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State office candidates speak with senior voters ahead of voter registration deadline

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Posted at 6:01 PM, Jun 28, 2022
and last updated 2022-06-28 19:15:13-04

BALTIMORE — Like most Baltimore City residents, Dr. Marvin Cheatham, the Mathew Henson Neighborhood Association president, is frustrated with violent crime plaguing the place he’s called home for decades.

While we’ve witnessed his reaction to Baltimore’s bloodshed before, Cheatham is putting the candidates running for state office --hopeful to address them front and center.

“We gave them the question of crime, senior issues, food desert and black agenda. We asked them to address questions that we have as seniors. We vote more than anybody else so we wanted to hear some of the answers to our questions,” Cheatham said.

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Candidates for Governor Comptroller and Attorney General addressed the audience of senior voters at Huber Memorial Church Tuesday afternoon.

Dr. Cheatham said he’s hopeful by giving candidates a chance to explain their plan and approach to addressing crime. The right people are put in place to reverse the deadly trend of violence seemingly becoming normalized

"I’ve been here 71 years," Cheatham said. "I’ve never seen it this bad before in all areas education, crime, violence, community service, it’s the worse.

The forum gave candidates an opportunity to speak and mingle with voters and gave some voters a final opportunity to get registered.

Some of his peers who attended the forum, including Lena Redmon, said she was looking to learn what plans candidates had to protect senior citizens like herself.

“We’ve worked all of our lives and we still have to fight to go out. Its ridiculous. You have no protection today when you have 70 and 80 year old people being killed everyday in the street. We have children being killed everyday in the streets. Something has to change,” Redmon said.

The goal was to ultimately inform voters of their options in the primary which is just three weeks away.

“I think it's always an issue trying to get people to not only come out and vote but to vote intelligently and I think that’s one of our biggest problems here in the greater Baltimore area,” Cheatham said.

“Its about safety health education and crime so we have to be apart of that,” Redmon added.