By Sharif Silmi
Where things stand
Arkia Wade is one canvass away from becoming the first Muslim ever elected to the Baltimore County Council, and along with Makeda Scott, among the first Black women as well. As of Thursday morning, November 5, the State Board of Elections has her at 10,020 votes to Tim Fazenbaker's 11,094 in the new District 9, a deficit of 1,074 with the mail-in and provisional canvasses still ahead. The county has posted 22,716 votes in the race so far: 6,410 from early voting, 14,977 from Election Day and 1,329 by mail. Donna Eve Radtke Sekora, running unaffiliated, holds 1,556.
Wade's standing in this community is not in question. Her grandparents moved to Dundalk in the 1940s; she has served on the board of the Turner Station Conservation Teams since 2014; she founded Neighborhood Companions, a nonprofit that drives seniors and disabled residents to where they need to be; and the county named her its 2023 Woman of the Year. District 9 was drawn in 2025 to cover Dundalk, Edgemere, Sparrows Point, Turner Station and a slice of Rosedale, and its precincts went 59 to 40 Republican in the 2022 council races. Wade won the Democratic nomination in June by 41 votes, after a mail-in canvass that ran for days. She has been here before.
The count
The mail-in ballots counted so far favor Wade decisively. Of the 1,329 tallied, she took 793, or 59.7 percent; Fazenbaker took 447, or 33.6 percent; Sekora took 87. That is a net gain for Wade of 26 votes on every hundred mail ballots opened.
District 9 consists of 23 precincts: 18 sit in Legislative District 6 and five, the Rosedale precincts, sit in Legislative District 8. Those 18 precincts hold 60 percent of District 6's registered voters; the five Rosedale precincts hold 14 percent of District 8's. As of November 4, District 6 had 3,317 mail ballots received and not yet counted, and District 8 had 5,815. Apply the shares and District 9 has roughly 2,770 mail ballots waiting: about 61 percent from registered Democrats, 21 percent from Republicans and 18 percent from unaffiliated voters. The ballots already counted ran 61, 26 and 13, so the remaining pool is five points less Republican than the one that produced her 26-point margin.
At her current pace, 2,770 ballots yield a net of about 720 votes, roughly 350 short. To close the gap on mail alone she needs a net of 39 points, which is 66 percent to Fazenbaker's 27.
Provisional ballots are canvassed separately on November 11, and the county has not yet published how many were cast. In the June primary, provisionals amounted to 3.5 percent of District 9's vote; the same rate here produces 800 to 1,200 ballots, and the State Board's same-day registration report already shows 363 new registrations and address changes in District 9, 279 of them on Election Day. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day count if they arrive by 10 a.m. on November 13, the day the county certifies. Taken together, close to 4,000 ballots remain, and Wade needs a net of about 28 points across them. She is running 26 on the mail counted so far.
The opponent
Fazenbaker's record is the reason this race is close in a district his party carried by 19 points four years ago. In June, his own party's central committee voted 24 to 0 to censure him over Facebook posts it found libelous toward one of its members; Delegate Ric Metzgar, the three-term conservative who represents Dundalk in Annapolis, has denounced him in the strongest personal terms and declined to endorse anyone in the race. Appearing before the County Council in December to oppose a bill protecting the county's immigrant residents, he told Councilman Izzy Patoka, "Do not be a traitor to your people," and he later called the members who supported it "sissies." The Banner reports that he has promoted unfounded claims of fraud in Maryland's elections, and that at least eight people in six years have petitioned for peace orders against him alleging harassment, threats or stalking, two of them sitting Republican lawmakers. Most of those petitions were denied and he has never been convicted of a crime; he denies the accusations and dismisses the censure as the work of party insiders. His supporters have directed anti-Muslim attacks at Wade on social media, and when the Banner asked him to condemn them, he declined.
Republicans in the district have noticed. Ed Hale Sr., the banker and former gubernatorial candidate, hosted a fundraiser for Wade and gave her campaign $1,000. Sekora, the unaffiliated candidate, has said that if she cannot win, she would rather Wade did. Wade outraised him.
Down, but not out
Wade is where a candidate in her position should be. "I'm at the Board of Elections right now. Been here since 8:30am and will be here everyday until the last vote is counted," she told the Crescent on Thursday. Canvassing resumed that morning in Owings Mills and continues into next week; the county posts each day's mail-in results after the board closes out.
Her margin on the mail counted before Election Day was 26 points. The ballots still to be opened come from a pool that is less Republican than the one that produced it. Provisional voters, many of them new registrants, add close to a thousand ballots on November 11. In June, a primary that was too close to call on election night went her way after days of canvassing. We will continue to watch the margin on the next batch of mail. This seat is within reach, and the count runs through November 13.
