GOP Freshman Challenges Maryland Power Structure

By any standard measure, Neil Parrott's place in Maryland politics ought to be toward the very bottom. He's a freshman Republican delegate in a very blue state, without pedigree or government connections.

Yet through dogged organizing and clever use of technology, this tea party leader from Hagerstown has turned a little-used provision of the Maryland Constitution into a tool capable of overturning chunks of the ruling Democrats' legislative agenda.

Parrott, a University of Maryland-trained traffic engineer, developed a website that makes it much easier to collect the 56,000 valid signatures needed to petition a law to referendum in Maryland. As a result, three laws are headed to voters in November — laws to legalize same-sex marriage, allow some illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition, and create a new congressional map.

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