BALTIMORE — Harry Dunn had a moment — between the madness of Jan. 6, 2021, and the swearing-in of President Joe Biden two weeks later — in which something crystallized.

The U.S. Capitol Police officer was on duty at the building’s West Front, which commands a picture-postcard view from on high of the National Mall with the Washington Monument in the distance.

Days earlier, a rifle-wielding Dunn — now a candidate in a contentious U.S. House race to succeed retiring Maryland Democrat John Sarbanes — grappled with supporters of former President Donald Trump who had stormed the building seeking unsuccessfully to block Congress from finalizing the vote count declaring Biden, a Democrat, the winner of the 2020 election.

“I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I lost faith in humanity,” Dunn, 40, said in an interview in which he described being called racial epithets by Jan. 6 rioters. “Is this America? We have to acknowledge that. But we are better than that.”

As the Jan. 20 swearing-in approached, Dunn was back at his post. But now the shards of glass and other debris were gone, and he was looking in the late-afternoon darkness at the inauguration platform the rioters had scaled, and the Mall view he had photographed countless times because he couldn’t get enough of its majesty.

“I just remember looking at it once it got all cleaned up. And they had the flags hanging from the Capitol — the American flags. And it’s like, ‘Wow.’ It just reinforced that the bad guys lost.”

Three years later, Dunn is competing in the 3rd Congressional District primary in a broad field that includes two state senators and three delegates who have legislative experience that he lacks, absent his compelling personal story.

“We are at a moment where we need defenders of democracy — literally and figuratively speaking— and he’s done both,” U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who has endorsed Dunn, said in an interview.

Dunn — a 6-foot-7 former James Madison University offensive lineman — has generated media attention and campaign contributions through his Jan. 6 accounts described in emotional testimony to a House committee in 2021 and a memoir last year called “Standing my Ground.” His campaign reported raising $4.6 million through April 24, according to his Federal Election Commission report.

State Sen. Sarah Elfreth, an Anne Arundel County Democrat, has raised $1.5 million, the second-highest total in the race, which includes 22 Democratic candidates.

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