Johnny Olszewski Jr. planned to bring his young daughter to the U.S. House of Representatives for his swearing-in on Friday. “My daughter gets to be on the floor because she’s under 12. She is nine going on 16,” he said.

Fellow Rep.-elect Sarah Elfreth was to leave her Annapolis home early in the morning, pick up her new office keys and voting card, and later greet her parents and other guests at a Capitol Hill reception with Olszewski. “I think we’ll have 250 of our closest friends coming,” she said.

Even as the celebrations continue, Olszewski, Elfreth and other federal lawmakers from Maryland will immediately confront the challenge — and perhaps the frustration — of being Democrats in a Republican-controlled Congress. Maryland’s delegation includes just one Republican, Rep. Andy Harris, whose district includes Harford County, the Eastern Shore and a piece of Baltimore County.

The other Marylanders’ minority status will quickly be driven home as the House elects its speaker on Friday. It was not immediately clear if the chamber would retain Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson in the post, but the GOP — by virtue of its 220-215 advantage — will certainly choose a Republican speaker. Its majority means a GOP representative will chair every committee, and the party will also manage the Senate and the White House following President-elect Donald Trump’s November electoral victory. Democrats had held the Senate until Friday.

For Maryland Democrats, Republican control is an exercise in carefully picking their battles and assessing how and when to compromise.

It’s a new dynamic for Olszewski, 42, the former Baltimore County executive and state House of Delegates member, and Elfreth, 36, who was the youngest woman ever elected to the Maryland Senate. Democrats maintain a significant majority in Annapolis and can override a governor’s veto.

In their careers, Olszewski and Elfreth have both emphasized working with Republicans, a skill they will need in the Capitol’s supercharged partisan atmosphere.

Democrat Ben Cardin, who was Maryland’s senior U.S. senator and did not seek reelection in November, long advocated for measured compromise. “I was taught that it’s OK to compromise — don’t ever compromise your principles — but find a path to get things done,” Cardin said during his recent farewell tour.

“I think Americans have always wanted cooperation. I don’t think that they’re looking for us to just throw bombs at each other,” Olszewski said this week in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. “I think that they want us to actually work together and find solutions, and if that means those solutions are a little more incremental than I might like, they’re still solutions that move us forward in my in my eyes.”

Olszewski said the search for “common ground” could include the divisive issue of reproductive rights. “You know, I might not agree with my Republican colleagues, for example, on access to abortion, but I think IVF is a place where we can find protections and some common ground,” he said.

Senate Republicans twice last year blocked Democratic attempts to protect access to in vitro fertilization. GOP members said afterward that they didn’t oppose the procedure but considered the legislation unnecessary.

Olszewski and Elfreth are two of Maryland’s four new delegation members in Washington. The others are Sen.-elect Angela Alsobrooks and Rep. April McClain Delaney of Montgomery County.

Elfreth said she would seek bipartisan support for such priorities as protecting Annapolis and Ellicott City from flood damage resulting from climate change.

Elfreth also plans to seek more federal support for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“My grandfather served in Korea and Vietnam and came home with PTSD,” she said. “They didn’t talk about it at the time, let alone diagnose it, but it led to lifelong challenges,” she said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who inherits Cardin’s title as the state’s senior senator, said the first bill he expects to introduce would require the largest corporate polluters to pay into a fund to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Van Hollen said in an interview that he is also promoting “pocketbook” measures such as bipartisan legislation making it easier for employees to be transferred ownership of the businesses they work for. He said the bill would empower workers and keep jobs and opportunities in the United States instead of under foreign ownership.

“Some things we can do with bipartisan support, but there’s also the fact that we’re going to have to defend Marylanders against many of the proposals that are coming down from the Trump administration,” the senator said.

Trump has proposed dramatically cutting the federal workforce, which he says is bloated, and converting many “career” officials into political employees. He has called entrenched workers “the deep state,” saying at a rally: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.”

As many as 160,000 federal workers are based in Maryland, which is home to the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn.

“We obviously are going to work to ensure that they don’t blow up a system that’s designed to serve the American people and substitute a system of political cronyism,” Van Hollen said.

Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, is expected to soon release his list of federal priorities after meetings with the state’s delegation.

Those priorities, his office said in a prepared statement, “will continue to encompass issues that have strong bipartisan support.”

Those include, the statement said, infrastructure rebuilding, health care concerns, Chesapeake Bay protection, and “keeping faith with our service members, military families and veterans.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com.