In my home state of Maryland, Jamie Raskin serves as my congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Raskin has represented the 8th congressional district since 2016 and had previously represented District 20 from 2007 to 2016 in the Maryland State Senate. Raskin won the eighth-house district securing over 55% of the votes in both the 2016 and 2018 election cycle solidifying his safe seat in the district named the 97th most Democratic nationally. The demographics of the Washington metropolitan area is 88.08% urban and 11.92 % rural. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2010 data, of the 747,185 it is approximately 48.8 % Male and 51.2? %. The racial makeup consists of 60.4 % white, 19.7% Black, 15.6% Asian, American Indian and 0.7 % Alaska Native, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and an ethnic population of 19.6% Hispanics. Congressman Raskin has set his agenda geared towards addressing the needs of the diverse population to which he serves.
The issues Rep. Raskin has decided to focus on this term are Social justice, environment, foreign affair & national security, health care, Immigration, seniors, veterans, voting rights & campaign finance, and workforce& job development. Raskin has shown his stance by securing 10.6 million dollars to assess the needs of Maryland’s children and he introduced a bipartisan bill to overturn Citizens United. Currently, Congressman Raskin serves on the House judiciary, oversight and reform, administration, steering and policy, and rules committees in the 116th congress. Rep. Raskin currently is a part of a whopping 89 caucuses including being the co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Free Thought Caucus and the House Education Caucus.
Maryland is one of ten states which employ multi member districts in its legislature. Delegate Bonnie Cullison is one of three representatives of the 19th district serving in the 439th session of the General Assembly. Rep. Cullison lists her priorities as high-quality education, supporting small business, a safe and secure community, environment, economy and access to affordable health care. As a three-term incumbent, Cullison served on the health & Government Operations committee and has sponsored the Student Data Privacy Council to review practices and the implementation of the Student Data Privacy Act in 2015. Currently, she is the assistant Majority whip, an associate member of Maryland’s Legislative Latino Caucus and chair of the Insurance and Pharmaceuticals Subcommittee of the Health and Government Operations Committee. The 19th district a suburb of Washington D.C., is classified as urban with a population of 121,618 according to the 2010 census. The racial makeup consists 54.37% White, 19.34% Black, 12.33% Asian, 9.47% Other, 4.00% Two or More Races, 0.44% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.05% Pacific Islander. The district is diverse in race and in gender where 51.7% of the population is female and 48.3% are male.