Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District has its November matchup set: Democratic incumbent Sarah Elfreth against Republican nominee Berney Flowers, a retired Air Force officer making his fourth run for a Maryland congressional seat since 2010. It’s a race with a wide gap in resources and a district that leans heavily blue, but the campaign finance filings tell their own story about how each campaign is built. Here’s what voters in Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and part of Carroll County need to know.
The District, Briefly
“It’s a race with a wide gap in resources and a district that leans heavily blue, but the campaign finance filings tell their own story about how each campaign is built.”
MD-3 covers all of Howard County, most of Anne Arundel County including Annapolis, and a slice of Carroll County. It’s one of Maryland’s most affluent districts, and it leans firmly Democratic: the Cook Political Report rates it D+12 heading into 2026. Elfreth won the open seat in 2024 with 59.4% of the vote to Republican Robert Steinberger’s 38.0%, succeeding longtime Rep. John Sarbanes, who retired after nine terms.
Like MD-2, this seat has not been part of the redistricting fight playing out in Annapolis this year. Democrats already hold it comfortably, so the push to redraw Maryland’s congressional map has centered on the state’s lone Republican-held seat, MD-1. MD-3 voters will still see the statewide constitutional amendment on redistricting on their November ballot, but it doesn’t affect this race.
Sarah Elfreth (D) — The Incumbent
Elfreth, of Annapolis, is finishing her first term in Congress after six years in the Maryland Senate, where she represented the Annapolis-based 30th District starting in 2019 and was the youngest woman ever elected to that chamber. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Towson University and a master’s in public policy from Johns Hopkins. In Congress, she sits on the House Armed Services Committee and in July voted against the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act, a break from the defense-heavy consensus that a district home to Fort Meade and a significant share of the region’s defense contracting workforce might not expect from its representative.
MDBayNews has previously reported on questions surrounding Elfreth’s donor network, including outside spending tied to pro-Israel groups during her 2024 campaign. Readers can find that reporting, along with our earlier coverage of her position on ICE enforcement, in our MD-3 archive.
A Closer Look at Elfreth’s Fundraising
Elfreth’s campaign has raised nearly $1.14 million this cycle, with about $336,000 in cash on hand as of the June 30 FEC deadline. A review of her itemized receipts shows a campaign funded by a mix of grassroots and institutional support:
Individual donors account for roughly $604,000 of itemized giving, and about 78% of that money came from Maryland residents.
Political action committees contributed about $427,000 across 262 separate donations from 141 different PACs.
Defense and government-contracting PACs — including Leidos, Booz Allen Hamilton, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell, Boeing, L3Harris, and several smaller contractors — combined for roughly $95,000, or about 22% of her total PAC money. That’s a notable detail given her vote against this year’s defense authorization bill.
Labor union PACs contributed roughly $62,000.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s political action committee gave $5,000 directly to her campaign committee in June, the maximum allowed for a primary-and-general combined cycle. That figure is separate from any outside, independent spending by AIPAC-aligned groups, which isn’t captured in a candidate’s own campaign filings and isn’t reflected in this dataset.
Her filings also show contributions from ten tribal governments around the country, most tied to gaming interests, totaling $21,500.
“Defense and government-contracting PACs combined for roughly $95,000 — about 22% of Elfreth’s total PAC money.”
On the spending side, Elfreth’s campaign paid roughly $181,000 for fundraising consulting, about $91,000 in direct contributions to other party committees plus a separate $10,000 general-election contribution — and sent a combined $111,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee over the course of the cycle, including a single $75,000 payment in March. The campaign also spent about $65,500 on compliance consulting and roughly $83,000 on payroll.
“Elfreth’s campaign sent a combined $111,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee over the course of the cycle.”
Berney Flowers (R) — The Challenger
Flowers, of Jessup in Howard County, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served nearly 21 years on active duty, including deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and was assigned to the Air Force’s Air Staff on September 11, 2001. After retiring from the military, he worked in banking before returning to the Department of Defense as a civilian cybersecurity specialist, including a stint as part of U.S. Cyber Command’s initial staff. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a graduate degree from Golden Gate University.
“Flowers’s campaign is a fraction of the size of Elfreth’s.”
This is Flowers’s fourth congressional campaign since 2010, when he first ran in Maryland’s 7th District. He ran in MD-2 in 2022 and briefly entered the MD-3 primary in 2024 before withdrawing. This cycle, he won the Republican nomination outright.
Flowers’s campaign is a fraction of the size of Elfreth’s. FEC filings show about $12,700 raised this cycle against roughly $14,400 spent, leaving about $2,000 in cash on hand as of June 30 — meaning his campaign spent more than it took in during the reporting period. Nearly all of his itemized donors are individual Maryland residents giving in the hundreds of dollars, plus two contributions from the Howard County Republican Central Committee totaling $4,500. His spending is similarly modest: texting and polling costs through a pair of small vendors, a few hundred dollars on yard signs, and a ticket to the Maryland GOP’s Red, White and Blue Dinner.
What to Watch
“Flowers is running the kind of grassroots, low-dollar campaign that reflects both his position as a decided underdog and a district where the math simply favors the incumbent.”
The district’s D+12 lean and the enormous financial gap between the campaigns make Elfreth the heavy favorite. But the fundraising data does complicate a simple story: Elfreth’s own committee reported only a modest, capped direct contribution from AIPAC’s PAC this cycle, even as her spending shows real institutional muscle behind her, including a six-figure transfer to the national party. Flowers, meanwhile, is running the kind of grassroots, low-dollar campaign that reflects both his position as a decided underdog and a district where the math simply favors the incumbent.
Sources:Candidate filings and status (active, withdrawn) are drawn from the Maryland State Board of Elections 2026 general election candidate list. Campaign finance totals, itemized Schedule A receipts, and itemized Schedule B disbursements are drawn from FEC filings covering the period through June 30, 2026; itemized totals exclude memo-coded entries to avoid double-counting earmarked and re-attributed contributions. District partisan lean (Cook PVI D+12) and district composition are from Ballotpedia and Wikipedia’s entry for Maryland’s 3rd congressional district. The 2024 general election result (Elfreth 59.4%, Steinberger 38.0%, Barajas 2.6%) is from NBC News election results. Rep. Elfreth’s committee assignment and NDAA vote are confirmed via her official House website. Background on Flowers’s military and professional career is drawn from Ballotpedia, his campaign website, and reporting by the Veterans for American Ideals Foundation. MDBayNews has previously reported on Rep. Elfreth’s donor network and her public position on ICE enforcement.
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