Sara Love is the first candidate to formally announce her candidacy for the District 16 delegate seat that’s open as Del. Bill Frick (D-Bethesda) runs for Congress.
Love, a Bethesda resident and attorney, formerly served as the general counsel for NARAL Pro-Choice America and more recently as the public policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland—a position she left in September.
She’s also spent time as a stay-at-home mom, led her daughter’s Girl Scout troop and served on the Carderock Springs Elementary School PTA.
Incumbents Ariana Kelly (D-Bethesda) and Marc Korman (D-Bethesda) are both planning to seek re-election. Korman has filed.
Other candidates considering pursuing the position include Bethesda residents Jordan Cooper, who finished fifth in the District 16 Democratic primary in 2014, and Samir Paul, a computer science teacher at Montgomery Blair High School. Both Paul and Cooper have active campaign finance committees with the state’s Board of Elections, but have not formally filed to run for the District 16 seat.
“I’m a different kind of candidate,” Love, a Democrat, said Wednesday in an interview with Bethesda Beat. “While I’m a first-time candidate, I have four years of experience in Annapolis and a track record of working hard and getting bills passed.”
She said she decided to run in the Bethesda-based district because she wants to be on the other side of legislation.
“I’ve done policy work my whole life,” Love said. “The next step is to go from a person who has drafted bills and gotten sponsors to actually being the sponsor.”
During her time at the ACLU, Love helped garner bipartisan support in the General Assembly for bills that later became law, such as one that prevented police from searching a person’s emails before obtaining a warrant and another that prevents police from tracking cellphones without warrants.
If elected, she said she’d focus on issues she’s long been passionate about—reproductive rights, civil rights and civil liberties. She also wants to work on school funding issues and making sure Marylanders have access to affordable health care.
She calls herself a progressive and supports a $15 minimum wage.
“I was raised with the adage that service is the rent we pay for the space we use on this earth,” Love said. “I believe this is the next step for me to make the world a better place and do my part.”
Love is a Princeton University graduate who earned her law degree from Northwestern University. She has two children—Nikki, 14, who attends Holton-Arms, and Kenny, 11, who attends Pyle Middle School.
She has begun outreach efforts, including launching a website and knocking on doors to introduce herself to district voters.
Frick, the House of Delegates majority leader, is pursuing the 6th District congressional seat that Rep. John Delaney is leaving to run for president.
On Wednesday, Frick said Love has his blessing to pursue one of the three District 16 delegate seats.
“I don’t intend to run for my seat again,” Frick said. In 2014, he ran for Maryland Attorney General before dropping out of the race shortly before the state candidate filing deadline. Instead he ran for and won re-election to his delegate seat. He stopped short of formally endorsing Love, but said the district “would be lucky to have her.”
“I suspect there are going to be other strong candidates,” Frick added.