Three weeks into last year’s legislative session, a lobbyist for Constellation Energy wined and dined members of the powerful House Economic Matters Committee at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Annapolis, where a New York strip goes for $67. The tab cost Constellation $4,550.67, lobbying records show.

Not to be outdone, a lobbyist for Baltimore Gas and Electric, a subsidiary of Exelon Corp. and Constellation’s former sibling turned rival, took the same committee out for dinner less than two weeks later. The meal, which included BGE executives, took place at The Choptank, an Atlas restaurant on the waterfront, and was even spendier: $5,361.72.

So it goes in Annapolis, where these energy giants dominate political spending. Exelon, through BGE and its other subsidiary, Pepco, spent $925,000 trying to peddle influence last year. Constellation, at nearly $1.5 million, spent more than any corporation in the state. This session will see more of the same. Constellation has 16 registered lobbyists for the 2026 legislative session — more than any entity not named Exelon, which will employ 34 advocates.

At the same time, Exelon and Constellation are among the state’s top campaign donors — the second and third biggest, according to campaign finance records.

It’s all part of an increasingly tense contest between Constellation and its former owner, Chicago-based Exelon, to win over state leaders and the public in a newly charged era of energy politics. Their lobbying is only expected to intensify as state leaders aim to tamp down surging utility bills and brace for new pressures on the power grid.

At issue is the future of Maryland’s energy generation. Top Democrats passed legislation last session to fast-track development of new energy projects, including natural gas plants, which are controversial for their climate-warming emissions.

Constellation’s business is generating power — the Baltimore-based company is the largest energy producer in the country — and Exelon’s is delivering it. Exelon wants to cut into Constellation’s business by building plants of its own, a step that would require the legislature to reverse decades of regulatory policy. Maryland law prohibits power-delivery companies like BGE from owning the sources of power.

Top Maryland Democrats haven’t dismissed the idea.

“We need to have more energy access, full stop,” Gov. Wes Moore said in an interview this week.

But Constellation has tried to make its own case. CEO Joe Dominguez told lawmakers at a company-sponsored event in November that he doesn’t buy doomsday predictions about data center consequences for the power grid and argued Maryland leaders need to understand strains on the system before rushing to build.

Nonetheless, Maryland regulators recently approved fast-track reviews for a Constellation proposal to construct over 700 megawatts of new natural gas.

Senate President Bill Ferguson, who sponsored legislation last session to boost in-state power generation, called Constellation’s gas proposals “a step in the right direction.”

To BGE CEO Tamla Olivier, it’s not enough.

Olivier said in an interview that Constellation’s proposal falls well short of Maryland’s needs. She warned of blackouts for Baltimore-area customers as early as 2027 due to increased demand here and in neighboring states including Pennsylvania, which supplies energy to Maryland.

Dominguez and Olivier are vying for state leaders’ favor at a time when there’s little love lost between their estranged companies.

At the November event, Dominguez said, if Maryland wants a partner that “will take no risk, has no expertise, no talent and no land to do this,” the state should let Exelon build power plants.

But, if the state takes that route, Dominguez threatened that Constellation would cut its investment in Maryland.

“We would stop doing what we’re doing in the state,” he said in a November interview.

It’s not clear whether lawmakers buy it.

Ferguson expressed hope in his statement that the “free markets” will resolve Maryland’s energy needs but left the door open to Exelon’s big ask.

“Any proposed alterations to State law will be dependent on the benefit to Marylanders paying unacceptably high utility bills,” the Senate president said.

Maryland is not the only state expected to hear arguments from Exelon that it should be allowed to own power plants. About half of U.S. states bar regulated utilities from owning their own generation, part of a deregulatory wave in the 1990s designed to make energy markets more competitive and therefore cheaper for consumers.

Exelon CEO Calvin Butler told Reuters in September that the company hopes to undo that 27-year-old divorce of generation and delivery in Maryland and elsewhere across its mid-Atlantic service area.

That could allow BGE to charge ratepayers for the costs of building new generation while earning a profit. But the company has yet to find a Maryland lawmaker willing to introduce its proposal, and it might not.

“I had one legislator, who will go nameless, say to me, ‘Tamla, I believe everything you’re saying,’” Olivier said. “The exact quote was: ‘What’s effed up about this role is that you’re talking technical, which is all truth. This is politics.’”

As that anonymous lawmaker expressed to Olivier, the entire General Assembly, as well as Moore, is up for reelection this year. Nobody wants to be seen as the person driving up utility bills, regardless of the state’s energy needs, making this situation all the more sensitive.

This is where the lobbyists earn their paychecks.

Olivier said Exelon’s lobbyists are in Annapolis for the “education” of lawmakers on the finer points of energy policy.

Constellation sees what it’s doing the same way.

It’s not a state legislator’s job to be an expert on the power system, said Mason Emnett, Constellation’s senior vice president of public policy.

“They want to understand. They appreciate that this is a very complex set of issues,” he said. “So we just respond to their questions. We provide them information.”

Some of this education happens over filet mignon.

Del. C.T. Wilson, a Democrat from Charles County and former chair of the House Economic Matters Committee, said those industry-bought meals are often the only way lobbyists can get meaningful face time with lawmakers. Energy companies, which have also donated at least $14,500 to his campaign since 2021, treated Wilson’s former committee to four dinners last year, lobbying records show.

These meals are one of the perks of being an elected official, Wilson said, but a legislator’s vote probably can’t be bought with a seafood dinner.

“The same people who would fall for that would also fall for bribes, I guess,” Wilson said.

He said his committee’s record with Constellation is proof that feting lawmakers only goes so far.

“Constellation has been very unhappy with my committee for many years,” Wilson said. “Joe Dominguez is a great guy and I love him to death, but we don’t rule in favor of them because they take us out to nice dinners.”

Others, though, feel the energy industry’s vast resources give it a serious edge.

Kim Coble, director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, said that although her group played a central role in discussions on energy legislation last session, it could never figure out which companies helped shape it.

“When we point blank asked them, they wouldn’t answer that,” she said of lawmakers.

The industry’s army of lobbyists is daunting, Coble said, because it far outstrips the resources available to the environmentalist flank.

“After last year, I think anything is possible. These guys are powerful and they have money and they have influence,” she said. “So I would never underestimate their ability to get things passed that they want. Ever.”

Last year, Moore met with executives from Exelon subsidiaries BGE and Pepco at the State House. According to records shared with The Banner by the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog, the June meeting was meant to introduce Moore to Olivier and to discuss the utility’s economic impact and policy priorities, “specifically resource adequacy” of the regional power grid.

Olivier said last week that she’s had “a lot of good conversations” with Moore’s office and appreciates his team’s recognition that something needs to be done to address rising costs. At the same time, Olivier feels her company’s lobbying has helped move the needle back toward natural gas, which not long ago was anathema to many Maryland Democrats.

“I was talking to one of [Moore’s] energy advisers,” Olivier said, “and I was like, ‘You know, we’re still not talking about gas being part of the portfolio.’ He’s like, ‘Actually, he did say it before Christmas. Out loud.”

Constellation’s Dominguez has met with the governor, too. According to emails obtained by The Banner, Dominguez and Moore spoke last fall, ahead of an event announcing the company’s $340 million Conowingo Dam deal with the state.

Both companies have taken creative avenues to spread their messages to a bigger audience.

As the General Assembly prepared to vote on an energy bill that Constellation opposed during the 2024 session, the company sent two dozen of its marked service trucks to Annapolis to circle the State House.

The bill passed, much to the chagrin of Constellation, which has urged lawmakers to revisit the issue.

Exelon, aware that a public frustrated by high energy bills might not be on its side, seems poised to launch a new advertising campaign.

In a social media post last week, a New York talent agency put out a casting call for customers of Exelon-owned utilities who use electricity or gas in “meaningful and interesting ways.”

The post offered examples of ideal candidates, including people who volunteer at homeless shelters, DJs, glassblowers, drone pilots and parents “doing fun things with their kids at home using power.”

Reporter Hayes Gardner contributed to this story.