- June 11, 2026
- By Philip Merrill College of Journalism Staff
Where do Maryland General Assembly candidates stand on a strained state budget, data center development and law enforcement cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? These are some of the questions students and faculty at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism set out to answer in a new voter guide that aims to help Marylanders negotiate a thicket of candidates and issues in the run-up to the state’s June 23 primary election.
To create the guide, Merrill College’s Local News Network — in partnership with the college’s Capital News Service and the university’s Maryland Democracy Initiative — sent questionnaires to all 235 General Assembly candidates who face a competitive primary, and 141 responded. Student journalists also conducted background checks on each candidate.
Their responses were published in an online database, and paired with a series of stories on findings from the questionnaire and background checks.
Among the key findings: Candidates were divided across party lines on how to address the state’s fiscal problems and how Maryland should respond to ICE operations. Democrats are stumping over who will work hardest to oppose the policies of President Donald Trump, while Republican candidates are steering clear of even mentioning Trump’s name. There’s bipartisan support for regulations on data center development. Both parties’ candidates also agree on the severity of the housing affordability crisis in Maryland, but not on how to solve it.
“We developed this primary voter guide because we know that many General Assembly districts are either very Democratic or very Republican — meaning the primary is the real contest for a four-year term in Annapolis,” LNN Director Jerry Zremski said. “We also know that there are so many candidates and so many races that it can be hard for voters to keep up. We hope our voter guide will help them.”
The primary voter guide was produced by a team of 120 student journalists and 10 faculty members at Merrill College. The Local News Network plans to publish a voter guide for all the General Assembly elections this fall, along with a voter guide for all the state’s school board elections.
Information from the voter guide is available for publication free of charge to any news outlet in Maryland. For more information, contact Zremski at jzremski@umd.edu.