Cephas wins in Cambridge; ex-mayor’s comeback attempt falls short

Cambridge voters on Tuesday rejected an attempt by a scandal-scarred former mayor to return to office.

In a runoff to become the Eastern Shore city’s next mayor, City Council President Lajan Cephas defeated former Mayor Andrew Bradshaw, with 787 votes, or 53%, to Bradshaw’s 697 votes, or 47%. She’ll succeed Mayor Stephen Rideout, who won a special election to replace Bradshaw in 2022 but chose not to seek a full term this year.

Bradshaw conceded in a video posted to social media Tuesday night, saying Cephas “has the ability to be a great leader for the city.”

Bradshaw resigned as mayor in 2022 after being charged by the state prosecutor’s office on 50 counts of distributing revenge porn on social media — a development that attracted national headlines. An apologetic Bradshaw reemerged to attempt a political comeback this year, saying he was worried about the direction of the economically pressed city and felt he had unfinished business to complete.

Cephas, a council veteran, served as acting mayor for nine months following Bradshaw’s resignation — and she will again for the rest of the year. Rideout resigned effective Tuesday because he is moving out of town. Cephas will be officially sworn in as mayor next month.

Both Bradshaw and Cephas laid out similar priorities in the election, including the importance of economic development in Cambridge, the imperative of jump-starting a stalled waterfront development proposal and the need to address decades of racial and economic disparities in the city. Race, in a city where the population was 47.4% Black and 38.19% white, according to the 2020 Census, may have been a factor in the election outcome.

Cephas, a former corrections officer who now sells insurance, is the second Black woman elected as the city’s mayor. Victoria Jackson-Stanley, who was the first woman and first African-American to serve in the top job, was mayor from 2008 until 2020, when she was defeated by Bradshaw.

Cephas and Bradshaw and a third candidate for mayor, former City Commissioner La-Shon Foster, appeared on the regular election ballot in October, but none of them got more that 50% of the vote, triggering Tuesday’s runoff. Cephas finished with 42.5% in October, compared with 41% for Bradshaw and 16.5% for Foster, who was eliminated from the runoff as the third-place finisher.

Although municipal elections in Cambridge are nonpartisan affairs, the Maryland Democratic Party weighed in on Cephas’ behalf in the runoff’s final days, blistering Bradshaw for his prior scandal. Democrats said they were moved to intervene because Bradshaw was being bankrolled by Republicans for his comeback attempt.

“Andrew Bradshaw hasn’t explained how he’s changed from the man who catfished as his ex-girlfriend in a deliberate, sustained campaign of humiliation against her while he sat in the mayor’s office,” a state Democratic spokesperson, Luca Amayo said earlier this week. “His rush to reclaim power reveals a troubling disregard for the harm his crimes caused as he seeks to lead once again.”

There is little evidence, though, that the Democratic news releases swayed the election result.