About Maryland

Maryland occupies one of the most consequential pieces of geography in American history. Wedged between the Mid-Atlantic and the South, straddling the Chesapeake Bay, and wrapping around Washington D.C. on three sides, it has been at the crossroads of every major event in American life, from the founding of the republic to the Civil War to the construction of the modern federal government.

It is a state of striking contradictions. It is the birthplace of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, two of the most important freedom fighters in American history , and also hosted one of the largest slave-trading operations in the antebellum South. It is one of the wealthiest states per capita in the country, driven by its proximity to federal spending, yet Baltimore struggles with poverty and inequality that rival any major American city. It is home to Johns Hopkins, the NSA, the Naval Academy, and the NIH, and also to watermen still harvesting blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay with methods little changed in a century.

Politically, Maryland is one of the most reliably Democratic states in the country, a blue wall built on the massive DC suburban counties and Baltimore City, which consistently overwhelm the more conservative rural areas. Yet it has a tradition of electing Republican governors , Larry Hogan served two popular terms from 2015 to 2023 before Democrat Wes Moore, the state's first Black governor, took office.