On Nov. 3, Maryland voters will select the next governor. Democratic incumbent Wes Moore is seeking reelection, while Republican nominee Dan Cox, Green Party nominee Alex Ellis and Working Class Party nominee Cathy White are challenging him.
Moore served in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division. After returning home, he became a White House Fellow and founded a business to help underrepresented college freshmen succeed. He also led the Robin Hood Foundation as CEO for four years, working to lift Baltimore families out of poverty.
Cox ran against Moore in 2022. He worked as an attorney, focusing on individual rights, small business and protecting working families. He also served as a town council member and state delegate, gaining knowledge of the inner workings of state government.
As a Green Party candidate, Ellis believes voters are ready to move beyond the two-party system. He promoted the power of language by coaching debate teams and launching a middle school debate program. His current focus is grassroots democracy, as he has worked with the Green Party for over a decade to break up the two-party system.
The final candidate, White, represents the Working Class Party, which gained ballot recognition in 2016 to challenge the two-party system and support working people. White said she is not a politician but a caregiver who has spent the past 40 years working in a factory, where she has learned about the needs of the working class.
Wes Moore campaign
When he first took office, Moore worked to revive the declining economy by investing in competitive industries and encouraging business expansions to bring more jobs to Maryland. Hitachi was one such company, opening a digital manufacturing plant in Hagerstown and bringing 500 new jobs to the area.
Moore has worked to improve Maryland’s education system by addressing teacher shortages, ensuring adequate district funding and raising state test scores.
In his first year in office, Moore helped pass the Maryland Educator Shortage Reduction Act, which aims to recruit and retain teachers. Since then, the state has reported a roughly 73% drop in teacher vacancies, and this year, the minimum starting salary for teachers rose to $60,000.
Moore is also committed to reducing violence and crime statewide. Since he took office, he said statewide homicide rates have dropped by more than 40%, and the state has invested about $124 million to support local police.
“Public safety does not care about politics; it is about results. By getting tough on crime and tough on the root causes of crime, we are delivering historic drops in violence and creating a model for the rest of America,” he said in a press release.
To address the root causes of crime, he has launched initiatives to improve local conditions that contribute to violence. For example, the ENOUGH Initiative aims to reduce childhood poverty by funding affected neighborhoods.
Most recently, he announced that an additional $500,000 would be invested in the Safer Stronger Together Initiative to help reduce crime and expand opportunities for the youth in Hagerstown, Salisbury and East Baltimore.
Dan Cox campaign
Cox’s campaign focuses on affordability, addressing the energy crisis, protecting farmland from further data center encroachment and improving education. He believes government power must be accountable and seeks to protect Marylanders’ rights and freedoms.
To address the rising cost of living, Cox plans to reduce the corporate and income tax rate to 4.9% and reverse the fees added by the current administration. In addition, he would provide resources for businesses and incentives for new business owners.
Education for Maryland students would be a top priority, as he would ensure schools are fully funded and teachers have the resources they need to teach effectively.
To reduce reliance on electricity from Pennsylvania and Virginia, Cox would bring power plants back to Maryland and push clean energy production to protect farmland and keep the bay clean.
His administration would also regulate data centers to protect communities and farmland while ensuring Maryland keeps pace in the technology race.
Cox is strongly against Flock surveillance, believing these cameras constitute illegal stalking that has led to the wrongful persecution of innocent people. He would halt the implementation of Flock to protect personal privacy while ensuring law enforcement has the resources needed to keep communities safe.
“Dan Cox is running for governor to bring Maryland a future defined by keeping more of our hard-earned money, affordable living, safety, opportunity and accountable leadership- a future where families can flourish, communities can grow stronger and the promise of Maryland is renewed for generations to come,” his campaign site read.
Alex Ellis campaign
Ellis’ campaign prioritizes ending the two-party system, halting further data center expansions and building up Maryland’s economy for all.
In office, he would support a multiparty model to strengthen grassroots democracy and create a task force to give voters more choices and independent candidates. This would include updating televised editorial practices so all candidates can participate in debates.
Ellis would allow all recognized parties to participate in primaries and let unaffiliated voters participate by selecting their preferred candidates. He would also provide parties with a ranked-choice voting option for primary and general elections.
To address data centers, Ellis plans to issue an executive order on day one to halt data center permit approvals, bar state agencies from signing non-disclosure agreements with developers and establish a transparency task force to examine the previous administration’s relationship with these companies.
He would further restrict new data center construction and repeal any state-level tax breaks or exemptions established for these facilities. He would also regulate how existing facilities use Maryland resources and ban campaign donations from data center developers.
Ellis argued that the current administration’s economic policies favor wealthy individuals and corporations over everyday Marylanders. To return power to the public, he proposes a framework for public input on the state budget and a corporate task force to disclose all corporate tax breaks.
He also proposes strengthening Maryland’s economy by taxing the wealthy, ending corporate tax breaks, granting striking rights to public-sector workers and establishing a public bank to fund infrastructure, education and renewable energy.
“If we want to solve any of the problems we face, we must have a system that makes sure politicians are accountable to voters, and that the people have the power,” his campaign site read.
Cathy White campaign
White said she believes the working class needs an organization that can represent its interests across workplaces and industries, and address current problems facing workers, such as unemployment, low wages and inflation.
By offering an alternative to Republican and Democrat candidates, White hopes to reach working-class people who feel the current system doesn’t represent them accurately and may not vote as a result.
As a factory worker and full-time caregiver, she has felt the strain of balancing work, life and health. She has also seen the toll of overwork on health, noting that many people are in the same position but have no financially viable way to retire.
“We work our whole lives, and the best this society has to offer us is the work-till-you-die retirement plan,” her campaign site reads.
In a WUSA Channel 9 interview, White expressed support for technological innovation but opposed data-center backers, the parties that benefit from the facilities and their resource consumption.
To address educational challenges in Maryland, she would improve failing school facilities and lower student-to-teacher ratios by adding teachers and reducing class sizes.
Her campaign mostly focuses on giving the working class a voice because it is the backbone of American society: its labor creates the country’s wealth, yet workers have little power to make decisions.
“It only makes sense that since we make everything run, we should be running things. We should be in charge. NOT the billionaires. The billionaires have two political parties. The workers – none. It is past time to change that.”
Here are the links to the campaign websites:
- Wes Moore campaign site: https://wesmoore.com/
- Dan Cox campaign site: https://dancoxforgovernor.com/
- Alex Ellis campaign site: https://www.gogreen2026.com/
- Kathy White campaign site: https://sites.google.com/view/wcp-md/home
