Beidle Withdraws At The Filing Deadline, Taps Chang For Her Senate Seat

By Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters

February 25, 1016

Del. Mark Chang (D-Anne Arundel) entered the Maryland State Board of Elections office in Annapolis minutes before the filing deadline Tuesday night. He wore the weight of the world on his face.

Chang, a three-term delegate, had filed in May to run for re-election. But hours before Tuesday’s 9 p.m. deadline, Sen. Pamela Beidle, the senator from his district, called to say she intended to withdraw and retire at the end of the term, and wanted Chang to run for her seat.

“I’m just waiting for him to file his paperwork,” Beidle said, holding the form to pull her name from the ballot.

It was a moment of drama on an otherwise sleepy deadline day for candidates to file in the 2026 election. The other big surprise among the roughly 70 candidates filing for legislative or congressional seats was former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker III, also a former gubernatorial candidate, who filed for the crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-5th). A total of 30 candidates have signed up for Hoyer’s seat, 24 of them Democrats.

Beidle, 74, is a 20-year veteran of the legislature who joined the Senate in 2019 and has been chair of the Senate Finance Committee since 2023. She was accompanied Tuesday by her husband, Leonard.

“We want a life, we want to travel, we want to downsize,” Beidle of her decision.

She said she first tinkered with the idea of retiring last spring, but said she broached the subject with Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), “Bill wouldn’t accept it. It took him a while to come around.”

Chang became emotional after filing.

“I was really honored to serve with her,” Chang said of Beidle. “When she … called me this afternoon to let me know that she considered me to succeed her, to continue her legacy, it’s a great honor.”

Chang is the son of Korean immigrants. His mother died when he was 11.

“And for myself, I’m really emotional because my parents came over here in the ’70s with $100 in their pocket, and they came from a war-torn country, and they actually lived right on Maryland Avenue in a one-bedroom apartment right outside Naval Academy,” he said. “And for, you know, a son of immigrants to be able to run for the Maryland State Senate, it’s a …. really, a great honor.

He recalled times growing up when he couldn’t afford to buy lunch at school, “and lunch at that time, was about a buck twenty.”

“For me to be elected in 2014 to the Maryland House Delegates, and then to be appointed to serve in them as a vice chair to House Appropriations Committee [from 2021 to 2025],” he said, “to have a small, small contribution in the $67 billion operating budget and a multibillion-dollar capital budget is a great honor for a kid who didn’t have $1.20 in his pocket at one time.”

In leaving, Beidle formed the Anne Arundel Democracy Slate, funded with $175,000, that includes Chang and Allison Pickard, an Anne Arundel Councilmember running for county executive. Pickard’s husband serves a chairman of the slate. Beidle’s husband is treasurer.

Beidle could pump additional money into the account. Her January campaign report showed Beidle with $460,000 in cash on hand.

The slate could provide a boost for both Pickard and Chang, who reported nearly $100,000 in cash on hand in January.

Chang will face Stephen A. Tillett, a pastor at Asbury Broadneck United Methodist Church, in the Democratic primary. Tillett in recent weeks has joined an effort to redraw Maryland’s congressional districts.

Filing deadline night held few surprises for onlookers who gathered inside the West Street elections suite to watch for 11th-hour candidates. Sen. J.B. Jennings (R-Baltimore and Harford counties) arrived with a box of pastries for election workers and spectators, and Sen. Arthur Ellis (D-Charles), who had already filed for Hoyer’s seat, came by the elections office to watch the last-minute filers.

Neil Parrott, a former state delegate from Hagerstown who ran three times for the 6th District seat in Congress, drove to Annapolis with his wife to watch — but not file.

“It’s like the Super Bowl,” Parrott said of making the trip from Hagerstown to watch others file. “You have to be here.”

Also not filing was Sen. Joanne C. Benson (D-Prince George’s). Benson, 84, has served more than three decades in the legislature, including 20 in the House. But he has missed more than 40 of the 90-day session so far this year. It’s unclear whether she will return and is considered day-to-day. But her decision not to file brings her legislative career to a close after this term.

A redistricting milepost

The filing deadline was also a milepost in the debate over redistricting for some. Ferguson, the Senate president, has said the candidate filing deadline was the last realistic opportunity for the Senate to pass a House bill that redraws the state’s eight congressional districts in a way that would likely eliminate the state’s only Republican representative.

The bill is stalled in the legislative purgatory of the Senate Rules Committee.

Ferguson has said the Senate would not bring a bill to the floor that lacks the votes to pass. So far, there do not appear to be the 16 votes needed to bring the bill out of committee, much less the 29 that would be needed to pass the bill, which includes a proposed constitutional amendment. Even so, Ferguson continues to refuse to declare the bill dead outright.

“We have conversations about lots of different issues,” Ferguson said Tuesday. “Certainly, we have a different opinion on this one, as it relates to what the Senate’s called Senate has determined and where the votes are in the Senate, as opposed to where the governor would like it to be.”

Gov. Wes Moore (D) calls the deadline arbitrary but Ferguson told reporters Tuesday that “any deadline that exists in law exists because it was an act of the legislature and signed by the governor. And so they’re not arbitrary. They’re set by law.”

“Today’s the deadline,” Ferguson said Tuesday. “It’s the reason I think the governor filed for office [Monday] … he believes that that deadline matters, as well. And so I believe the deadline is a deadline. And so I think we’ll be moving forward on to the next stage of this after today.”