Editor’s note: The Frederick News-Post is profiling the candidates in Frederick County’s state legislative races and Maryland’s 6th Congressional District in the Nov. 8 general election. For county office candidate profiles and other election coverage, go to fredericknewspost.com/news/continuing_coverage/election_coverage.
Del Neil Parrott is running for the U.S. House of Representatives to champion “common sense” tax policies he believes will boost manufacturing jobs and help stave off an economic depression he fears Democratic decision-making is causing .
Parrott, a transportation engineer who has served in the Maryland House of Delegates since 2010, cited inflation as a major factor in his decision to run to represent District 6 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The Biden-Pelosi-Trone agenda is really hurting middle-class families, people who are on fixed incomes,” Parrott said, referring to his opponent in the general election, U.S. Rep. David Trone. “I think we can do better.”
It’s been a contentious election season since Trone and Parrott won their respective races in July, with Trone receiving 17,943 votes and Parrott receiving 10,452.
Backed by nearly $13 million, Trone has bought ads labeling his opponent an “extremist” who is anti-LGBTQ, anti-women’s rights and an ineffective legislator.
Earlier this month, Parrott held a press conference where he accused Trone of misleading voters in a campaign video about his previous position that HIV-positive people should get tattoos to mark their status and be treated for the disease.
Parrott, who proposed the tattoo idea in a 2005 letter to the editor of The Herald-Mail in Hagerstown, said he publicly retracted it 12 years ago.
Two years ago, the last time Trone and Parrott competed to represent Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, Trone beat Parrott by nearly 20 percentage points.
But now the district looks different. After the 2020 redistricting cycle, it covers a much larger swath of Frederick County.
“It’s very competitive this time,” Parrott said.
During the last legislative session, Parrott introduced 10 bills, one of which passed.
HB222, which requires drivers traveling slower than the general speed of traffic on roads in rural areas to drive in the right lane if practical, took effect this month.
According to a Capital News Service analysis of data from Maryland’s 2019 legislative session, Parrot was one of the state’s “least successful” lawmakers that year: None of the 16 bills he introduced became law .
But the number of bills a lawmaker can pass “is by no means a measure” of their success, Parrott said.
“You’re there to do people’s work,” he said. “A lot of times, that involves trying to stop bills that are going to be harmful to your community that you represent and doing that in any way that you can.”
There are other reasons to propose a bill besides being sure it will become law, Parrott said. Sometimes, it’s to make a point.
He pointed to a bill he introduced in 2019 that would have given counties the authority to set a minimum wage.
Lawmakers had been discussing raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, which they voted in favor of later that session, and Parrott said he wanted lawmakers to consider allowing counties to choose their own rates .
“Unfortunately, counties like mine were hurt, and are being hurt, by this bill,” he said, referring to Washington County. “Every year, it gets worse.”
At the beginning of the year, in July, Parrott wrote on Twitter that even though Joe Biden is president, he believes “there were irregularities that could have changed the election.”
“Fact: I would have voted against certifying the election results [Pennsylvania] i [Arizona],” he wrote. “Send to the states to review.”
When asked by the Frederick News-Post if he thinks Trump lost the 2020 election, Parrott said yes.
“Well, he did,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious who the president is right now. Just look at the economy. I mean, it’s a real disaster.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m running,” he said. “We can’t afford two more years of the way this country is going. We need to make sure Congress changes right now.”