Mikulski nominates Hillary Clinton, Rawlings-Blake takes the roll

Mikulski nominates Hillary Clinton, Rawlings-Blake takes the roll

Sen. Barbara Mikulski nominates Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention.

 By Len Lazarick

Len@MarylandReporter.com

PHILADELPHIA – Marylanders again had key roles at the Democratic National Convention, with Sen. Barbara Mikulski putting the name of Hillary Clinton in nomination Tuesday evening and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in her role as convention secretary taking the tally of the delegates that made Clinton the party’s official nominee.

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake takes roll call

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake took the roll call of the states in her role as secretary of the convention.

Mikulski shared the news of her role with the Maryland delegation to the Democratic National Convention at breakfast Tuesday morning.

“I cannot tell you how touched I am,” Maryland’s retiring senior senator told her home-state delegates. She is the longest serving woman ever to serve in Congress and longtime friend of Hillary Clinton.

“I get choked up” just thinking about it, Mikulski said.

“One of the things tonight will be about breaking barriers,” Mikulski said. “We’ve come a long way together.”

“We break barriers not just for ourselves, but for others,” she said, a line she repeated from the podium.

Hillary Clinton “wants to break the barriers to opportunities so you won’t have barriers,” Mikulski told the convention. “She will run for you. She will fight for you.”

“…It was the Founding Mothers who said, ‘Do not forget the ladies or they will foment a revolution!’ They started the job, but we’re going to keep it going,” the senator said.

The former secretary of state would “fight for the macro issues and those macaroni and cheese issues,” Mikulski said, a phrase she has used in other settings, but it went viral on Twitter.  (Story continues below the Twitter sidebar.)

Maryland Dems work get Clinton elected

Sen. Ben Cardin and state party chairman Bruce Poole urged the delegates at breakfast and guests to work hard to get Clinton elected.

“This is not a slam dunk,” said Cardin. “It’s hard for us to understand why it is not a slam dunk,” running against Donald Trump. “It seems like such a no-brainer.”

Maryland is expecting to remain Democratic, as it has for the last six presidential elections, “and we’ll help surrounding states.”

Cardin, who chairs the Democrats coordinated campaign in Maryland, said they are also going to keep it going for 2018, when all state and local offices will be on the ballot.

“We’re going to win in 2018,” said Cardin, implying that Democrats will take back the governor’s office.

“That’s what this coordinated campaign is about.”

About The Author

Len Lazarick

len@marylandreporter.com

Len Lazarick was the founding editor and publisher of MarylandReporter.com and is currently the president of its nonprofit corporation and chairman of its board He was formerly the State House bureau chief of the daily Baltimore Examiner from its start in April 2006 to its demise in February 2009. He was a copy editor on the national desk of the Washington Post for eight years before that, and has spent decades covering Maryland politics and government.