When we at Charm City Indivisible issue an endorsement, we always want to be clear that it rests on affirmative support for our endorsed candidate, not simply dislike of their opponent. While our decision to weigh in on a race may be influenced by a clear gap between the candidates, those who ultimately earn our endorsement do so on their own merits, not just as the lesser of two evils. Because of that, we generally refrain from commenting on why an endorsement was not offered to a particular candidate—we’d far rather talk about the strengths of the candidates we choose to endorse than the shortcomings of those we don’t! However, in the case of State Senate District 46, we’re making an exception.

We know this is a contentious race, with strong feelings on both sides—in the electorate and among our own membership—and so we want to be very deliberately transparent about our thought process. We also know, since we’ve mentioned that the incumbent, Senator Bill Ferguson, chose not to participate in our endorsement process, some may believe that we endorsed his opponent “by default,” or that the outcome might have been different had the Senator chosen to engage with us. We write today to correct that impression.

Caution Dressed as Conviction

Across issue after issue, Senator Ferguson’s record reveals the same instinct: when a decision carries real political risk, he waits. Of course, we believe that deliberation and thoughtfulness are virtues, but there’s a difference between the patience that builds a coalition and the caution that waits for others to take the risk first. Time and again, Ferguson hangs back while the outcome is uncertain, letting others absorb the risk first, then steps forward to claim the popular position only once the danger has largely passed.

We see this perhaps most clearly on midcycle redistricting. The House, the Governor, and a majority of Maryland Democrats wanted to redraw our congressional maps to protect Democratic power at a moment when Republican-controlled states were gerrymandering everything in sight. But Bill Ferguson used his procedural power as Senate President to bury the bill in the Rules Committee, where it never received a vote—not, by his own account, on principle, but out of concern that a new map could be challenged in court and delay the 2026 primary. He framed this caution as wisdom. But the risk was contested—Ferguson himself acknowledged the “varying opinions and analyses” on the question—and his own party’s leaders judged it a risk worth taking. Declining to fight while the other side presses every advantage isn’t wisdom; it’s weakness wearing caution’s clothes. Setting the Senate’s agenda is its president’s prerogative, but there’s a difference between using that power to lead and using it to retreat—and on redistricting, he used it to disregard the will of his constituents. (We did note with interest that this past May—the final month of a primary in which Senator Ferguson faces his most formidable opponent in years—he signaled an openness to revisiting redistricting after all, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racially discriminatory maps. But that threat was never hidden. The case was pending before the Court for more than a year, its danger plain—and redrawing the state’s maps was a chance to push back, preemptively, against a national assault on fair representation. Ferguson used his power to deny that effort a vote, ignoring the pleas of Democrats across both Maryland and the country. He discovered his openness only once the damage was done and a primary was bearing down on him.)

The redistricting fight also offered a glimpse of how the chamber’s leadership treats those who break ranks. Senator Arthur Ellis of Charles County, who staged a protest over the lack of a redistricting vote, later alleged on the Senate floor that capital funding for two facilities serving children in his county had been stripped in retaliation for his speaking out. Senate leaders offered procedural explanations, which Ellis rejected, and we’re in no position to adjudicate that dispute. But when a sitting senator is willing to publicly charge his own leadership with retaliation, that gives us real pause about how power is wielded in the chamber Ferguson leads.

The same pattern appears in immigration. In 2025, the House passed the Maryland Values Act, which, as originally written, would have banned 287(g) agreements (formal cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement). When the bill reached the Senate, rather than using his power as President to advocate for its passage in full, Senator Ferguson allowed it to be gutted, with the 287(g) provisions stripped out due to concern about potential federal retaliation from the Trump administration. That risk was not imaginary—the administration was openly threatening sanctuary jurisdictions, and “there is a limit,” as Ferguson put it, “to what states can do.” But leadership means weighing a real risk and acting anyway, and on this he hung back—until the politics changed. By late 2025, with ICE’s tactics drawing national revulsion and the political risk largely drained away, Senator Ferguson came out in support of the very 287(g) ban he had let languish. A year later, with a new bill, that prohibition finally became law. But for many, it came too late: while Senator Ferguson waited, an estimated 170 people were taken into ICE custody under 287(g) agreements in Maryland—170 families torn apart. The retaliation he feared never came; the irreparable harm to those families did.

His approach to abortion rights has followed a similar path. In 2022, when the House passed a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution, Ferguson declined to bring it to a vote in the Senate, making clear that a much narrower access bill would be the only abortion measure the chamber took up that session. But after the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs that summer, making clear how vulnerable Maryland’s statutory protections were, Ferguson’s calculation shifted. By 2023, with Democratic momentum at his back, he became the amendment’s lead sponsor, declaring it essential to protecting reproductive freedom. The amendment ultimately passed into law by referendum on November 5, 2024, with 76% voter support—and to be sure, Ferguson deserves some real credit for that outcome. But the pattern here is one we keep seeing: he adopts bold progressive positions once the political risk has receded, then steps forward as their champion. A leader with genuine conviction would have fought for the amendment before Dobbs, or at least acknowledged his earlier caution as a mistake. Instead, Ferguson waited for the winds to shift, then claimed credit for having been moved by them—all while Marylanders spent as long as two years with less durable protections than we needed.

He Answers to Those Who Fund Him

But risk-aversion is only half the story. The other half is a question of who commands Senator Ferguson’s attention—and the answer, consistently, is whoever holds leverage over him. He takes substantial money from the very industries his chamber is responsible for regulating—into both his own campaign account and the Senate caucus fund he personally controls. As of his 2026 annual campaign finance report, he held more than $1.2 million in cash on hand, far more than a robust reelection campaign requires—yet he keeps taking their money all the same. And the industries writing those checks get something for it: leverage over the man whose committees decide their fate.

Consider real estate. For years, good cause eviction protections—which would simply require a landlord to give a reason before forcing out a tenant—have passed easily in the House of Delegates, only to stall in Ferguson’s Senate. Last year, rather than let a clean bill through, Senator Ferguson personally pushed an amendment forcing jurisdictions to choose between good-cause protections and rent stabilization—meaning counties would have had to gut existing renter protections to gain new ones. Advocates rejected it as a poison pill, their support collapsed, and the bill died in committee. So why would the Senate President personally champion an amendment that renters and their advocates uniformly opposed? It may be worth noting that, according to that same campaign finance report, Senator Ferguson received roughly $70,000 in contributions from the real estate industry. The renters wanted a clean bill; the real estate industry that funds him did not. He sided with the money.

Energy follows the same shape. In October 2024, Senator Ferguson personally invited representatives of Baltimore Gas & Electric—a utility corporation whose rates the state sets—to a $25,000-per-head retreat at a Colorado ranch benefiting the Senate caucus fund he leads. Months later, when the House and the Office of People’s Counsel—the state’s independent advocate for utility customers—moved to end “forecast-based” ratemaking, which the OPC found had raised the average BGE customer’s bills roughly three times as much as the traditional method did over the previous six years, Senator Ferguson defended the practice and his Senate worked to preserve it. The people who pay the bills wanted the method gone; the company that profits from it did not. He sided with the company.

The pattern in both cases is clear: the industries that fund Senator Ferguson got the outcome they want, and constituents who don’t have that kind of influence—Baltimore’s renters and ratepayers—were forced to absorb the cost. Time after time, on issues where his donors have a stake, his voters lose.

And He Ignores Those Who Don’t

While money and power reliably command Senator Ferguson’s attention, the absence of them reliably loses it. He chose not to participate in our endorsement process—he did not complete or even acknowledge our questionnaire, while his opponent replied promptly. And this is not an isolated incident: earlier this year, our Electoral Action working group hosted a candidate Q&A with Senator Ferguson’s opponent, Bobby LaPin; we also reached out to the Senator to offer him a similar opportunity. His office took over a month to respond, and when they finally did so and indicated interest, we replied immediately with possible times and a willingness to work with his schedule, but never heard back.

We also saw this pattern at our No Kings Day rally in March. We initially limited the number of politicians we invited to speak, out of a desire to hold sufficient space in our program for activists, organizers, and community leaders. Some elected officials who weren’t originally invited reached out to ask if they could speak; City Council President Zeke Cohen did exactly this, and we were more than happy to make room in our program for his excellent remarks. Senator Ferguson did not reach out. He attended the event, and indeed publicized his attendance on social media, but never approached our team to engage with us about his involvement or our work. Additionally, we recently learned that, on a piece of campaign literature he distributed to voters, Senator Ferguson prominently included a photo of himself at our previous No Kings Day rally, in 2025, at which he also was not among our speakers. The photo in question shows him alongside elected officials who did participate, creating a misleading impression of the nature of his involvement. To be clear, we do not at all resent his presence at our events; we welcome every elected official who shows up. What we find distasteful is his habit of using our events for self-promotion while never taking the time to actually engage with us.

In a healthy democracy, the people a legislator answers to are the ones who can vote him out. A constituent shouldn’t need a checkbook or a lobbyist to be heard by the person elected to represent them—showing up, asking, and caring should be enough. We’d like a senator who governs as though he remembers that.

On the Merits

We want to be clear that this was not a decision made by default. As we’ve communicated throughout our endorsement process, the candidates we endorse earn our support on their own merits—and the candidates we decline to endorse fall short on theirs. Senator Ferguson didn’t lose our support to a stronger opponent; he never earned it, and he wouldn’t have regardless of who he was running against. A record of waiting to act until risk is gone, a deep entanglement with the industries he’s meant to regulate, and a habit of ignoring constituents who can’t pressure him are all disqualifying on their own.

We know some will argue that keeping a Baltimore senator as Senate President is inherently valuable for our city. We respectfully disagree: a senator’s power only matters if he uses it to serve his constituents. Too often, Senator Ferguson has used his to defer to those who have leverage over him and overlook everyone else. That’s not power we should be proud of, and it’s not the kind of leadership we need right now. We don’t owe deference to power simply because it is powerful—it has to be earned, through service to the people in whose name it is held. That’s what we mean when we say “no kings,” and it’s just as true of the State House as it is of the White House.

You deserve a senator who answers to you. That’s why we didn’t endorse Bill Ferguson. It’s also why we’re proud of all the candidates we did endorse this cycle, up and down the ballot. This month, we hope you’ll vote for candidates who will lead responsively, respectfully, and with courage—and if you’re still making up your mind, we encourage you to read our full voter guide, to learn more about all of the excellent candidates we’re supporting.

The CCI Endorsement Committee