Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, the front-runner to be the next speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, is an unabashed progressive who has championed immigrants’ rights and health equity.

Over the weekend, Peña-Melnyk locked up enough support among fellow Democrats to clear the field in the competition to succeed Del. Adrienne A. Jones, who stepped back from the speaker’s role last week.

Peña-Melnyk isn’t officially speaker yet — that would come after the House Democratic Caucus votes behind closed doors next Tuesday, and after the entire House of Delegates votes as well. But barring a turn of events, Peña-Melnyk is likely the next to take charge of the House of Delegates.

Here is a quick primer on the state House’s new power player.

Dominican Republic → New York → Maryland

Peña-Melnyk would be the rare General Assembly presiding officer who is not a born-and-raised Marylander.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Peña-Melnyk and her family moved to New York City when she was a child.

After graduating from John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, Peña-Melnyk was the first in her family to attend college. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Buffalo State College and a law degree from the University at Buffalo.

Peña-Melnyk eventually moved to the Washington, D.C., area. She became active in the community, winning a seat on the College Park City Council. She won election to the House of Delegates in 2006 and has served there ever since.

It’s been some 75 years since the House of Delegates has had a speaker who wasn’t born in Maryland. That honor goes to C. Ferdinand Sybert, speaker from 1947 to 1950, who was born in Loretta, Pennsylvania, but moved to Maryland at age 2.

John S. White, who was speaker from 1944 to 1946, was born and raised in Philadelphia, and moved to the D.C. suburbs after serving in World War I.

Peña-Melnyk would become the first Afro-Latina speaker in state history.

From a powerhouse district

Peña-Melnyk represents the state’s District 21, which includes neighborhoods in northern Prince George’s County and western Anne Arundel County. As with all districts, there are three state delegates and one state senator.

Combined, the district has plenty of sway in Annapolis. In addition to Peña-Melnyk as the presumptive next speaker, the district’s reps also include Del. Ben Barnes as House Appropriations Committee chair and Sen. Jim Rosapepe as vice chair of the Senate’s Budget and Taxation Committee.

Barnes made a bid for speaker himself, but bowed out and threw his support behind his district-mate Sunday night.

Rosapepe said Peña-Melnyk is a tireless worker, whether it’s on a timely health issue or a local concern in the district, such as a yearslong effort to get safety improvements to Route 1 through College Park.

Rosapepe described Peña-Melnyk as a “pragmatic progressive” in the vein of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Peña-Melnyk has a strong sense of empathy for her constituents and her colleagues, Rosapepe said.

“She intuitively tries to understand where the other person is coming from. What do they need from this conversation?” Rosapepe said. “That explains why she was a leading candidate for speaker and is likely to become speaker: Because a majority of her colleagues thinks she understands them and listens to them.”

Barnes, who was first elected the same year as Peña-Melnyk, praised his colleague as smart and capable.

“She has the grit that it takes. She has the intelligence that it takes. She has the experience that it takes. She has the empathy that it takes,” he said. “That combination of skills is rare and will just make her a tremendous speaker.”

Expertise in health policy

During her entire House of Delegates career, Peña-Melnyk has served on the Health and Government Operations Committee, becoming the vice chair in 2019 and the chair in 2022.

She’s had a part in every major public health measure passed by the General Assembly, from requiring digital medical records years before other states to securing reproductive rights to codifying provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act into state law.

Under Peña-Melnyk’s leadership, the state created a panel that sets price limits for certain prescriptions covered by state government health plans, a first-in-the-nation effort that will be expanded to private insurance plans.

Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Health Care For All Coalition, has worked closely with Peña-Melnyk. He said he’s “thrilled” that she’s likely the next speaker.

“She has shown her deep commitment to health care affordability for all and her ability to get things done,” DeMarco said.

Fighting ‘for people on society’s margins’

In her campaign materials, Peña-Melnyk touts her work fighting “for people on society’s margins.”

Peña-Melnyk has recalled that her immigrant single mom struggled working in the garment industry, and the family relied on welfare for a time. Peña-Melnyk said she helped translate for her mother at the welfare office and was enlisted to help others in the neighborhood, too.

In law school, Peña-Melnyk spent summers working for death row inmates and migrant farmworkers. Early in her career, Peña-Melnyk was an attorney for foster children and abused children.

Later she was an attorney in private practice and a federal prosecutor, and she volunteered on the board of the immigrant advocacy group Casa.

In Annapolis, many of Peña-Melnyk’s legislative efforts have centered around the rights of people who are vulnerable.

She sponsored laws that require implicit bias training for perinatal health care providers and led to the creation of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Another bill requires that people incarcerated in state prisons be counted at their home addresses in the census, rather than at their prisons.

This past year, Peña-Melnyk has been outspoken in support of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Marylander who has been wrapped up in a controversial immigration case.

At a government conference this summer, Peña-Melnyk publicly pressed a federal ICE official on the agency’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

“We need to be respectful because we are lacking empathy right now in this country, and we are abusing people and we have laws for a reason,” she said, according to news reports. “Can you please go back to your office and tell them to be kinder?”

Many electoral victories, 1 loss

When Peña-Melnyk ran for the House of Delegates in heavily Democratic District 21, she finished third for three slots in the Democratic primary, unseating incumbent Del. Brian Moe, who finished fourth. She’s won reelection every four years since then.

Peña-Melnyk had one loss in that time span, though, in a 2016 campaign for Congress for the 4th District, which at the time included parts of Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties.

She finished third in the Democratic primary, behind eventual winner Anthony Brown (now the state attorney general) and Glenn Ivey (who holds the seat now).

She was endorsed by The Washington Post’s editorial board, who said that Peña-Melnyk made up for a lack of name recognition with “preternatural endowments of energy, grit, and determination.”