In the 1980s, Ben Cardin and I went to Congress from very different places, both politically and geographically. I was a young Republican elected in 1980 from a suburban Los Angeles district as Ronald Reagan swept into the White House. Six years later, Ben was elected as a Baltimore Democrat who had served as speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates. I would stay in the House for more than 30 years, while, in 2007, Ben moved to the Senate, where he still is today.
There were plenty of times when we disagreed. But, in 2019, we came together on one topic where we share an identical viewpoint — the vital importance of the First Amendment and a vibrant free press.
On June 28, 2018, in a targeted attack, a gunman killed five people in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis. At the time I was a director on the board of Tribune Publishing, and six months later, I became its chair. Our company had bought Capital Gazette Communications, in 2014 through Baltimore Sun Media, which we owned at the time.
