GOP primary for Carroll state’s attorney too close to call

Listen to this article

The Republican primary for Carroll County state’s attorney is too close to call, with thousands of ballots left to count and George Psoras leading Allan Culver by less than 200 votes Wednesday.

Psoras has received only 193 more votes than Culver, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections‘ unconfirmed returns Wednesday afternoon. With some mail-in and provisional ballots yet to be counted, Psoras has about 51% of the vote and Culver 49%.

The Carroll County Board of Elections will count roughly 4,000 mail-in ballots Thursday, Election Director Erin Perrone told The Daily Record. Those include both Democratic and Republican ballots, and Perrone couldn’t say how many there are of each.

Next Wednesday, she said, more than 300 provisional ballots will be counted. After that, the board will count 400 to 500 more mail-in ballots collected on Election Day.

The seat is open as State’s Attorney Haven Shoemaker Jr., a former state delegate who was elected prosecutor in 2022, announced last year that he would retire at the end of his term.

The primary will decide the election; there are no Democrats on the ballot.

Both candidates support close cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and opposed efforts in the Democrat-led Maryland General Assembly to end agreements between local sheriffs’ offices and ICE, and to limit the automatic charging of juveniles as adults.

Psoras, who vows to “make crime illegal again,” is positioning himself as an outsider.

He’s been a personal-injury plaintiffs’ lawyer for more than three decades and is now a partner at Rice, Murtha & Psoras. His criminal law is limited, but he’s vowed to bring on two criminal defense attorneys as “key members of the executive team, helping lead the office and actively prosecute cases to make Carroll County the safest county in Maryland,” his campaign website states.

Psoras, who self-funded his campaign with more than $70,000, argues the state’s attorney’s office has been ineffective at securing convictions under Shoemaker.

“Our current administration simply doesn’t win,” he says in a video posted by Carroll Community Media Center, adding that the office doesn’t adequately train its junior attorneys. He said he plans to create a diversion program for first-time nonviolent offenses and would personally prosecute serious cases.

Psoras’s campaign has gotten outside help from a political action committee called Small Businesses of Carroll County. The group is chaired and funded by Anthony Birdsong, a business owner who in April sued Shoemaker, Culver and another state’s attorneys office official for defamation.

Psoras is an outsider in the race, but Culver has spent most of his career in the Carroll County State’s Attorney’s Office, including as its interim head.

Before Shoemaker was elected, Culver served as interim state’s attorney for about a year and a half after his predecessor was appointed as a judge. Now, he’s the office’s special counsel.

Culver is also more deeply connected to local Republican leadership. He and incumbent Sheriff Jim DeWees ran as a slate; many yard signs in the county include both of their names. (DeWees appears on track to easily win his primary, with over 70% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.)

Culver has been endorsed by several prominent Carroll County Republicans, including Shoemaker, state Sen. Justin Ready and former state Del. Susan Krebs. Former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, also endorsed him.

In his interview with the Carroll Community Media Center, Culver said he had prosecuted everything from traffic violations to murders.

“I know the work of the state’s attorney’s office inside and out,” he said in the video.