Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger has represented Maryland’s 2nd congressional District for 20 years and is running for his 11th term. Ruppersberger’s Republican opponent, Nicolee Ambrose, is attacking the congressman for his long stay in office while at the same time downplaying some of the conservative views of her own party. Earlier this week, Ambrose was working the trickle of voters at the Early Voting Center at Towson University, including Patricia Kraus.
“I’m running against Dutch who’s been in office for 20 years. Career politician for 40 years,” Ambrose told Kraus. “I think in this case a woman can do a better job. We don’t have a single woman in our federal delegation.”
Kraus told Ambrose she agreed with everything she said.
“One of my Democrat friends hears that I’m in big trouble,” Kraus said.
Ambrose needs all of the Democrats she can get.
The data journalism website FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats an 11 point advantage in the 2nd District which includes most of Baltimore and Carroll Counties and a small piece of Baltimore City.
“Just by the nature of the district, any person who is Republican is going to have to appeal in some fairly big numbers to Democrats,” said Roger Hartley, the dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore.
For example, abortion is a hot button issue for both Democrats and Republicans. In Maryland, abortion remained legal despite a ban on abortion in more than a dozen other states after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer.
About 61% of Democrats said the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling guaranteeing a right to an abortion motivated them to vote in this election, according to a September public opinion poll conducted by Goucher College in partnership with WYPR and The Baltimore Banner. Only 17% of Republicans said the same about the ruling motivating them to vote.
Neither Ambrose nor her campaign will say where she personally stands on abortion.
Human Coalition Action, a Plano, Texas-based anti-abortion advocacy group, touted Ambrose as a member of its advisory board and mentioned her role as the elected Republican National Committeewoman for Maryland. A campaign spokesman said she never authorized the group to put her on its advisory board and she has never attended a meeting.
But Ambrose has been on the organization’s website as early as September 2020, according to screenshots captured by the Internet Archive. On Thursday, after WYPR contacted the Ambrose campaign and the coalition, her name and photo were removed.
The coalition did not respond to emails asking for clarification about Ambrose’s involvement as of Thursday afternoon.
Ambrose said that access to abortion is settled law in Maryland. If elected to Congress, she said she would not support Senator Lindsay Graham’s proposal for a national ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“I disagree and I don’t understand for example Senator Lindsay Graham, for all of these years, supported state’s rights and on and on and all of a sudden he’s supporting federal intervention here and I disagree with Senator Graham,” Ambrose said.
She was a delegate to the party’s 2020 National Convention, which nominated Donald Trump for a second term.
The former president is not mentioned on Ambrose’s campaign website.
Unlike some other members of her party, she said Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square to Joe Biden.
“It is up to each state to certify their election,” Ambrose said. They send it to Congress. And then Congress does the same thing. When you make it through those basic processes, guess what, you’re the winner of the election, period.”
Ambrose embracesthe support she’s received from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan who has been consistently popular in Maryland.
On the other hand, Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox trailed his Democratic rival Wes Moore by 31 percentage points in the latest poll, conducted by the Baltimore Sun. Hogan has labeled Cox a “QAnon whack job.”
Ambrose was asked if Cox could be a drag on her campaign.
“You know I appreciate that question but I am running for Congress and Washington D.C has some really significant problems and I am running to represent the voters in this district at the federal level,” Ambrose said.
“Having a member at the top of the ticket who is not polling well and maybe who has strongly conservative beliefs, it’s easy to get fairly or unfairly associated with that candidate,” said Hartley at the University of Baltimore.
Ambrose criticized U.S. Rep. Ruppersberger for supporting trillions of dollars in spending over the past two years, money she said the government doesn’t have.
“Much of that has gone to luxury resort owners, golf courses, ski slopes,” Ambrose said. “Nothing that benefits the voters of the second district.”
Ruppersberger declined multiple requests for an interview. In a statement he said both Presidents Trump and Biden proposed spending that saved the economy from collapsing during the pandemic.
“I won’t apologize for supporting them,” Ruppersberger said.
The congressman also said Maryland residents are getting new roads, bridges and tunnels due to the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act passed by Congress last year.
Ruppersberger has declined to publicly debate Ambrose. Jaime Lennon, spokeswoman for Ruppersberger’s campaign, said in a statement the congressman has always debated his opponents in the past.
“This is also the first time running against a candidate running a campaign based on lies,” Lennon said. “She is not interested in a good faith policy discussion.”
But Republican Del. Ric Metzgar, who represents the Essex area in the Maryland General Assembly, said he recently challenged Ruppersberger on not debating Ambrose.
“He wanted to talk about real issues,” Metzgar said of Ruppersberger. “High inflation is a debatable issue. Education is a debatable issue. Dutch didn’t want to debate her.”
Ambrose has capitalized on the incumbent’s lack of interest in a public debate.
“In the Baltimore area we’ve had this tradition of people taking us for granted,” she said. “There’s no better example of that than Congressman Ruppersberger.”
