The two adult daughters of the House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings are spurning the candidacy of the Maryland Democrat’s widow, who is running for the seat he held for 23 years.
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, a former Maryland Democratic Party chairwoman, is one of several prominent figures running in the Feb. 4 special election to represent a district covering much of Baltimore and leafy suburbs to the north and west that includes several rural stretches. The general election will be held April 28, to fill the remainder of Cummings’s term, ending shortly after New Year’s Day 2021.
Instead of backing Rockeymoore Cummings, Adia and Jennifer Cummings endorsed Harry Spikes, a 15-year member of the congressional staff of Cummings, who died Oct. 17 at 68, after suffering long-standing health challenges. Rockeymoore Cummings was the congressman’s second wife.
After House Democrats won the majority in 2018, Cummings was chairman of one of several committees investigating alleged corruption in the Trump administration and by President Trump directly.
Spikes is expected to compete against 23 other Democrats running in the primary. Also running is Cummings’s predecessor in the House, former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, 71, who was congressman for the district for nearly a decade before becoming NAACP president and CEO. The district leans heavily Democratic.
Despite the snub from her stepdaughters, if Rockeymoore Cummings wins the seat, she will become the 48th widow to have succeeded her husband in Congress, according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women in and Politics.
