Del. Chris Adams inspired by Salisbury business career in leading Eastern Shore delegation

On the wall of the Annapolis office of the current chair of the Eastern Shore delegation to the Maryland General Assembly is an image of a ship coming against the breaking waves.

Del. Chris Adams, a Republican representing the counties of Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot and Wicomico and a fifth-generation Eastern Shore man, describes the image as a metaphor: “Calm in rough seas,” he says.

The political waters have already been tempestuous this year for some on the Eastern Shore, particularly after a Republican member of the State Board of Elections, who made campaign contributions to several Wicomico County elected officials, was arrested in connection to his alleged participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.

Days after the news of the arrest broke, Adams in his second session as chair of the delegation convened the delegation’s first meeting of the year just as he had the year previous: with a call to order and the recitation of the Pledge, followed by a prayer.

The meeting which included briefings by two Moore-Miller administration officials as well as utility representatives and the leaders of multiple hospices — proceeded. For that day at least, the ship of the 16-member delegation’s work in Annapolis continued to sail.

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Past and present colleagues representing both parties describe Adams as someone who “cares for the Eastern Shore” and as “bright.”

But what sets him apart from a political climate that can, as evidenced by the Jan. 6 attack, devolve into combat is his leadership without that destructive combative element.

“I’ve never found him to be combative,” said Maryland Treasurer Dereck Davis, a Democrat and former chair of the House Economic Matters Committee on which Adams still serves.

He called Adams “very, very bright, hardworking (and) dedicated,” in a Jan. 31 interview after a meeting of the Board of Public Works in the State House’s Governor’s Reception Room. Adding “conservative” to the list of descriptors, Davis said: “He’s willing to work with his colleagues where he can, and there were times where he would say, ‘We have to agree to disagree.’ ”

Similarly, state Sen. Johnny Mautz, a Republican representing the same counties as Adams and who served with him in the House, called the delegate “extremely intelligent” and “very diligent.”

“(He’s) very straightforward in his approach to his legislative work, which in today’s world can be a little confusing with all that’s going on in politics,” said Mautz, a former legislative director to U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., during an interview outside of the State House’s Senate chamber in Annapolis on Feb. 1. “With Chris, you see what you get, and you get what you see.”

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'One of the worst days' with family business leads to Annapolis

Adams’ approach comes from his origin in politics and from his background. He is currently the president of a family-owned carpet store in Salisbury that dates back to 1964, when his grandfather started the corporation. The now-Value Carpet One president started working at the business in 1992 when he was going to college after graduating from Wicomico High School.

In the early 2010s, the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation accused his company of improperly classifying carpet installers as subcontractors instead of employees, citations which threatened to put the company out of business.

During a Jan. 30 interview in his office, Adams called receiving that notification “one of the worst days of (his) life.” The letter caused him to come to the state capital, the locale from whence the law came. In 2012, prior to the start of his political career, he joined as a member the Senate Finance Committee’s Task Force on the Workplace Fraud Act of 2009, the state law whose provisions affected his company.

“Through that experience, I learned how a Republican business owner can come to Annapolis and change things,” he said. “You don’t do it pounding your fist. You don’t do it yelling and getting mad. You do it by winning your case on the merits, which we did.”

Two years later, in 2014, because of that experience with a state agency, he ran for a seat in the House of Delegates and won. That victory had its roots in the citations against the carpet store.

“If it wasn’t for me and our family being deeply affected by Maryland’s Department of Labor, I would never be in political office,” said Adams, sitting behind his desk adorned with a stack of bills and Maryland paraphernalia. “It is through the lens of hardship and personal difficulty that I was able to learn about myself, how to deal with stress and negative outcomes, and then turn it into something entirely good and appropriate.”

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General Assembly committee work: ‘He brings a lot of credibility’

Asked what he’s most proud of in his almost decade as a state delegate, Adams does not hesitate: “It’s my committee assignment,” he says.

In a year where the House Bills alone are approaching 1,000, Adams has a stack of less than 10 on his desk.

“My guess is out of the seven or 10 that are sitting in the stack here, I can maybe pass maybe one or two, to be honest with you,” said Adams in the Jan. 30 interview, “My job here is not to pass legislation. It is to in my committee be a voice.”

The weight of and what exactly that voice conveys come from his life’s experience.

“There are a lot of laws that we pass up here that affect businesses,” he said, “but there are very few people that are up here that understand instinctively what that kind of legislation does.”

Adams serves on four subcommittees, including business regulation; banking, consumer protection & commercial law; public utilities; and property & casualty insurance in addition to the Economic Matters Committee.

His former committee chair, Maryland Treasurer Davis, called Adams’ contribution to the Legislature and the committee “very meaningful.”

“Chris is very detail-oriented, gives a very thoughtful analysis, (and) can articulate his feelings and sentiments on a bill,” said Davis, who led the committee for nearly two decades before his election as the state’s second Black treasurer in 2021. “Clearly, we disagreed on some things, but we were able to disagree without being disagreeable.”

Del. Steven Arentz, a Republican who represents an adjacent Eastern Shore district and sits next to Adams in the Economic Matters Committee, called Adams’ job there “excellent.”

“He brings a lot of credibility with his testimony and his questions,” said Arentz, in an Feb. 1 interview in his House of Delegates office.

Last year, he worked to remove a provision that would automatically tie increases to the minimum wage to inflation. The boost to a $15 an hour state minimum wage was signed into law by the state’s new Democratic Gov. Wes Moore last year, but without the tie to inflation.

The opposition of Adams and others was a reason why.

“I’m proud of the idea that I work well with the majority party as a Republican,” Adams said. “To find places where agreement can happen, and then strive to get there, and then when there’s differences of opinion, just help my colleagues across the aisle understand it.”

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Challenges in Annapolis are regional, not partisan

Asked what the greatest challenges have been in Annapolis, Adams said the politics that becomes difficult for him is not partisan, the Republicans versus the Democrats, but regional.

“We’re up here in Annapolis fighting in some cases existential threats to some of our key industries,” said the delegation chair, citing agriculture and state climate goals, “that’s tough.”

“The world that I live in as a retailer depends on (that) base fundamental industry,” he said. As an example, on Feb. 2, a representative from the trade group Delmarva Chicken Association told the delegation during their weekly meeting, there were 572 “chicken growers” in Maryland, producing over 62 million birds for five firms, including Tyson Foods and Perdue.

Former state Sen. Jim Mathias Jr., D-Somerset/Wicomico/Worcester, was one of over 50 people on the delegation’s Zoom meeting on Friday. In a phone interview the day before, Mathias called the delegation meetings “very valuable,” and he still attends regularly in his capacity as government and public affairs liaison for the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

“Chris does a great job,” Mathias said of Adams as chair. Mathias recalls the Eastern Shore delegation meetings going back to 2006 when he arrived in Annapolis as a state delegate after a decade as Ocean City’s mayor, and said he heard from individuals, including two former Eastern Shore delegates, that the meetings may have started in the mid-1970s.

For now, Adams is the one steering that ship.

“He does an excellent job at it, bright guy,” said Arentz, the delegation’s immediate past chair, of Adams, “lets us all ask questions, he treats the group fairly.”

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Wicomico executive: 'Del. Adams cares for the Eastern Shore'

Mautz, another business owner in the General Assembly, attributes that to his background.

“Chris is accustomed to managing a number of people and a number of projects, which enables him to do very well,” he said. “When Chris comes to Annapolis, he comes to do a job.”

Both of Maryland’s Democratic United States senators, Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, have made appearances at the delegation’s two-hour weekly meetings in recent months as have the superintendents of several Eastern Shore school districts and multiple Maryland cabinet officials.

“I have a particular attitude about the time, I try to fill it,” said Adams, in the interview in his office before a committee meeting, “We get more requests for people to participate than we do the amount of time available.”

In an email on Thursday, Wicomico County Executive Julie Giordano said: “Delegate Adams cares for the Eastern Shore.”

The comments from the second-year Republican county executive echoed a line about Adams from the state’s treasurer, a Democrat, earlier in the week.

“(He) cares deeply about the Eastern Shore,” said Davis, “but not just the Eastern Shore, he’s definitely of that ilk of one Maryland.”

“He’s always very balanced, very levelheaded in policy decisions,” the treasurer said.

For some members of the Eastern Shore delegation like Arentz and some who are a part of the community like Mathias, they seem to be appreciative of that balance and Adams as chair, the one currently at the helm of the delegation’s ship in Annapolis.

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.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Business owner Adams leads Eastern Shore delegation in Annapolis