Register to Vote: Republican

By Viki Volk

I have become a Republican so I can vote on the selection of my county’s next Sheriff, State’s Attorney, and at least one, but most likely all five county commissioners who will serve through 2026.

The Republican Primary will elect nine of the 13 St. Mary’s County officeholders. (Actually only 11 offices are up for grabs, two incumbent Republicans have no challengers.) This leaves four elected county offices offering voters a choice of two candidates in November.

In November, St. Mary’s voters will see only one name for Sheriff and one name for State’s Attorney on their ballot. The victors in the Republican Primary will move on to serve. That will also be the case in one of five County Commissioner races. Four commissioner seats have Democratic challengers.

That’s it for local races on the November ballot when Unaffiliated voters, as Independents are labeled in Maryland, and those registered with other than one of the two major parties, will get their first and only chance to vote in 2022. About three times as many Democrats and Republicans vote in the General Election than their respective primaries. There are more Republicans.

Short of a galactic overhaul of Pentagon voting patterns before Nov. 8, odds are that the winners of the Republican primary will also sweep the four challenged commissioner seats as well as those they’ll have sewn up in the primary. Democrats have one local primary, for Delegate in the southern third of the county.

In addition to the four votes noted above, two-thirds of St. Mary’s voters will also have a choice in November between a Republican or a Democrat for the Delegate to represent them in the Maryland legislature.

None of us have a choice for State Senator, the incumbent Republican has no challenger in the Primary or General Election. Nor does the incumbent Republican Delegate in the county’s northern Legislative District have a challenger, and he too will return to Annapolis through 2026.

Read “Voting Districts Have Changed” for more information about the Delegates and Senator St. Mary’s County sends to Annapolis.

Flagrant incompetence occasionally loses to party loyalty in the voting booth, but there’s a lot of loyalty for Democrats to overcome in St. Mary’s. In 2018, the candidates chosen in the Republican primary took 16 of the 17 elected offices, nearly all of them with majorities approaching 60%. The lack of Democratic candidates is a response to this imbalance. Waging a campaign is a huge amount of work and expensive. And the winners have difficult jobs.

County Commissioners hold purse strings impacting schools, parks, roads, garbage disposal, libraries, so many things it takes hundreds of pages to itemize. And they zone the land, deciding such things as whether a gas station or slaughterhouse can be built next door to you. Three of them in a single vote can change your life forever.

It doesn’t even take a vote by the Sheriff or State’s Attorney, just doing their jobs alters the course of life and death. Pretty much as basic as it gets.

Only registered Republicans have a choice in who will hold these offices in St. Mary’s County through 2026. And the Republican’s local primaries are chock-a-block with 26 hopefuls. Three very different men are running for Sheriff. An old-timer and a newcomer are running for State’s Attorney. Four Republican candidates as different as east, west, north, and south are running for Commission President.

The Republican Primary is the decider election. So, I have registered Republican. It’s easy to do. It’s easy to undo. This isn’t taking a consecrated wafer, getting a tattoo, or adopting a dog. It has no impact on your vote in the General Election. You can change to another party as soon as the primary is over. This is a simple procedure of registering for the election that will determine who is taking care of where we live and raise our families.

Here is the page to register to vote, as a Republican or anything else. You must register by June 28, 2022, to vote in the July 19 Primary Election. For questions about upcoming and past elections and the candidates running throughout the state, visit the Maryland Board of Elections webpage here.

Here is a full list of St. Mary’s County candidates running in the Maryland July 19, 2022, Primary.