After a dominant election year and a hectic three-month General Assembly session, the majority party’s lawmakers poured out of the State House largely having stayed united, completed almost all of their agenda and set themselves up for another three years of progressive policymaking.

It is, they said, just the beginning.

“This isn’t a three-month mission. It’s a four-year, eight-year, generational mission,” wrote Maryland Democratic Party Chair Yvette Lewis in a fundraising pitch to supporters Tuesday, the day after the session ended.

She highlighted the party’s moves in the legislature to expand access to abortion, improve local election processes, help victims of child sexual abuse, expand gun control and pass a budget that is “equitable and prosperous.”

The Democrats’ turn to capitalize on their successes serves as both celebration and preview, especially as issues like abortion rights and gun control remain targets of federal courts stocked with judges and justices appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump.

At the same time, the session marked the diminished sway in Maryland of Republicans. The GOP has long toiled in the legislative minority, but controlled the governor’s office for 12 of the last 20 years.

It’s a power shift that played out in behind-the-scenes meetings and public debates all during the 90-day legislative session before swirling into chaos right before the General Assembly’s midnight Monday deadline to wrap up its work. That’s when Republican delegates shouted at House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones for not allowing them time to explain their positions on a bill.

Jones said the following day that she accepted an apology from Republican Del. Nic Kipke of Anne Arundel County for yelling at her to “sit down” during the fracas. And Kipke told The Baltimore Sun he called Jones to convey his respect.

But he also maintained Democrats ignored the chamber’s rules when they wouldn’t let Republicans speak and that he would continue to advocate for his positions. And House Minority Leader Jason Buckel of Allegany County said after the House adjourned that Democrats were to blame for the derailment by calling up a bill Republicans opposed at the last minute.

Whether those issues carry over to the second year of this four-year term is unclear.

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, bringing a relentlessly friendly public persona from the campaign trail to the governor’s mansion, has made his pitch to the opposition party. He invited Republican legislators to some of the many events at Government House and recruited their support for his legislative agenda.

“I’m proud because this session showed that we as a state can move differently,” Moore said Tuesday at his first bill-signing ceremony. “It showed that we can move in partnership. And it showed that, once again, Maryland can do big things and Maryland can lead.”

Still, there’s work to do. Two days after the end of the session, Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey said in a statement that his Democratic counterparts “flat-out ignored” constituents’ concerns to address violent crime. He disparaged the passage of a request from Democratic State’s Attorney Ivan Bates of Baltimore to raise maximum sentences for illegal firearm possession from three years to five as a “small measure” and “attempt to ‘check the box’ on public safety.”

While some Democrats had issues with parts of Moore’s first-year agenda, they said they’re pleased with how the session played out and what it means moving forward.

“It’s like night and day,” said Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat, in an interview while reflecting on the differences between Moore and his predecessor, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.

She described Moore as accessible and cooperative, someone who doesn’t believe in “my way or the highway” while working with the legislature.

Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, similarly said his chamber and the governor have worked collaboratively in a way to “set ourselves up for a good four years.”

Part of that was not just building new relationships but navigating old ones.

Ferguson, who turns 40 this weekend, and Moore, 44, are both public figures in Baltimore whose kids are roughly the same age. They’ve been friends for years, and suddenly leading separate branches of government is vastly different from working together outside of government and having friendly family barbecues.

“That has been an adjustment that we’ve had to kind of figure out,” Ferguson said. “I think we’ve gotten more and more comfortable about kind of knowing … there’s places where we’re just going to have a different perspective on the way to move forward, and that’s OK.”

Those disagreements — while few and far between in the scope of the hundreds of bills and nominees approved this session — bubbled up around some of Moore’s priorities and cabinet picks.

One of his most vocal campaign promises, to immediately raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and link it to increases in inflation, met a wall as legislators pushed back the date to increase the wage and removed the inflation provision. The revised version was the first bill Moore signed into law. Other bills to increase a tax cut for military retirement income and provide free health care to members of the Maryland National Guard also were scaled back.

And though hundreds of appointments for the governor’s cabinet and other state boards and commissions sailed through the Senate confirmation process without issue, concerns over his picks for the Maryland State Police and the Department of Juvenile Services delayed those nominees.

Also, one nominee for the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, withdrew because of concerns from environmentalists. Another pick, for the powerful Maryland Stadium Authority, fizzled out when senators concerned about her past financial and legal issues chose to never call her for a vote.

“Just because the governor’s proposals were adjusted or changed or amended, I mean, that’s what the legislature does,” Ferguson said. “That is our job, and so that’s not a loss. It’s actually what the process is supposed to be.”

Moore has refrained from focusing on any shortcomings, saying repeatedly all 10 of his bills passed. A fundraising email Friday, after a three-month fundraising freeze for all state officials during the session, showed him and his family at the Orioles home opener and said Moore was “batting 1.000!”

He has not said whether he will propose again next year ideas like linking minimum wage increases to changes in inflation, though he maintained that’s smart policy.

Certainly, other issues debated in the 2023 session will return in the next several years, either because their bills didn’t cross the finish line, because certain new laws may face court challenges or because not every aspect of a complex situation could be addressed or anticipated.

That includes some of this year’s landmark bills.

Widely expected legal challenges to the Child Victims Act (over a “lookback window” that would allow victims a period to file lawsuits regardless of when the abuse occurred) and new gun control policies (over proposed limits on where licensed firearm owners can carry guns in public) could leave those policies in a kind of legal limbo.

Moore signed the abuse litigation bill in an emotional ceremony less than a day after the legislature adjourned. He’s called the gun bills “common-sense gun policies,” but has not committed to signing them.

Ferguson said lawmakers passed bills in both cases that they believe are constitutional. But if a person or group challenges the gun laws, as he expects, and the U.S. Supreme Court makes an unfavorable ruling, the legislature will “adjust as needed — that’s why we’re back every year.”

The opportunity for child sex abuse victims to sue is a more untested part of the law, Ferguson said, while noting that Democratic Attorney General Anthony Brown has said he’s comfortable representing the state in arguing for the law in court.

Lawmakers already are preparing to revisit another major, complicated bill to create and regulate the recreational cannabis industry in Maryland. Or, as Senate Finance Committee Chair Melony Griffith put it while addressing her colleagues during the debate in the chamber: “I’m fairly confident that, for as long as we all live and breathe, we will be working on this in the same way that we are on alcohol bills every single year.”

Ferguson said Griffith, a Prince George’s County Democrat, and others carried out a “herculean task” that ended up largely where he expected it would — a framework that will need to be tinkered with in future sessions, but one that allows the industry to launch July 1.

Those tweaks could run the gamut, from changes in the number and types of cannabis licenses issued to further evaluations of criminal justice issues, such as penalties for illegal distribution or driving under the influence.

Two rounds of cannabis licenses will have been awarded by the time lawmakers begin next year’s session in January. The third round isn’t scheduled to go out until spring 2024, leaving time for potential improvements.

For instance, some lawmakers expressed concerns around “on-site consumption” licenses that won’t be issued until that last round, which begins May 1, 2024. Though negotiations and hearings led to added restrictions on what would essentially be cannabis bars — such as prohibiting smoking indoors and banning most food-service businesses like restaurants from getting a cannabis license — further restrictions could be proposed before they launch.

An outstanding question is what will happen to businesses that sell hemp-derived products like CBD and Delta-8. Despite an outcry from business owners, Democratic lawmakers were mostly comfortable with limiting the amount of THC in those unregulated products, effectively requiring those businesses to change their products or acquire a recreational cannabis license. Lawmakers have not committed to revising the issue of hemp-specific regulations next year.

“We’ll see how things play out moving forward,” Ferguson said. “I do hope that a number of the retailers that have gone into that business and been successful find a way to apply to be a part of the adult-use program moving forward. I’m sure not all of them will.”

He said legislators wanted a “legal marketplace, while also understanding it was going to have a negative impact on some.”

Cannabis-related issues on the agenda next year likely will touch on criminal penalties, too, including one bill that appeared headed for passage before the chaos in the House minutes before the session ended. The bill would have reduced penalties for high-volume cannabis dealers. House Majority Leader Marc Korman blamed the disruption for the House adjourning before the bill was passed.

Another bill that missed its chance for the same reason would have provided coordinators to help school districts carry out the state’s long-term education plan, the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

With hundreds of other bills coming up short or having mixed results under the new dynamics in Annapolis, it’s hard to know what will happen for the rest of the term.

“I don’t like to predict,” said Jones, a 26-year lawmaker who became the first female and the first Black leader of either chamber of the General Assembly in 2019. “You have to be flexible to deal with what’s happening.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Hannah Gaskill contributed to this article.