Southern Marylanders heading to conventions
Trump, Clinton supporters win delegate seats in primary
Southern Maryland residents aligning themselves with the winning presidential candidates in this week’s primary election in Maryland received the most votes in their bid to serve as delegates at the upcoming nominating conventions.
Donald Trump received more than half the Republican votes in the state’s 5th Congressional District, which includes the three Southern Maryland counties, as he easily won the state’s GOP primary, and Hillary Clinton received more than twice as many votes than her main challenger in the region as she also prevailed statewide in the Democratic contest.
The congressional district’s three delegates at the Republican National Convention to be held in July in Cleveland will be Charles County residents Collins A. Bailey, his son, Caleb Bailey, and Jim Crawford. In the event one of them can’t be there, the three alternates elected this week in the district, also aligned with Trump, include Dennis Di Bello of Calvert County and Charles County residents Vanessa Jones and Tony Medoro.
Collins Bailey, the 62-yearold chairman of the Charles County Republican Central Committee and 1st vice chair with the party’s statewide organization, said this week that he ran in 2008 and 2012 as a delegate candidate in support of Ron Paul, who sought the GOP nomination for president both times while serving as a congressman from Texas.
“I feel that it’s important that people who have strong convictions go to the convention,” Bailey said, and ensure “we would have strong representation in Cleveland.”
The work includes more than nominating a candidate for president, he said, in that delegates at the convention also “work on the [party’s issues] platform and work on the rules.”
Bailey, a self-employed lumber broker, didn’t weigh in on the ongoing controversy as to whether Trump’s lead in delegates will secure him the nomination on the first ballot. “I’m not much into speculating,” Bailey said. “We want to make sure the people of the 5th District are heard and represented.”
The winning delegate candidates from the congressional district supporting Clinton, consisting of four women and five men, include five people living in the tri-county area — Edith J. Patterson and Russell Yates, both of Charles County, Amanda Cross of St. Mary’s, and Calvert County residents Marie L. Duffield and Monica Lee Silbas.
Patterson, 70, serves as delegate from Charles County in the Maryland legislature, and her resume includes a 30-year career as a college counselor and administrator, as well as serving as a member of the county’s board of education and as a county commissioner. She was chairman of the county’s Democratic Central Committee in 2004 when she was appointed to the Maryland delegation, in support of John Kerry’s nomination at that year’s convention.
Patterson sees her support for Clinton this summer at the convention in Philadelphia as being part of a group effort, one with a mission that “supports candidates that you believe in.”
Patterson noted Clinton’s call for making college education more affordable, voting rights, reforming the criminal justice system and pursuing affordable health care.
“These are things that she believes in. These are things that I believe in,” Patterson said. “Her positions and my positions are very similar.”