Democrat April McClain Delaney declared victory Friday in a tight and often contentious race to represent Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, as the ongoing count of mail-in ballots showed her with a widening lead over Republican Neil Parrott.

McClain Delaney’s announcement Friday came as NBC News and CNN projected her the winner. On Saturday, the Associated Press, too, called the race for McClain Delaney. She was ahead of Parrott by fewer than 9,000 votes, with about 89% of the vote counted.

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the trust the people of Maryland’s 6th District have placed in me,” McClain Delaney said in a statement. She went on to say that her campaign has been about “common sense, common ground leadership that puts people over politics, defends our freedoms and values, and builds a future centered on unity.”

Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland Democratic Party congratulated McClain Delaney on Friday.

Parrott said on social media that vote counting continues and that he was “extremely grateful for the huge amount of work” during the campaign.

McClain Delaney is poised to become the third woman from Maryland elected to Congress this cycle, joining U.S. Sen.-elect Angela Alsobrooks and U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah Elfreth of the 3rd District. For eight years, the state’s 10-member congressional delegation has been entirely male.

The 6th District is a sprawling, ideologically diverse swath that spans ruby-red counties in the state’s panhandle, all of purple Frederick County and deep-blue suburbs in Montgomery County. Democrats outnumber Republicans 41% to 34% — a much narrower gap than in the rest of the state — and almost one-in-four voters is unaffiliated with either party.

Days before Tuesday’s election, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its rating of the race from “likely Democrat” to “lean Democrat,” signaling a tighter contest than what is typical for a Maryland congressional race. In the final weeks, both campaigns received boosts from their national parties and PAC-funded ads. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise campaigned with Parrott, while Moore hit the trail with McClain Delaney.

The 6th District became much more competitive after redistricting in 2022, when lawmakers redrew the lines to exclude parts of Montgomery County.

The seat became open when U.S. Rep. David Trone, a Democrat now in his third term, opted to run for the U.S. Senate this year. He lost to Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive. His absence from the fall ballot cost Democrats his name recognition, incumbency and immense personal wealth.

Running in his place was McClain Delaney, a former nonprofit leader who has never held elected office and was not well-known in the district. She waged a campaign amid a climate of broad discontent toward Democratic President Joe Biden, under whom McClain Delaney served in the U.S. Commerce Department.

But while that sentiment propelled Republican Donald Trump to a second term and contributed to a rightward shift in every corner of reliably blue Maryland, it appeared Friday that it wouldn’t be enough to flip a seat that Trone had won in 2022 by 9.6 percentage points and that Democrats have held for more than a decade.

Aiding McClain Delaney’s cause: Federal campaign finance reports show that she raised $4.4 million, including $2.6 million that she pumped into her own campaign, to Parrott’s $910,000.

McClain Delaney, the wife of former U.S. Rep. John Delaney, said she ran for Congress in large part to protect abortion rights. She often talked about the issue in personal terms, drawing on her experience as a mother of four daughters and someone who survived a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy in her mid-30s.

Parrott is a former state delegate who was making his third bid to represent the 6th District, having lost in 2020 and 2022 to Trone. He argued that abortion was a “non-issue” in the race because there weren’t enough votes in Congress to enact national standards.

Instead, he made immigration and the economy the main themes of his campaign. He supported lowering taxes, building a border wall and investing in transportation improvements. On foreign policy, he advocated ending U.S. aid to Ukraine and opposed a two-state solution in the Middle East.

The candidates hurled attacks and aired negative ads throughout a bitter campaign. McClain Delaney argued Parrott was too extreme, particularly on social issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. She cited numerous examples from his 12 years as a state legislator, including his support of a fetal personhood amendment and his vote against a bill that would have made it easier to prosecute spousal rape and sexual assault.

Parrott claimed McClain Delaney was lying about his record. He criticized McClain Delaney’s ties to the Biden administration and repeatedly attacked her for living in Potomac, a tony suburb eight miles outside the district line. The U.S. Constitution only requires House members to reside in the state they’re representing.

The campaign’s acrimonious tone was on full display during an October forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Frederick County. The final minutes erupted into a fiery confrontation, with McClain Delaney interrupting Parrott’s closing remarks, and Parrott telling McClain Delaney to “be quiet.” Seated alongside each other on stage, the candidates continued talking over each other and pointing in each other’s faces before Parrott stormed off stage.

Additional mail votes and provisional ballots are yet to be counted, and complete results are not expected for several days.