Republican Neil Parrott, with new map, renewed hope, tries again for Congressional seat

As a professional traffic engineer, Neil Parrott has been working on the roads to Washington, D.C., for a long time. As a politician now running for Congress, his actions have showed a similar purpose.

His lawsuit in state court, which helped reconfigure the 6th Congressional District earlier this year, provides him his best opportunity yet at the U.S. House of Representatives while giving Republicans their best prospects to regain an additional seat in Maryland’s congressional delegation in a decade. The Economist ranked the race versus Democratic incumbent Rep. David Trone as the eighth most competitive House race in the country.

After being defeated by Trone by nearly 20 points in a 2020 run for Congress when Democrats won the presidency with majorities in the House and Senate, Parrott is hoping to reap the fruits of his own lawsuit to take him to D.C.

“It definitely took some time, but that was the best thing I could do for my citizens at that time,” Parrott told the Herald-Mail in June when asked about his attendance record in Annapolis. He missed seven of 33 Environment & Transportation Committee hearings entirely during the last session of the General Assembly in the spring.

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Democratic Del. Kumar Barve, chair of the committee, noted Parrott’s frequent absences and his ambition.

“He’s always been interested in serving in Congress,” said Barve, who represents Montgomery County, a heavily Democratic jurisdiction, split into two congressional districts and critical to the 6th Congressional District race. He also noted one transportation bill Parrott passed last session.

The “Driving in Right-Hand Lanes” bill was one of three Parrott sponsored that became law during the last legislative session, which had Democratic majorities.

Barve, who drives a Tesla electric vehicle, may well depend on roads that the member of Congress from the 6th District helps to oversee, and Parrott is hoping to have that position.

In part he wants the job to finish work he started as an engineer for the city of Frederick in 2006, back before he entered politics.

“I have a bigger picture of the transportation network in the whole district,” said Parrott, referencing his work on the Interstate 270 Multi-modal corridor study project and on Interstate 70, two critical highway projects in the region.

But as national questions from the last election still linger in the district, transportation issues may again take a back seat this year during the campaign.

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Hot-button issues or hometown improvement?

“We still got people where they truly believe that that (2020) election was stolen,” said district resident Eric Vaughn, in a Sept. 30 interview on Summit Avenue in Hagerstown.

Vaughn, 49, a Washington County resident for a little over a year, said he is still undecided on a candidate in the race. Crucial for his vote is the Republican stance on the movement begun by former president Donald Trump: “Are you a MAGA Republican or are you a traditional Republican?” he asks rhetorically of the Trump-led Make American Great Again faction.

Parrott acknowledged no such split in the Republican Party when asked that question by a Herald-Mail reporter later that afternoon during an interview at his Hagerstown campaign headquarters. Sidestepping, he instead called himself a “commonsense conservative.”

Asked what he wanted to see from the campaigns in the next month, Vaughn, the undecided voter, said he wanted to see a race that was focused on what could realistically be done to improve the city, not on polarizing social issues.

“Don’t sell us third-and-17 stuff,” said the former wide receiver, “sell us second-and-five.”

Noting closed businesses and empty storefronts in the city, Vaughn called Parrott’s hometown of Hagerstown “15 years behind,” and in need of additional revenue.

“Concentrating on a hot-button issue, all you’re going to do is create a stalemate,” Vaughn said.

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The Trone campaign has since released an ad, highlighting Parrott’s 2005 letter to the editor of The Herald-Mail advocating for withholding medicine until those with HIV were tattooed. Parrott said publicly he no longer supported the idea during his initial 2010 run for office. On Oct. 5, at a news conference outside the Frederick County Courthouse, he announced the creation of a website that documents his original letter and the associated media coverage.

“I don’t need to lie to win this seat,” Parrott said.

The abortion issue is one motivating Harold Wills, who has both pro-life and pro-Parrott signs in his front yard on Summit Avenue in Hagerstown.

At a June 28 event this year, Parrott called the Supreme Court decisions loosening restrictions on firearms and overturning Roe v. Wade “great decisions” with the issues returning to the states.

“Mr. Parrott stands for right,” said Wills on his front porch across from the former headquarters of The Herald-Mail.

Unlike Maryland’s Trump-endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, a delegate representing adjacent Frederick County, Parrott does not mention the former president on his campaign website. He acknowledged the electoral victory of the current president, Joseph R. Biden, by citing “disaster” in the country and saying: “Of course, he’s the president.”

Closer to home

A primary line of appeal from Parrott to voters is not national politics, however, but proximity.

“You can vote for someone who is one of you,” he told his supporters on election night after winning the July primary, noting his residency in Western Maryland (Hagerstown) and his middle-class family.

He sponsored bills in the state legislature in 2020 and 2022 to require candidates for Congress to live in the district that they are elected to represent. Fundraising emails characterize his opponent, a Potomac, Md., resident who does not live in the part of Montgomery County included in the new district, as “DC millionaire David Trone.”

“It is helpful to have a congressman that lives in the district,” said Parrott, citing trips to the grocery store and to church as occasions when constituents can see him and talk to him.

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Speaking to people during an Oct. 4 trip to the grocery store where Parrott said he shops, a Herald-Mail reporter had no sightings or recognition of either candidate. But those at the Martin’s Food and Drugstore on Dual Highway generally agreed with Parrott’s principle of district residency.

“How can (a representative) help me if they don’t live where I live?” said Brandi Ziegler, a Hagerstown resident and mother, in an interview as she loaded her groceries into her trunk.

New district, new results?

In the 2014 campaign for the 6th Congressional District seat, Republican Dan Bongino lost to another millionaire Democrat, John Delaney, by less than 2 percentage points and 3,000 votes. Delaney had just finished his first term after defeating longtime Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett on the new maps in 2012. Republicans are hoping the 2022 map yields new results.

“Maryland, with a Republican governor, has been gerrymandered so badly that only one Republican could get elected, but this year’s map is very different,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a Parrott-backer, who represents the Eastern Shore congressional district and has been the sole Republican member of Maryland’s delegation since Bartlett’s 2012 defeat. Parrott hopes to be the next Republican to represent the district in Congress.

“I sued over the gerrymandering, I’ve been working on this thing for 10 years,” Parrott said. “Now people are going to have a really good chance to have a local representative.”

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 The Herald-Mail: Traffic engineer Parrott hopes to be next MD Republican in Congress