Wes Moore projected to make history as Maryland’s first Black governor

Wes Moore will win the Maryland gubernatorial race, CBS News projects, making him the state’s first Black governor. Moore will also be just the third Black governor elected in U.S. history.

President Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden appeared alongside Moore Monday at Bowie State University for his final stop on the campaign trail.

Douglas Wilder was elected Virginia governor in 1989, and Deval Patrick was elected Massachusetts governor in 2006. Other Black men have served as governor, but assumed the office after their governor resigned — like former New York Gov. David Paterson, who was lieutenant governor, and became governor when Eliot Spitzer resigned. 

If Stacey Abrams were to win the Georgia gubernatorial race, she would become the nation’s first Black female governor, but CBS News CBS News estimates the race leans Republican.

Moore defeated Republican candidate Dan Cox, and ran with lieutenant governor candidate Aruna Miller, who was previously a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. She was the first Indian American woman elected to the state legislature, according to Capital News Service. 

Moore and Cox debated each other once, during which Moore criticized Cox for attending the  “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, according to CBS News Baltimore. Cox has spread the baseless claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and has amplified the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Moore called Cox “an extremist election-denier whose rhetoric and his policies are not only dangerous and divisive, but will take our state backwards.”

Moore, a combat veteran and author, had never run for public office before his bid for governor, according to his campaign website. He was a Rhodes Scholar, and studied at Oxford University after graduating from Valley Forge Military College and Johns Hopkins University. Moore was a U.S. Army captain and paratrooper deployed in Afghanistan.

Before running for governor, he was CEO of Robin Hood Foundation, a nonprofit that works to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. 

He wrote a New York Times bestseller, “The Other Wes Moore,” about “the fragile nature of opportunity in America,” which is commonly assigned reading in Maryland schools, according to his campaign site. Among his other books is “Five Days,” which tells the story of Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody in 2015.

Moore and his wife, Dawn, have two children. 

Caitlin O’Kane

Caitlin O’Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift.