The congressman from the 7th District is Elijah Cummings, who won a 1996 special election after Kweisi Mfume resigned to become president of the NAACP. Cummings is the son of sharecroppers from South Carolina who moved north for a better life for their seven children. He grew up in Baltimore, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Howard University, and then got a law degree from the University of Maryland. He practiced law for a time in Baltimore, and then in 1982, at age 31, he ran successfully for the Maryland House of Delegates, where he served 16 years and rose through the ranks to become speaker pro tem. When he ran for the U.S. House, his main competition was the Rev. Frank Reid III, stepbrother of Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who raised $255,000. Cummings had support from local businesses and community-development organizations, and raised $450,000. He won with 37% of the vote to 24% for Reid. He has not been seriously challenged in a primary or general election since then. Read More

The congressman from the 7th District is Elijah Cummings, who won a 1996 special election after Kweisi Mfume resigned to become president of the NAACP. Cummings is the son of sharecroppers from South Carolina who moved north for a better life for their seven children. He grew up in Baltimore, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Howard University, and then got a law degree from the University of Maryland. He practiced law for a time in Baltimore, and then in 1982, at age 31, he ran successfully for the Maryland House of Delegates, where he served 16 years and rose through the ranks to become speaker pro tem. When he ran for the U.S. House, his main competition was the Rev. Frank Reid III, stepbrother of Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who raised $255,000. Cummings had support from local businesses and community-development organizations, and raised $450,000. He won with 37% of the vote to 24% for Reid. He has not been seriously challenged in a primary or general election since then.

Cummings lives in troubled west Baltimore, and he is a crusader against drug abuse and for stricter gun control. His voting record has been mostly liberal, and he can be blunt in defending his party. In the fall campaign season of 2010, when some Democrats were de-emphasizing their support of the health care overhaul, he said he was doing just the opposite. “I know the media wants us to apologize for being Democrats,” he said at one rally. “They want us to apologize for health care. Why? Because the Democratic Party is the humane party.” But Cummings also has a pragmatic streak that allows him to work with Republicans in legislative coalitions. He worked with Indiana conservative Republican Mark Souder to reauthorize the White House drug control office and to establish federal policy to combat rapidly multiplying methamphetamine labs. When Democrats won the majority in 2006, he became chairman of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee at Transportation and Infrastructure, a useful niche for his port-dependent district. The House unanimously passed his bill in July 2009 to reform Coast Guard acquisition practices, and a year later he helped get an authorization bill for the agency into law that included some acquisition reforms as well as other changes.

On the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he worked closely with Democratic Chairman Henry Waxman of California on the investigation of performance-enhancing steroids in baseball, and emphasized the detrimental effect steroid use was having on young people who look up to successful athletes. “You’re one of my heroes, but it’s hard to believe you, sir,” Cummings told former star pitcher Roger Clemens at a 2008 hearing. When Waxman in November 2008 was chosen to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, some Democrats urged Cummings to challenge the more senior Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., to replace Waxman as chairman of Oversight. But Cummings did not run, partly to avoid conflict within the seniority-sensitive Congressional Black Caucus, an influential group that Cummings chaired in 2003 and 2004.

The issue of Cummings challenging Towns for Oversight’s top Democratic slot resurfaced in 2010 after the Republicans regained control of the House. Many Democrats worried that Towns could not be a tough enough foil to Darrell Issa, the California Republican who took over as chairman and who pledged numerous aggressive inquisitions into the Obama administration. Towns agreed to step aside, and Cummings took over the job after beating New York’s Carolyn Maloney by a 119-61 vote. “The Democratic Caucus must not cede to the new House majority that wishes to move our nation backward,” he said. He enlisted Waxman’s help in attracting top-notch investigators and quickly showed his willingness to tussle with Issa. In January 2011, Cummings complained that Democrats were being repeatedly denied access to committee records and asked committee Republicans to publicly commit to a bipartisan policy on issuing subpoenas.

Cummings usually wins re-election by landslide margins, and in 2006 he was unopposed. He backed Mfume in the Democratic primary for the open Senate seat that year, and then played a constructive role in coalescing Democrats behind the eventual nominee, former Rep. Ben Cardin. In 2007, he bucked most of the Maryland Democratic establishment by announcing his early support of Barack Obama in the Democratic primary, and went on to serve as co-chairman of Obama’s campaign in Maryland. Cummings suffered a personal tragedy in June 2011, when his nephew, Christopher Cummings, was fatally shot near Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., where the young man was a student.