Arundel Politics: Anne Arundel’s member of Congress—in Tennessee
Capital Gazette
By Rick Hutzell
Wednesday, July 2, 2014

No one from Anne Arundel County has won a seat in Congress since Tom McMillen. Well, no one except Diane Black.

Turns out, if you want to get elected to Congress the secret is to move to Tennessee.

Black is a Republican from Hendersonville, Tenn., who represents the 6th District. But as a child she was Diane Warren, growing up on Eugenia Avenue in Ferndale. She graduated from the old Andover High School and earned a nursing degree from Anne Arundel Community College.

“I knew I wanted to be a nurse when I was really little,” she said. “I used to take care of my brothers and all their scrapes and all the kinds of things that went on when we played in the woods.”

Politics were not part of life in the home of Joseph and Audrey Warren. It wasn’t until after Black moved to Tennessee and raised three children that her cause arrived in the form of health care reform.

Tennessee adopted a program in 1994 that expanded Medicaid benefits to millions of poor families. It was a part of “Hillarycare,” the failed reform pushed by President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary.

Black thought TennCare opened the door to waste and abuse, flooding emergency rooms and making it too easy to get prescriptions from multiple doctors.

“I was working in the hospital seeing the results of it ... It was very concerning what was happening both from the quality perspective and the cost.”

TennCare survived, and today helps 1.2 million people a year. But the issue made Black a state representative, and played a role in her run for state Senate in 2004. She learned how government works, and was savvy and respected enough to become the first chairwoman of the Republican caucus.

Black might have stayed in Nashville, but her cause came knocking again when President Barack Obama won approval for the Affordable Care Act. Luck handed her the opportunity to answer in 2010 when Rep. Bart Gordon decided to retire.

“I’m still working in the hospital and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is deja vu,’” Black said. “I’d seen the same model in Tennessee with TennCare, now much bigger, kind of on steroids, on a national level, and decided I could have a voice in that. That’s really what compelled me to run for Congress.”

Her background was right for the moment in Washington, D.C., where the Republican-led House began a symbolic series of votes to repeal Obamacare. She won seats on two powerful committees, and became the rare freshman to get a bill signed by the president — closing a loophole in the Affordable Care Act that gave unneeded premium subsidies to seniors.

“Twelve years in the state legislature and in leadership positions really groomed me to be parachuted into a really complex system in Washington,” she said.

She’s poised for more success, working as a whip to help elect Kevin McCarthy House majority leader.

Black was in Ferndale last month for a family reunion. The visit makes her the only member of Congress to come home to Anne Arundel in decades. Voters here are divided among four districts, limiting their voice.

Just one of Black’s 19 counties is cut up that way. She called divided counties a confusing situation for constituents and public officials looking for help from Congress.

“I just think it’s better for both the people and also the elected officials if you can have a single representative representing the entire county — my personal opinion.”

Republican Nancy Hoyt of Severna Park is challenging Rep. Donna Edwards this year in the 4th District, the only Anne Arundel contender to survive the primary. She and future candidates can take a lesson from Black’s success.

It takes a cause, experience, hard work and luck to make it to Washington.

And it helps to be from somewhere else.