Annapolis entrepreneur, Severna Park nurse file for Rep. John Sarbanes’ District 3 Congressional seat

Produce business owner Abigail Diehl, and Severna Park nurse Kristin Lyman Nabors have filed as candidates for the seat held by Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes representing the 3rd Congressional District.

Sarbanes announced in October he would not seek reelection after 17 years in office.

The Anne Arundel residents, both Democrats, enter an already crowded candidate field that includes several seasoned liberal legislators from across the region. They’ll by vying in the May 14 primary for the chance to compete in the general election for the seat covering Howard County and parts of Carroll and Anne Arundel, including Annapolis. The filing deadline is Feb. 9.

Maryland Sen. Sarah Elfreth and Dels. Mark Chang and Mike Rogers, all Anne Arundel Democrats, have begun campaigning, along with Howard County Democrats Sen. Clarence Lam and Dels. Vanessa Atterbeary and Terri Hill.

Diehl, a 41-year-old from Severna Park who now resides in Annapolis, owns Diehl’s Produce of Annapolis. She became intrigued by politics in the 1980s watching her father run for the Maryland House of Delegates. Though Douglas Diehl, who owns Diehl’s Produce in Severna Park, lost his race the campaign fascinated his daughter.

“I just remember the energy in the room all around it,” she said. “Even though I was so young it was really tangible.”

The younger Diehl entered the political sphere around 2016 following the passage of bills legalizing medical cannabis.

For the past several years Diehl has worked for cannabis companies with local operations starting with Kind Therapeutics and transitioning to MariMed in addition to running her produce business and launching her own line of CBD chews.

Navigating the regulatory hurdles of the fledgling industry piqued her interest in government. She soon got involved in the successful effort to legalize recreational cannabis, serving as Montgomery County Sen. Brian Feldman’s volunteer senior cannabis adviser. She found that she could get things done on the state level, as did her peer, former Anne Arundel-area Sen. John Astle, a fellow Democrat who encouraged her to run, she said. She launched her campaign Thursday night at Midnight Madness in Annapolis with Astle by her side.

“I am extremely unhappy with how politics are going,” Diehl said. “I don’t like to complain about things; I’ve always been a solutions person and I like to get involved.”

With a background in agriculture and alternative medicine, Diehl said she’s long been curious about innovative methods and technologies to slow climate change, improve food quality and transition the U.S. to clean energy. A platform like a congressional seat could enable her to integrate cutting-edge programs into government to address national issues, she said.

“I’ve seen problems that we have easy solutions to that we’re just not doing,” Diehl said, such as efficient methods to clean nuclear waste and conserve water.

If elected, she said she would assess strategies to use the momentum of the cannabis industry for the benefit of agriculture as a whole. For example, proposing or supporting legislation incentivizing farmers who intend to grow cannabis to harvest nutritious crops as well.

While access to healthy, preservative-free food isn’t necessarily as buzzy a political topic as universal medical coverage, education or mental health, allocating more government resources toward improving the quality of food in schools, prisons and hospitals could help alleviate pressure on those systems, she said.

In Washington, she’d look into ways to remove processed products from school cafeterias and help education systems partner with local farms.

“I truly believe food is medicine,” she said.

Lyman Nabors, a Michigan native who works in nephrology research for the Johns Hopkins University, is also new to politics. The 43-year-old is concerned with the overrepresentation of men and lawyers in Congress and the effect that has on their constituents. She filed for the seat in October.

“Nurses by nature are problem solvers,” Lyman Nabors said. “It’s just unfortunate that up to this point in time you don’t see more of them out in the political environment advocating like they do for their patients.”

As a woman, a nurse and someone who has lived many of the challenges Congress is grappling with now, she felt her perspective could be valuable in Washington.

“These things have happened to me,” Lyman Nabors said, pointing to “the exorbitant cost of higher education, health care worker burnout, substance use disorders and recovery — for a long time I lived without any health insurance.”

In D.C., Lyman Nabors said she’d attempt to increase security measures at public schools to protect children and faculty from gun violence. It’s a service she’d help fund by lobbying for cuts to the Department of Defense budget, she said.

Through her medical experience, she’s become horrified by the substandard conditions of Medicare-funded nursing homes. She’d seek to improve oversight of those facilities perhaps by supporting the formation of a task force dedicated to auditing these sites at a higher level.

The nation needs “to figure out how to help people age with dignity and also die with dignity,” Lyman Nabors said. “Seniors struggle with mental health, too.”

She said that mental health is another topic central to her platform, specifically designing or supporting a federal mandate requiring employers to offer mental health days.

“I just think a lot of people have thrown their hands up and just are along for the ride,” she said. “We can have a different world, but we have to want it.”