The posters put up by the staff of U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin said, “Thank you, Howard County,” but they might just as well have said “Thank you, Ben” from the elected officials who met with the retiring senator Friday.
The effusive praise and thanks for Cardin’s 58 years of elected service were mutual in the second leg of his “farewell tour” of the state. He’s represented Marylanders for 18 years in the Senate, 20 years in the U.S. House, and 20 years in the state House of Delegates, including eight as speaker.
“Ben is just a great man, a great hero,” said Howard County Executive Calvin Ball. “He and Myrna [his wife] not only are great public servants, but they’re friends. They’re people who know about us and our lives and care about us.” For Cardin, it would be easy to “stop working and go off into the sunset. But he’s working probably harder now to save democracy in our country, and he’s here when he doesn’t have to be. … We love you, Ben,” Ball said.
Sen. Ben Cardin talks to Howard County elected officials as County Executive Calvin Ball listens. MarylandReporter.com photo by Len Lazarick
“It has been a real honor to represent you in the U.S. Senate,” said Cardin. He joked that Ball had started his career on the County Council at the “pretty old age” of 25. Cardin, now 81, was 22 when he was elected to fill a seat in a Baltimore district that had been represented by his uncle.
“This is a great, great county to represent. And it’s been a real pleasure,” said Cardin. His 3rd Congressional District included much of Columbia. In redistricting, “I always tried to keep as much as Howard County as I could in the congressional district, but everybody else wanted parts of it.”
Howard County was Cardin’s third stop of the day Friday, which included two stops in Anne Arundel County, a Zoom radio call-in show on WYPR, and an afternoon meeting with community leaders.
“I expected this to be a quiet time. It’s not. We don’t have a budget yet for you, for FY 25. That’s why we’re working on a continuing resolution that expires on December 20th. I was just on the phone with Senator Schumer [majority leader till Jan. 3] on several issues involving that budget, because we have a lot of issues in Maryland. But it’s quite likely we’re going to get another continuing resolution until sometime in March.”
Del. Courtney Watson thanked Cardin for his help on projects to prevent future Ellicott City flooding. As chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, she praised his work to get full federal funding for the replacement of the Francis Scott Key bridge. The legislators and County Council members thanked Cardin for his help on other issues and also for personal touches over the years.
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