Incumbent U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) has won a second term in Congress.
According to the Maryland State Board of Elections, Trone unofficially had 55.2% (142,845) of the votes that were counted to Neil Parrott’s 43.0% (111,297).
The results include Election Day, early voting and mail-in totals.
In declaring victory, Trone, a Potomac resident, said in a statement that he plans to focus his next term on fighting the opioid epidemic, increasing funding for medical research, improving education and criminal justice reform.
“The coming months will mark a major transition in our government and our politics, and we will ensure that the interests of this district are represented as those changes are made,” he wrote.
Parrott, a state delegate from Hagerstown, told Bethesda Beat in an interview early Wednesday morning that he was at the Clarion Inn in Frederick with volunteers Tuesday night when he called Trone to concede.
“We had a positive conversation. I conceded the race and congratulated him on his win,” he said.
“We talked about how we’re going to work together …. for the next couple years as we have in the past,” Parrott added.
According to unofficial results from the Board of Elections, Parrott got more than 55,000 early votes compared to Trone’s more than 48,000.
Additionally, Parrott was leading Trone in the Election Day totals, 37,034 to 14,529. But Trone won the mail-in vote overwhelmingly, 79,874 to 18,437.
Parrott said he was surprised by the mail-in margin. “That I didn’t expect to be as lopsided as it was,” he said.
He added that Maryland’s congressional districts will be redrawn after the 2020 Census, and he hopes that the newly redrawn districts are “more fair.”
Parrott said it’s too early to think about whether he wants to run for Congress again in two years.
“Right now, we’re just thinking about this election,” he said. “2022, (there) will be new districts, so it’ll be interesting to see what those look like. I’m open to looking at it, but there’s way too many unknowns at this point.”
Earlier in the evening, Trone noted that very little of the campaign was in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID safety took precedence over everything,” he said in an interview. “There was no door-to-door knocking. It was Zoom call after Zoom call.”
Trone was first elected to Congress in 2018. The co-founder and co-owner of Total Wine & More also ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in the District 8 congressional race in 2016.
Parrott is in his tenth year representing Washington County in the House of Delegates.
The third candidate in the race, George Gluck of the Green Party, had 3,888 votes, or 1.7% of the total.
District 6 includes parts of northwestern Montgomery County and extends to the far reaches of Western Maryland. The seat was occupied by Republican Roscoe Bartlett from 1993 to 2013.
Following a redistricting after the last Census, Democrat John Delaney defeated Bartlett in 2012.
Delaney did not run for re-election in 2018 after deciding to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Delaney dropped out of the race in late January.
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media