Maryland Incumbent to Get Biden Boost Friday in Key House Race

John HaugheyOctober 6, 2022

President Joe Biden will spearhead a campaign rally for Maryland Democratic candidates in the state’s most competitive congressional district on Oct. 7, the White House announced this week.

Few details regarding the Friday rally planned for Hagerstown, Maryland, were included with the announcement, other than the president would discuss the economy in support of Democratic candidates.

Most notable among those party hopefuls is two-term incumbent Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) who is facing a stiff challenge from 12-year Republican state Del. Neil Parrott, R-Hagerstown, in Congressional District 6 (CD 6)—which includes Hagerstown—in what analysts project to be Maryland’s most competitive Nov. 8 congressional race.

Court-ordered post-2020 Census redistricting has provided Republicans with what they believe is an opportunity to win in CD 6 and snare a House seat in deep blue Maryland, where seven of the state’s eight congressional districts are represented by Democrats.

Maryland Del. Neil Parrott, R-Hagerstown, issues instructions to volunteers at Black Hill Park in Boyd, Md., in early September. (Courtesy Neil Parrott for U.S. Congress)

Trone, co-founder of Total Wine & More, a 210-store retail chain, first won the seat in 2018. He defeated Parrott by more than 20 percentage points in his 2020 reelection in “solid” Democratic CD 6.

But in 2022, Parrott has a much better shot at unseating Trone in their rematch after a state judge rejected CD 6 maps drawn by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and shifted deep blue areas in Montgomery County out of the district.

CD 6 now spans much of the state’s western panhandle framed by Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and features a significantly higher density of Republican voters.

The Maryland contest is among a handful of midterm mid-Atlantic congressional elections being closely watched by analysts. How early results unfold on Nov. 8 in CD 6, New York’s Hudson