What a political win in Cherry Hill says about the power of Baltimore’s Black women voters

The primary election was months ago, but people in Cherry Hill still tell the story like it’s folklore: Charismatic state Senate candidate Bobby LaPin was canvassing the Black South Baltimore neighborhood when he unexpectedly had to tangle with Termite.

Channeling the snappy social media posts that earned the political unknown attention, his pitch to voters included some trash talk of his opponent, Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson. Lifelong Cherry Hill resident and activist Kin “Termite” Brown-Lane wasn’t having any part of it. Around her neighborhood, Ferguson’s commitment is so deep that he’s sometimes called “Cherry Hill Bill.”

Brown-Lane unleashed on LaPin: “I told him, ‘Listen, you’re in the wrong neck of the woods to be talking about Bill.’”

Others in the area saw the encounter and spread word of it across the neighborhood. LaPin said he spoke to Ferguson supporters in Cherry Hill and left shortly thereafter; he said he did not remember talking to Brown-Lane.

In Baltimore politics, all roads go through Black women, the city’s largest, most reliable group of voters. When voters register in Maryland, they don’t report their race, meaning there’s no local data on the voting patterns of Black women, but local political analysts say it’s impossible to win a citywide election without them. The demographic is powerful enough to shape the way candidates campaign and even dictate where some attend church, according to one strategist.

“We know that Black women in Baltimore are the most powerful voting bloc in the city, period,” Mayor Brandon Scott said in an interview. “And everything goes through them. As it should, in my opinion.”

Though it was his closest race since first winning his seat 16 years ago, Ferguson easily defeated LaPin in the June 23 primary. Some of his strongest support came from South Baltimore’s Black neighborhoods. In Cherry Hill, for example, he won with more than 80% of the vote in all three precincts.

LaPin said he appreciates Black women voters and believes he did well in places such as Latrobe Homes “because of the help of powerful Black women.”

Brown-Lane recalled Ferguson popping up at the scene of a school break-in at 1 a.m. and in the early-morning hours after a homicide. She remembered how he helped get the power back on after a storm.

“He’s not sending people,” she said. “He shows up.”

Need proof of Black women’s political power in Baltimore? Visit a Black church during an election year or a major event that draws a large number of Black women, said Karen Miller, who runs a political fundraising and crisis management firm.

Black politicians in Baltimore are typically members of the “church family,” Miller said. And, while white politicians are not, that doesn’t stop some from going to Black churches and sororities and fraternities, who all have political action committees that invite candidates to talk about their platforms, she said.

Candidates also attend the annual Black Girls Vote gala and the AFRO tea, an event that attracts more than 1,100 people. Attendees have included Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman, U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, U.S. Rep. Johnny Olszewski Jr. and Scott.

“We are the folks who are leading the community associations, the church meetings, the PTAs,” Miller said. “We are locked in every facet of Baltimore city government and elsewhere.”

Ferguson said Black women “showed me what it actually means to be a warrior for people, and I hope my work on an everyday basis shows them how much they have taught me.”

Helen Holton, a City Council member for 21 years until stepping down in 2015, believes Black women are such a powerful force because many of the basic needs sought by voters — public education, the price of goods, safety — stem from the home.

“It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” she said.

Sabrina Tapp-Harper relied on her deep roots in Baltimore during her campaign to become the city’s first Black woman sheriff.

Miller and Tapp-Harper herself credit this approach with giving her a clear advantage in her campaign in which she was outspent by incumbent Sheriff Sam Cogen.

Tapp-Harper began her campaign by tapping into childhood classmates from Frederick Douglass High School and Roland Park Elementary/Middle School, who then mobilized grassroots activists and her house of worship, New Metropolitan Baptist Church in Upton.

She also worked in five of the nine districts in the city during her 26 years with the Baltimore Police Department, where she also led sexual assault investigations. She is a second-generation Coppin State alum and attended Johns Hopkins. All those networks helped her, she said.

The common thread of all these areas was Black women, who “absolutely played a major role in her victory,” she said.

She said she is still getting approached by random Baltimoreans, mostly Black women, who are congratulating her on the primary win.

What’s happening in Baltimore politics plays out nationally, said Niambi Carter, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. For generations, Black women have been at the helm of everything from social groups to grassroots organizations.

“Black women have been keenly aware of what the political stakes are, not just for us as women but for our communities, for our families, and that’s kind of what you see reflected in Baltimore. I mean, there is no political apparatus in Black America, quite frankly, without the labor and the commitment of Black women,“ Carter said.

Nykidra “Nyki” Robinson, founder of Black Girls Vote, a nonpartisan national group founded and based in Baltimore, calls Black women the most consequential voting bloc in the country — in part because of their influence over friends and family and ability to get them to vote.

“There is tremendous power in that,” she said.

Black women are by far Democrats’ most loyal voters, exit polls and surveys have shown. They voted for Democratic presidential candidate and then-Vice President Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by a 79-point margin in 2024 and for Joe Biden over Trump by a 90-point margin in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.

“No political party, candidate or institution should simply assume Black women are going to show up without asking what Black women and our communities are receiving in return, not personally but in terms of policy, investment, representation and accountability,” Robinson said.

When asked if it is possible to win a citywide race without the support of Black women, Ferguson asked why someone would be interested in doing that.

“You should want a coalition that actually reflects the city you’re asking to lead,” he said. “In Baltimore, that means earning the trust and support of Black women. Nobody is entitled to anybody’s vote. And what’s most important is knowing that earning that vote is a privilege and responsibility, requiring you to deliver better opportunities for families, for young people and for a shared belief that we can be better than where we are today.”