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Governor-Elect Moore has announced several key staff positions for his administration.
Fagan Harris, president and CEO of Baltimore Corps, a nonprofit employment and grantmaking agency, will become his chief of staff. Other key positions include:
- State House Majority Leader Eric Luedtke (D-Montgomery) will become chief legislative officer;
- Helene Grady, vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer at Johns Hopkins University, will become secretary at the Department of Budget and Management;
- Tisha Edwards, a former top official at Baltimore City Hall who was the Moore campaign’s chief of staff, will become appointments secretary;
- Amanda LaForge, an election lawyer and veteran of former Gov. Parris Glendening’s administration, will become chief counsel.
An article in Maryland Matters provides some background on each appointment.
By tapping Harris, who has never worked in government before — but has worked closely with government, particularly in Baltimore City — Moore is hoping to signal a change in the way the state does business, advisers said. Harris has few close ties to the Annapolis political establishment.
“The governor-elect really believes that Marylanders want us to do things differently and that’s what voters wanted…so I think we’re really going to lean into that,” Harris said in an interview Sunday.
Baltimore Corps, which Harris has led since he started the organization with Moore, the nonprofit’s first board president, recruits and places people who are often overlooked in the job market, connecting them to career opportunities in public service or with nonprofit organizations or entrepreneurial ventures.
…In Luedtke, Moore is getting a young but highly experienced lawmaker who was just elected to his fourth term — and whose wife, Dawn Luedtke, was just elected to the Montgomery County Council. Eric Luedtke, 41, is a top lieutenant to House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) and was an early backer of Moore’s in the Democratic primary. A faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Luedtke will be an integral part of Moore’s legislative strategy. He has strong, obvious ties to House leadership, but is also well-regarded by many senators.
…Grady, Moore’s nominee for budget secretary, has been in her current position at Hopkins since 2020 but joined the staff a decade earlier, first as associate dean for finance and administration in the School of Nursing, then as vice president for planning and budget. She also served as deputy director of finance for the City of Baltimore for nearly five years and as Philadelphia’s assistant and then deputy budget director for almost four years.
…LaForge, who served as counsel to the Moore campaign, has been a top Democratic campaign lawyer for the past two decades, including as counsel to the Democratic National Committee. But she also has worked in state government, during the Glendening administration.
