MEET ANTHONY
Hey there, I’m Anthony Lyon. Thanks for visiting my website to learn more about me and my campaign. Politics has mattered to me since I was in middle school because I knew then how profoundly it affects our lives. The growing anger and dysfunction in our government has affected us in new ways, dividing our communities and families based on party affiliation like never before. At the end of the day, what do we have to show for the constant fighting, finger-pointing, and double standards? Maryland’s high cost of living is driving people from our state, our roads and classrooms are too full, and home ownership is out of reach for too many in my generation.
I was raised in a Republican family and have Democratic friends and colleagues. The experiences I had and the people I met growing up changed my perspective on politics. I’m a campaign organizer by trade, having spent more time knocking doors than any other professional activity. The thousands of face-to-face conversations I’ve had with voters since 2018 have convinced me that we all have more in common than the loudest voices would have us believe. Having worked for candidates and causes of both parties, I can safely say that the loudest, most divisive voices control them, and that’s not for me. I’m an independent at heart, and if our system didn’t so heavily favor the two major parties, that’s how I’d be running. But, in order to stand a chance, I had to run with a party, and the one that represents me more and can deliver more for our community in Annapolis is the Democratic Party.
I’m running for Delegate because I’m fed up with our division and believe that my background will help me build the bridges in Annapolis that are needed to deliver more resources to District 34B (Bel Air and Abingdon) and all of Harford County.
Read on below for more of my story.
I grew up in Hudson, Ohio, a small town that reminds me of Bel Air. Like Bel Air, Hudson is host to many small businesses and a family-friendly atmosphere with lots of community events. Each municipality in Ohio was responsible for its own school district, and my brother Vincent and I were blessed with an excellent education that every student should have. We grew up close (he’s just two years younger), with a shared love of pop culture. Our parents taught us to always work hard for what we have and to count our blessings. Sunday Mass and Italian pasta dinners were tradition at our house, as were outings to the movie theater for the latest Star Wars or Marvel film.
Music is a big part of my life. From 6th grade through junior year of college, I played tenor saxophone and doubled on bassoon in high school in every ensemble that would have me. My first elected office was President of Hudson High’s chapter of the Tri-M Music Honor Society. From 2023-2024, I played with the Middle River Community Band, traveling around the beltway every Monday night to share music at retirement homes. My church put out a call for new choir members, so I decided to give singing a try from 2023-2025. I gave up choir to dedicate more time to campaigning, but I look forward to rejoining in November. In the meantime, I’m still Secretary for our Pastoral Council.
So then, why politics? In preschool, I told my classmates that I wanted to be a paleontologist to study dinosaurs. My passion then became history, which put being a teacher on my radar and led me to Hiram College. History remains extremely important to me. One of the many reasons I love living in Maryland is being able to spend time exploring Civil War battlefields and visiting the museums and monuments in Washington, DC. History also sparked my interest in politics. My family shaped a lot of my early views. If Seinfeld wasn’t on the family TV, Fox News was. I no longer feel this way, but at the time, Conservatism seemed to align with my Catholic faith and the world as I knew it as a teenager. In 2016, I participated in a mock presidential debate at my high school on the side of then-candidate Donald Trump and attended a Trump rally. I remember being excited about a candidate who would shake up the system, but grew uncomfortable with the way that the Republican Party was increasingly judging people from backgrounds different than my own. My faith taught me not to judge someone until you’d walked a mile in their shoes.
I worked my way through college at Walmart, where I met colleagues and served customers from all kinds of backgrounds. My experiences with them changed my perspective on working-class people for the better. During the COVID lockdown, those of us in the dairy and frozen departments were essential workers. As someone who’s fascinated by systems, I loved learning about our store functions. Meeting dozens of customers every shift prepared me for meeting thousands of voters while knocking doors.
I’m a proud Hiram College Terrier, ‘21, where I earned a B.A. with double majors in Political Science and International Studies and a minor in History. Commuting to college was a priority for me because I wanted to minimize student loans, and the alma mater of U.S. President James A. Garfield seemed like a good fit. Located just 30 minutes away from my hometown, our small school on a hill in rural Ohio was very different from my public high school. Instead of coming from a single town, my classmates came from across the country and from a variety of income levels and lived experience. I quickly realized that many of the assumptions my politics had taught me to make about them simply weren’t true. I also learned a lot more about our country and its people through school trips studying our U.S. Presidents, from the Deep South to the West and the Northeast. These experiences challenged my stereotypes about people that I’d never met and whose hometowns and circumstances I'd never seen.
During my freshman year at Hiram, I founded our short-lived chapter of Turning Point USA. The next fall, in 2018, after interning for a Republican Ohio House candidate and knocking doors for the first time all summer, I converted our chapter into Middle Ground, a bipartisan political discussion club. Our focus was on increasing voter registration, turnout, and engagement on campus. I no longer felt at home in the Republican Party, which had become increasingly different from the one I grew up in. I couldn’t reconcile it with my Catholic faith and its core principle of loving thy neighbor. At the time, I thought the only alternative was to become a Democrat. My first jobs out of college were as organizers for a moderate Democrat, Congresswoman Shontel Brown, and two at-large city council races in the Cleveland suburbs.
In the spring of 2022, Ohio’s congressional maps were finalized late, and due to gerrymandering, the congressional race I was working on came to an end. My job search brought me to Bel Air, Maryland, in 2022, when I joined the campaign of our District 34 state senator, Mary-Dulany James, as Campaign Manager. Although this job was temporary, I was determined to stay in Bel Air afterward. When I visited our town for the first time to tour apartments, I knew I was home. Our downtown reminds me of Hudson’s, St. Margaret’s feels like my home parish of St. Mary’s, and there’s an awesome comic shop within walking distance. These last four years, I have taken many trips to Rocks State Park, Legends of the Fog, Six Flags America, and Western Maryland. I love walking to work when I can and swinging by Collector’s Corner, ShopRite, or St. Margaret’s for Adoration on my way home.
During the 2023 legislative session, I was a Committee Analyst for Senate President Bill Ferguson. Sitting in daily with the Senate Budget & Taxation Committee, I learned a ton about how our state government is funded and about the challenges ahead in our budget. It’s because of that experience that I’m concerned that enough isn’t being done about our structural deficit. Since then, I’ve been at Rice Consulting in downtown Bel Air, fundraising for campaigns large and small across our state. There is too much money in our elections, full stop, and fundraising is challenging for candidates without incumbency or institutional support. The most rewarding part of my job is supporting outsider candidates who go on to win and make a difference. Prior to my own campaign, I volunteered as an organizer with and member of the Harford County Democratic Central Committee, heading up voter contact and turnout efforts in 2024.
I’ve spent enough time in Democratic politics to know that there are things I’d change. Just as President Trump changed the Republican Party, the Democratic Party changed to fixate on him, rather than addressing the needs of their constituents. I can’t go along with reducing our debates to red versus blue, and I won’t abide by judging someone based on their party affiliation. The fall 2025 government shutdown was the last straw for me, as the partisan brinkmanship jeopardized the livelihoods of Maryland’s federal workers, many of whom are our neighbors. In good conscience, I could no longer personally identify with a party, and like a record number of Americans, I started identifying as an independent.
One of the benefits of running as yourself is being free to campaign on your own values and beliefs, and that’s what I aimed to do from the start. Like many of the thousands of voters that I’ve met since 2018, I don’t fit neatly into a box, even if our political system says we have to. I’m still conservative in that I think change should be gradual and deliberate, with a certain deference to fiscal restraint and systems that already work. And I’m still liberal in that I’m concerned about income inequality and feel that government has a responsibility to help the marginalized. Our elections are designed to favor the two major parties, and I know firsthand from my campaign experience that their infrastructure is needed to win. The Republican Party is favored in Harford County, but it is powerless in Annapolis. I felt strongly that I had to run with the party that represents me more and could deliver more for our community, and that’s the Democratic Party. Above all, I want leaders who value civility, honesty, and genuine engagement with and from voters. I’m running to be a leader who gives a voice to the middle and to our district, both of which are too often forgotten in Annapolis.
