Elijah Cummings

BALTIMORE — Two dozen Democrats are running for the nomination in Maryland’s 7th District, but no one looms larger over the race than the late Elijah Cummings, whose death last fall prompted the upcoming special election.

What Cummings wanted in a successor — and what people think he would have wanted — have become big factors in this contest, where the two best-known candidates are his widow, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, and his friend and predecessor, Kweisi Mfume, who left Congress in 1996 to lead the NAACP.

The late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore left $1 million in unspent campaign funds, according to election records. That raised an unanswered question: What happens to all that money now?

Rep. Elijah Cummings was the first African American and African American lawmaker to lie in state in the US Capitol, according to congressional historians.

Speaking at the late Maryland representative's funeral, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that "Elijah brought people together in life of different parties and in his death of different parties."

She pointed out that "it took bipartisan agreement for Elijah to lie in repose on the same catafalque that Abraham Lincoln lied in repose at the Capitol."

Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are expected to speak at the late Rep. Elijah Cummings’ funeral on Friday, according to reports.

The Baltimore lawmaker passed away at Johns Hopkins Hospital on October 17 amid “complications concerning longstanding health challenges.” His funeral service is scheduled to take place at the New Psalmist Baptist Church in his Baltimore district on Friday and will feature high profile Democrat figures, such as Obama, Pelosi, and the Clintons.

Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland died early Tuesday due to complications stemming from longtime health issues, the Democratic leader’s office announced. He was 68. Cummings, who has played a high-profile role in a myriad of investigations into President Donald Trump as the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, underwent a medical procedure last month but had not yet returned to his office this week when the House was back in session.

Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings died early Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital due to complications from longstanding health challenges, his congressional office said. He was 68.

A sharecropper's son, Cummings became the powerful chairman of a U.S. House committee that investigated President Donald Trump, and was a formidable orator who passionately advocated for the poor in his black-majority district, which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore as well as more well-to-do suburbs.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Baltimore attorney and civil rights advocate who served in Maryland's legislature before representing the state in the U.S. House, where he took on a lead role in investigating President Trump, has died. He was 68.

Cummings, the head of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, died early Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital from complications related to longstanding health challenges, according to The Associated Press.

Last weekend, the president got bored and decided to see if he could make Democrats defend one of the most dangerous, mismanaged places in the country. And of course, he could. It wasn't hard. He just sent a flurry of tweets criticizing the city of Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings. President Donald Trump called Baltimore a "disgusting, rat and rodent invested" hellhole, a "corrupt mess" that "no human being" would want to live in. A lot of people who've never been to Baltimore claimed to be deeply offended by those remarks.

President Trump was already seething about Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.

He was frustrated that the oversight committee Cummings (D-Md.) chairs authorized a subpoena last week that could sweep up emails from his daughter and son-in-law. He was annoyed that Cummings stood alongside Democratic leaders discussing the possibility of impeachment following testimony by the former special counsel.

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused US President Donald Trump of "racist attacks" in his tweets about an African-American lawmaker.
Mr Trump attacked Democratic Rep Elijah Cummings and his Maryland district on Twitter.
The president described Mr Cummings' majority-black district in Baltimore as a "rodent-infested mess".
Mr Cummings was a "bully", Mr Trump wrote, for criticising the treatment of migrants at the US-Mexico border.