Changes Coming Quickly In Annapolis – With More On The Way

By Josh Kurtz, Maryland Matters

December 22, 2025

The pace of change in Annapolis continues to accelerate.

For starters, Maryland has never had anyone in high office who was anything like the new House speaker, Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel).

Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) paved the way for Peña-Melnyk: Jones was the first woman and the first person of color to become a presiding officer in the Maryland General Assembly – and just the third Black woman in the U.S. to lead a state House. She handled the role of trailblazer proudly, with dignity and equanimity.

But Jones was grounded in local government and in the Baltimore County Democratic machine. She is temperamentally understated. She had been a top lieutenant to the late Michael Busch (D) during the full 17 years that Busch was speaker, and her 6 ½-year speakership in a way was a continuum of his – despite the obvious differences and even after she started to put her own team and agenda in place.

Peña-Melnyk is a different type of political athlete.

She is a vocal progressive. A passionate and compassionate protector of the underclass and the unparalleled defender of immigrants’ rights in Annapolis.

She’s also a true believer in government’s ability to improve people’s lives. She’s a policy wonk who works incredibly hard and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Peña-Melnyk went against the grain last year, supporting David Trone in his unsuccessful big against Angela Alsobrooks in the U.S. Senate primary, because she didn’t think Alsobrooks had done enough to boost Latinos as Prince George’s County executive. And she did that without any evident blowback. That says something about her.

The new House speaker: Forged by poverty, fueled by empathy

Peña-Melnyk is a historic choice in obvious ways. She’s the first Afro-Latina to serve as a presiding officer in the Maryland General Assembly (the current state Senate president in California, Monique Limon, is also Latina). She is the first immigrant to ascend to speaker.

It was always going to be a matter of time before a woman or a Black legislator became a presiding officer in Maryland. In fact, before Jones emerged as the compromise choice for speaker in 2019, the leading candidates were a Black man and a white woman who was openly lesbian.

The Latino community has yet to fully mature as a political force in Maryland, so when you think about that, Peña-Melnyk’s achievement becomes even more extraordinary.

And she is unique in other ways. We’ve had plenty of rags-to-riches stories in Maryland politics, people who rose to great power from humble beginnings. But the level of privation Peña-Melnyk and her family faced – first when she was a very young girl in the Dominican Republic, later growing up in New York City – is possibly unprecedented.

We’ve had House speakers from Baltimore City and House speakers from rural communities, but there is nothing in Maryland like the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan where Peña-Melnyk grew up.

You take the most urban neighborhood in Baltimore that you can think of, and I’d argue that culturally it has more in common with Western Maryland or the Eastern Shore than it does with Washington Heights.

Washington Heights has more energy, more diversity, more congestion and more chaos than anyplace in Maryland – and I know this because I lived in Washington Heights for seven years as a young adult. And I say it with all due respect and affection for Maryland, where I’ve been for the last 30 years.

Peña-Melnyk will join the pantheon of consequential people who grew up in Washington Heights, a list that includes Henry Kissinger, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, TV news reporters Bernard and Marvin Kalb, baseball slugger Manny Ramirez and Broadway impresario Lin-Manuel Miranda, who still lives there.

Even though she’s taking over in the last year of a four-year legislative term, Peña-Melnyk is going to put her own stamp on the House right away, including creating a new committee and making some significant changes to House leadership. No doubt there will be more moves in House leadership in the next year – and more after the 2026 election. But that’s still a lot of change in a short amount of time, and it will be interesting to watch Peña-Melnyk grow into the job.

Redistricting commission votes behind closed doors to move toward redrawing maps

She has been an advocate and a policy leader during her time in the legislature. Now she’ll have to become a conciliator, a consensus-builder, someone who cools temperatures and allows egos to mesh.

Peña-Melnyk’s election should make leadership in the House more progressive than it’s ever been – and the House is already considered way more progressive than the Senate. That dynamic will be a factor in the upcoming legislative session and during the election year.

The legislature did not take up redistricting during its daylong special session Tuesday. But that doesn’t mean the idea is dead. It could still come up in the regular session, which convenes on Jan. 14.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) and House leaders favor the idea of drawing a new congressional map for the state, thinking they can squeeze the state’s lone Republican member of Congress, Rep. Andy Harris, out of his seat. But Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) has resisted the idea, and most of his caucus supports him.

Ferguson has argued that mid-decade redistricting is a bad and undemocratic idea and has also warned that a court might not just overturn a newly drawn map but could also change the current map, with its 7-1 advantage for Democrats.

On the one hand, we can laud a political leader taking an adult view in these partisan times. And maybe his fears about judges redrawing the boundaries to the Democrats’ detriment are founded.

But on the other hand, in the age of Trump, it sure doesn’t feel as if this is a political leader who is reading the room or meeting the moment – at least not in the eyes of many Democratic activists. Fairly or not, Ferguson has been lit up for his wariness – on social media, and by national progressive pundits and political leaders.

Will he face more blowback?

Just last week, a poll came out showing Marylanders have at best mixed opinions about redistricting – and that it’s only a top priority for 27% of registered voters.

Of course, in California there were mixed opinions about re-redistricting initially, but with the full weight of the Democratic establishment behind it, and after weeks of expensive messaging, the ballot measure passed overwhelmingly last month, and could yield Democrats up to five House seats. I suspect the same dynamic could develop here, with a stronger push from Moore and other party leaders.

Ferguson’s redistricting stance is all of a piece. The state Senate during this legislative term has been demonstrably more moderate and cautious than the House in Annapolis.

Under Ferguson this term, the Senate has moved more slowly or more incrementally than the House on a range of things, including taxes, the living wage, abortion rights, immigration, health care and healthy school meals for low-income students.

That’s just a quick survey. Talk to advocates and they’d show you other examples.

And this is all under Bill Ferguson’s leadership. Ferguson – who is just 42, who was considered a liberal breath of fresh air when he became Senate president in 2019, after 33 years of the conservative Democrat Mike Miller in that job.

I am, frankly, given the mood of most Democratic activists, surprised that several Democratic Senate incumbents aren’t facing serious primary challenges from their left in 2026. Though that could still happen in some places before the late February filing deadline.

Ferguson has a challenger now, Bobby LaPin, though he seems like more of a community character than a political force, and it’ll be interesting to see if he gets any traction.

In Montgomery County, Sen. Nancy King, who is Ferguson’s majority leader, got a challenger who is worth watching, a young military veteran and gun safety advocate named Amar Mukunda who is taking her on from the left, and suggesting that Senate leaders are too scared of Donald Trump to go through with redistricting. King is a distinguished and honorable public servant who has beat back tough opponents before, but that doesn’t mean the primary isn’t going to get uncomfortable for her.

A few weeks ago, Moore announced that he was setting up a political slate, to back candidates who support his agenda. But he was a little vague about its scope and purpose.

My understanding is there are a couple of Democratic legislators he’s really mad at, and is going to try to find and back primary challengers against them. Otherwise, he’s created a list of questions for candidates to answer who want to be considered for his slate endorsement. Who he ultimately backs and what his criteria will be are a little unclear.

Earlier this month, quite by accident, I heard Moore on a podcast with a progressive California Democratic activist named Jess Craven, saying that if Annapolis lawmakers aren’t going to go along with his re-redistricting plan, “it’s time to move them out.” Does that mean his slate could target incumbent senators who don’t get behind the redistricting push?

That’s one of the many intriguing political questions to think about as we turn the page on the calendar and contemplate the possibility of even more jolting political developments ahead.