(Editor’s note:This reporting took place prior to the apparent assassination attempt on former President Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania. In a statement Saturday, Trump’s campaign spokesman said the former president “thanks law enforcement and first responders for their quick action” and is doing “fine.”)
Two dozen locally elected Marylanders are scheduled to head to Milwaukee for this week’s Republican National Convention in order to help pick the party’s presidential nominee.
It won't be the first time attending the party's convention for Del. Barrie Ciliberti, R-Frederick. In an interview this month, Ciliberti described a “pandemonium-like” atmosphere when Donald Trump came out on stage in Cleveland to accept the nomination in 2016. This year, Ciliberti, elected in May as a delegate to the convention, wants the same result.
“What we’re going to do is put the imprimatur on Donald John Trump,” said Ciliberti, who is in his fourth term in the state legislature — over parts of three decades — and is one of three Trump-pledged delegates elected in a Western Maryland district, each with about 26% of the vote.
Wicomico County Executive Julie Giordano, Washington County Commissioner Derek Harvey and Ciliberti are just a few of the scheduled convention-goers and delegates who are currently serving in elected office in Maryland. All 24 of the Republicans representing the state as convention delegates pledged to support former President Donald Trump, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections’ website.
By the time Marylanders voted in the primary on May 14, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had dropped out of the contest for president. That left some Marylanders, potential Republican delegates who had pledged to support her, on the ballot above the name of an inactive candidate.
While Haley still received 22% of the Republican vote statewide, the closest a potential Haley delegate came to a victory was within seven points. That result came in a suburban Washington district. In the other districts, the margin was wider.
Maryland convention delegates pledged to former president
It was after Maryland’s primary, which also included the primary victory of former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan as the GOP nominee for a seat in the United States Senate, when the party’s pick in the presidential contest was convicted on felony crimes in New York. A case in a Georgia court and two federal court cases involving the former president are still pending.
Does Trump's conviction concern Ciliberti?
“I have zero, zero concern with it,” he said, before adding, “The hard left is out to get the man.”
For Maryland’s former governor, concern about Trump appears higher. The Hogan campaign has said Hogan is again not supporting Trump for president and, according to the Associated Press, Hogan does not plan to attend the convention.
It might be this national-level tension between the two men that caused the Maryland Republican Party Executive Director Adam Wood to cite party “rules” requiring journalists to submit to him, in advance, specific interview questions for the delegates.
“We’re keeping tight operational control,” Wood said during a July 9 phone call, before hanging up when a reporter declined to provide more than interview topics for him — or the locally elected officials.
Some convention delegates, like former Washington County Republican Central Committee Chairman Jerry DeWolf, who stepped away from that role in 2022, are not currently in an elected role other than as a convention delegate. Harvey, Giordano, and Ciliberti are currently in office.
(Giordano agreed to an interview before the state party intervened and nixed it.)
Ciliberti, contacted before the state party intervened, put his perspective on the national-local balance this way: “I don’t bring the national level into my office. I just don’t,” he said. “Anybody that comes to me with a problem, whatever the issue may be that I think my office can help them with, I do my best I can to help them.
“It doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, they’re good constituents, and I assume I have a lot of Democratic votes or I might not be down there (in Annapolis)," the veteran politician said with a laugh.
For this week, he’s headed west to support the former president.
The Republican National Convention is scheduled to run from Monday through Thursday.
Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.
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