Sarah David takes commanding lead over Scott Shellenberger for Baltimore County state’s attorney

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Baltimore County might have a new state’s attorney for the first time in two decades.

Sarah David held a commanding lead against incumbent Scott Shellenberger in the Democratic primary on Tuesday night. As of 11 p.m., she’d received about 52% of the vote, compared to Shellenberger’s 27%, with 243 of 258 Election Day precincts reported, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections’ unofficial returns.

Lauren Lipscomb, who leads the conviction integrity unit of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, was in third with about 21% of the votes.

There are no Republicans or independents in the race, meaning the winner’s name will be the only one on the ballot in November.

Four years after an outspoken progressive lost to the moderate Shellenberger by a hair, David, the No. 2 at the Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor, took a different tack — though she received significant help from a progressive group.

She told The Daily Record earlier this year that under her leadership, the office would be “very different from the way it has been,” but she declined to put herself in an ideological camp. She said she would reform an office that suffered from a “lack of leadership” under Shellenberger. She campaigned on modernizing its use of technology and data, taking sexual assault cases “seriously” and communicating more effectively with the public.

David won over many of Shellenberger’s former supporters. They said that he had run the office less effectively in recent years, with high staff turnover and accused mishandling of sexual assault victims.

David also dominated the fundraising battle, with her success driven in large part by her deep connections to the local legal community. She raised the second-most of any candidate for state’s attorney in a contested primary, raising and spending more than three times as much as the incumbent. Lipscomb raised and spent far less than both.

In addition to her own fundraising, David received independent support from a political action committee. The Working Families Party, a progressive group, spent more than $200,000 on her behalf in the final weeks of the campaign.

This story will be updated.