recently as mentioned previously. This voter base tends to have more latent racist attitudes that make these policies frightening to them (I list studies that substantiate this claim in my 2022 piece).
I chose to run for a 41st Legislative District seat on the Democratic Party’s State Central Committee because it was clear that this ideological cold war was playing itself out in my community.
Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer is a conservative Democrat that ran an all-White slate of candidates for the State Central Committee. He has often espoused beliefs that align with the racist propaganda coming from David Smith, Sinclair Broadcasting and Fox45 in Baltimore. Particularly, the juvenile crime narratives that misleads the public to believe that reforms to the juvenile justice system get in the way of holding accountable youth that commit heinous crimes. I worked with, then-Sen. Jill P. Carter on our own slate that was more reflective of the demographics of the district and had folks who have a generally more progressive approach to politics. Having votes on the State Central Committee would allow us to appoint people to office – in the event that someone resigned from office – who would push back against the right-wing politics represented by Councilman Schleifer. We were able to elect four members of our slate (Tammy Stinnett, Lakesha Brown/Wright-El, Angela Gibson and me), while three members of Councilman Schleifer’s slate were elected (Alex Friedman, Sandy Rosenbluth and Councilman Schleifer). Brian Easley, who was affiliated with neither slate, rounded out the newly elected committee members.
Historically, one of the challenges that Black people have had in achieving liberation is that White people and their institutions are able to help individual Black people attain their own personal, financial and professional aspirations at the expense of advancing our collective power as a people. Angela Gibson, though she ran on Sen. Carter’s slate, caucused with Yitzy’s slate when it was time to appoint someone to replace former Del. Tony Bridges, and was able to get them to vote for her in pursuit of the vacated seat. This created a 4-4 tie that was decided by the governor, who appointed Malcolm Ruff, who was supported by Carter and has expressed commitments to issues like criminal justice reform and reparations (Brian Easley caucused with our slate).
When Sen. Carter resigned from her seat, there was a meeting to put Del. Ruff in the Senate seat. That required that the four of us that supported him before, vote in his favor again, this time against Del. Dalya Attar who is an extension of Yitzy’s slate. Lakesha Wright-El (her last name was Brown at the time of the 2022 primary) was in our meeting while developing our plan. On the night of the vote to replace Sen. Carter, Ms. Wright-El voted for Del Attar, sabotaging the plan we came up with during the meeting mentioned previously.
People are entitled to making their own political decisions, but they are responsible for the consequences of those choices. Angela Gibson and Lakesha Wright-El’s choice has the impact of having one less advocate for the policies that I mentioned earlier. Ruff’s political agenda is more explicitly aligned with policies that meaningfully address the issues facing working class Black people.
I have since been kicked off of the State Central Committee as of Feb. 24, 2025. The official reason is for attendance (missing three consecutive meetings in 2023), with no probationary period nor formal warning. What is most important about this is that much of the discussion about whether to kick me off the committee, led by Baltimore City committee chair Tammy Stinnett, was about my public criticism of the Democratic Party. In my one-on-one conversation with her Stinnett said to me that she supports my work, but in her motion to terminate me from the committee she talked about my public criticisms of the Democratic Party as an important consideration in deciding whether I should be removed. Bear in mind, my public criticisms of the Party were well known before and during my campaign for a seat on the State Central Committee.
Even people who would like to be understood as allies of Black liberation behave as henchmen of the Democratic Party establishment. We cannot allow the corporate wing of the Democratic Party to continue to pretend to have the interests of Black people in mind, while being impotent in delivering for our community.
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