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Maryland Congressman Rep. Elijah Cummings  died early Thursday morning. However, his legacy will continue through his wife Maya Rockeymoore Cummings. She is expected to run for his seat in the House.

See Also: Black Leaders Mourn The Tremendous Loss Of Rep. Elijah Cummings

The Washington Examiner reports, Rockeymoore Cummings, 48, “will be most likely successor to fill his congressional seat.” She is currently the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party and ran for Maryland governor in 2017. She and Cummings have been married since in 2008.

The Washington Examiner also reports “Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has 10 days to schedule a special election for Cummings’ seat and will likely set the date by the middle of next week, according to state political sources. The primary election is expected to take place next January and the general election in March.”

Cummings became a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1983 and by 1996 he was the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland’s 7th District, which is the seat Rockeymoore Cummings would run for.

According to The Baltimore Sun, the wake and funeral for Cummings will be held at New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, which is the church where he worshiped for nearly four decades, on Friday, Oct. 25. The church reportedly seats 4,000 people.

Elijah Eugene Cummings was born Jan. 18, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was a graduate of Howard University and the University of Maryland School of Law.

The shocking news of his death came after Cummings, the ranking chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, recently announced that he was having a medical procedure but never returned to his Capitol Hill offices afterward, according to the Baltimore Sun. That announcement came on Sept. 30 and said that he was only expected to miss about two weeks of work.

Tuesday would have been his first day back to work following his medical procedure. Instead, he ended up missing that day’s House roll call vote.

According to his official House bio, Cummings “began his career of public service in the Maryland House of Delegates, where he served for 14 years and became the first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tem. Since 1996, Congressman Cummings has proudly represented Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

In his final hours, Cummings was still pushing policy. Rep. Ayanna Pressley wrote on Twitter, “As I was paying my respects to our forever Chairman, his staff told me that in his final hours he signed subpoenas to USCIS and ICE, pursuing justice for immigrants in my district & across the country with chronic medical conditions. A man of his word every moment of his life.”

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Black Leaders Mourn The Tremendous Loss Of Rep. Elijah Cummings

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