Rob Steinberger pulled away as LaToya Nkongolo tried to coax him onto the parking lot at Laurel Park. Dancers were moving ahead and back, left and right, under a late August sun at the African American Heritage Festival.

The Republican candidate for Congress was stumping in an apple-red campaign polo. Nkongolo, who is running for the Anne Arundel County school board, wore a banana-yellow T-shirt. For a moment, they engaged in a two-step of wills as South African singer Nomcebo Zikode’s “Jerusalema” propelled the crowd of about 40.

“No, no,” Steinberger said, letting the song continue without him.

He is running in the 3rd District against a better-known, more experienced and better-financed Democrat, state Sen. Sarah Elfreth. There’s a Libertarian candidate, too. But by any reasonable examination of voter rolls, Elfreth has a much easier job — not to lose.

Steinberger’s job — the one he’s been toiling away at since winning the Republican primary in May — is introducing himself to voters. That, and getting anyone to listen.

He recalled meeting a reporter waiting outside a local high school for Elfreth on the day of the primary. She explained she wasn’t writing about him because the odds are against him.

“And I’m like, wait, that’s not true at all! By not reporting it, you influence the office.”

Steinberger sat down with me at an Annapolis coffee shop a few days before the culture festival and one day after Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president.

“I listened … to a number of the speakers at the DNC, “ he said. “Quite frankly, if you took some of those speeches, reversed some of the words obviously, and put it at the RNC, they’re not that different. I mean, both sides are attacking the other. But the ultimate goal is: America, where do you want to go? Bettering the lives of the citizens that we represent ... they’re the goals.”

Steinberger, 52, is a lawyer, but not the kind who dukes it out daily in a courtroom. He’s corporate. He’s worked for companies in finance, strategy and contracts as both an employee and — as he currently does for FujiFilm — a consultant. He moved from New York to Arnold, in Anne Arundel County, nine years ago. He and his wife have two young children.

He’s done the parades, slogging through the July Fourth heat on a borrowed fire truck and tossing out candy.

“We ran out of candy about two-thirds of the way through because I had kids just handing it out,” he said. “I had a little neighbor girl, who’s all of 9, and she started the kids chanting, ‘Vote for Rob.’”

He’s knocking on doors with state Republican Party teams, who are focused on former Gov. Larry Hogan’s campaign for U.S. Senate, and making the rounds of Republican clubs.

He steps carefully around former President Donald Trump’s popularity, trying to get the right degree of distance from Trump’s ideas and actions, such as mass deportations or killing the bipartisan immigration compromise in Washington.

“I want to get down there and actually stop some of the infighting or encourage the infighting to stop,” Steinberger said. “To actually get to work. To do things that are going to help the economy. To close the border, to get those legislations passed. …

“I try to be careful what I say here, but I do think that there was an opportunity and politically, it stopped.”

So, would he have supported the immigration bill?

“I think so. From what I’ve read of it. Yes.”

That’s another problem. Running for Congress for the first time means vying for a job without personal knowledge of what works there or in any legislature.

He wants to address the high cost of child care based on the experience that he and his wife had. He wants to expand the child tax credit, another of President Joe Biden’s initiatives blocked by Republicans. He just isn’t offering any details.

“You think everybody’s going in with the answers?” Steinberger asked. “Yeah, I have a few ideas. I’m not gonna, I mean, sit here and do a dissertation for you about what some of those are.”

Steinberger is running because U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, a Democrat, didn’t seek a 10th term. It is a rare open seat, and his motivations sound similar to those that Elfreth cited in December.

He was as unknown in the primary as in the general election campaign. His campaign was hobbled by a hospital stay last fall. In the end, that low profile may have been an advantage.

Steinberger beat Republicans in the primary who were known for losing — Berney Flowers of Elkridge in 2022 and Thomas E. “Pinkston” Harris of Baltimore in 2018, 2020 and 2022. John Rea of Annapolis lost more elections in the last decade than all of them.

Winning got Maryland party leaders’ attention, he says, in a heavily Democratic district.

“I think I surprised everyone, yeah, including [party leader and U.S. Rep.] Andy Harris,” Steinberger said. “When I was at the state convention, GOP convention after the primary, my conversation with Andy was like, ‘How did you do this? Who are you and how did you do this?’”

So he spends his weekends meeting people. At the African Diaspora Committee’s festival at Laurel Park, a few hundred people circled tents filled with jewelry, lotions, clothing and brightly colored crafts or queued up for Liberian-style sausages and jollof rice. As a location, it symbolizes the district.

Here is Anne Arundel. Across the rail line is Howard. Carroll County is nowhere to be seen, just as true for its few precincts lassoed into the district four years ago. And like the district, Laurel Park is changing. Racing will end there in the next few years after the state revamps Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.

At the Republican tent, “Trump 2024″ signs peeked out from behind the “Vote Rob Steinberger U.S. Congress” placards. Only a few people stopped by. It wasn’t any busier for the Democrats a few steps away.

Party volunteers circled in and out of the shade, trying to look busy.

Jeremy Washington, 27, of Pasadena, said he was there to help candidates like Steinberger because taxes are high and housing is hard to find. A carpenter just out of military service, he doesn’t feel that a congresswoman Elfreth or a president Harris would speak for young men like him.

“For the most part, we’re hearing what young women demand,” he said. “Politics are what the hot girl wants.”

That’s not what Steinberger is saying. Instead, he’s focused on getting his name in front of people in the time remaining and getting people to look past his party label.

Mail-in voting starts in less than two weeks, and early voting starts a month after that. And, of course, the danger for Steinberger is that with so little time left, there is the risk that people won’t understand who he is.

“So my sister, she introduces me and says I’m running for Congress as a Republican,” he said. “And she will say things like, ‘But not that kind of Republican. He’s not a jerk Republican.’”

As we finished our conversation at the coffee shop, Steinberger was talking about how, if he were to win, he wouldn’t make a career out of elected office. If he loses, he might seek a local office.

As he described himself and his ideas, at least one voter nearby was confused. He walked up to Steinberger.

“I’ve been listening to you, and you sound like President Joe Biden,” the man said. “Don’t forget your core values. And good luck.”

Both Elfreth and Steinberger have been invited to attend the League of Women Voters forum on Sept. 24 in Columbia.