Democrats never expected this Senate primary to have such high stakes

SILVER SPRING, Md. – On Wednesday afternoon, nine Latino Democrats gathered outside the Veterans Plaza polling place here to explain how a 68-year-old white congressman had won their vote.

They trusted Rep. David Trone, the wealthy founder of Total Wine; they didn’t trust Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive. She took Latinos “for granted,” protected “racist police,” and didn’t work quickly to end “racist” immigration enforcement policies. Alsobrooks, who if elected would be Maryland’s first Black female senator, didn’t celebrate diversity like Trone did.

“It’s important to him,” said Celina Benitez, the mayor of Mount Rainier. “Why else would you have so many elected officials, of varied diversity, here supporting him?”

Two hours later, four former state Democratic Party chairs came to the same plaza, warning that Trone had gone too negative and that non-white Democrats might struggle to support him.

“It’s really difficult,” said former chair Susie Turnbull, referring to an incident when Trone meant to use the word “bugaboo” but said a racial slur instead, apologizing immediately. “His excuses for things have been apologies with a ‘but.’ Using a term that is horrendous, and then you say ‘I’d never used that word before?’ He’s my age. I know he’s heard that word before.”

Maryland’s Democratic primary is the most expensive in the country, thanks almost entirely to Trone; he’s sunk $61.8 million into this race, after spending tens of millions of dollars on four House campaigns, blanketing airwaves and YouTube with his Horatio Alger story. Alsobrooks, who went on the air in February, has spent a tenth as much.

At a Tuesday night rally at Silver Spring’s AFI movie theater, where California Rep. Adam Schiff praised Trone’s “understanding of our economy” and ability to “defend our democracy,” Trone’s ads played on the big screen while a few dozen voters took their seats — so many that over 15 minutes of “I approved this message”-ing, no ad was played twice.

Yet the race remains close. Its final weeks have become an increasingly personal, tense contest between candidates battling over intertwined issues around race and who is best positioned to defend what until recently had been considered a safe seat.

Republicans haven’t won here since 1980, and the Donald Trump-led GOP is practically designed to lose in Maryland: Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, D.C. suburbs that cast nearly a million votes in 2020, gave less than 150,000 of them to Trump.

But the surprise decision by popular former Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate anti-Trump Republican, has turned the general into a tossup. For the Democrats, that’s exponentially increased the stakes of their primary.

“Hogan’s entrance ended our complacency about the fall election,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has endorsed Alsobrooks, and beat Trone in 2016 to win his safe Montgomery County seat. (Trone got to Congress by spending $18 million in the neighboring, competitive 8th District.)

Since Hogan’s entrance in February, Trone has made his personal fortune a centerpiece of his pitch: If he wins the nomination, Democrats won’t have to spend cash in Maryland that they’d earmarked for Ohio, Montana, or other competitive states.

“It will give them a lot more flexibility to spend money elsewhere,” Trone told Semafor on Tuesday. “I’m sure that will appeal to Leader Schumer.”

The deep-pockets argument, along with Trone’s years of party donations and go-everywhere campaigning, helped him win over many Democrats who repeat his argument: He has more relevant experience than Alsobrooks, and he can win. But most of the state’s congressional delegation has stuck with Alsobrooks, confident that Hogan’s support will fade by November and wary of once again telling Black voters — who make up a third of the state’s electorate — that it’s not their turn yet.

Maryland Democrats previously rejected Black candidates when Senate seats opened up 2006 and 2016 — agonizing about it the whole time, then winning the general anyway. Neither of those races divided elected Democrats like this; Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, the winners in those years, had most of the establishment behind them. But Gov. Wes Moore, the first Black Marylander to hold that office, endorsed Alsobrooks six months ago; Adrienne Jones, the first Black female state House Speaker, beat him to it.

Moore told Semafor that the electability concerns about Alsobrooks, who has out-raised Hogan, were misplaced: “Regardless of what happens in a primary, every single one of us are going to be all in to make sure that our nominee” wins the race.

Alsobrooks goes further, suggesting she may be better positioned to unite the party’s diverse wings come the general.

“What’s going to be needed is a coalition of people from all backgrounds who will come together to defeat Larry Hogan,” Alsobrooks told Semafor after stopping to talk to voters at an early voting site in Bowie. “I’m the person who has the experience of doing that.” The evidence that Trone’s wealth wasn’t insurance against a Hogan win, she said, was that Trone had outspent her all year, and she’d closed the gap.

Trone, for his part, has consistently highlighted support from non-white and female Democrats in his omnipresent TV spots; Black men who’d benefited from his investments in criminal justice reform, women of all races who were helped by his support for family planning. He could even get to the county executive’s left on some issues. Trone had always opposed the death penalty; Alsobrooks would only say, passively, that Maryland had banned it.

The candidates didn’t disagree on much else, so Alsobrooks’s supporters homed in on how Trone — and his surrogates — talked. In March, after Prince George’s County Council Member Ed Burroughs said in one Trone ad that the Senate was not a job for people with “training wheels,” more than 600 Black women co-signed a letter that denounced its “tones of misogyny and racism.”

That comment was struck from the ad, but the attention hurt Trone. In Silver Spring, pressed on the “training wheels” quote, Trone noted that he didn’t say it in the ad; when a reporter pointed out that Trone had used the same phrase, the candidate said that “we stand by the fact that Burroughs made the comment, and, frankly, she doesn’t have the experience at the federal level.” What mattered, he explained, was what he was going to do with the Senate seat.

“I have supported wonderful women and diverse candidates all over this country, and will continue to do so,” Trone said. “But what the voters keep saying, time and time again, is look at what I can do for you.”

But as early voting wrapped up, Trone’s non-white surrogates kept saying what he’d been told not to say: Alsobrooks wasn’t ready for the job, or sensitive enough to other non-white Democrats. “We need someone who can be effective from day one,” Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said on Thursday, when pro-Trone Democrats gathered at a union hall to support him to argue that voters needed to look past the candidates’ race.

“I wouldn’t vote for Candace Owens, no matter what she was running for,” said Krystal Oriadha, another county council member who’d rejected Alsobrooks. “The idea that we just have to vote for someone because of their gender, because of their color, negating any other issues, is insulting to us as a community.” (Owens is a high-profile Black conservative pundit.)

On the stump, Alsobrooks didn’t lead with her race or gender — and didn’t really need to. “She would certainly make history, but more importantly, she will make a difference,” Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock told reporters after a meeting with the candidate and Black pastors, redirecting a question about race to talk about the investments made by the Democratic Senate.

“My basic thought is positive politics, high road politics is what wins in Maryland,” Raskin said, asked about the challenges of facing the self-funding Trone. “I’ve told that to all the candidates. I think that that is the way to go.”

Pat Moran, a Democrat who voted for Alsobrooks this week, said she was drawn to the candidate because of her experience fighting crime in the county. “You know what the crime is like; it’s off the chain,” she said. But the candidate’s identity mattered, too. “We need an African American in the Senate. We do need a balance of power in the Senate.”

Nagender Madavaram, an engineer who was supporting Trone, said that he made his mind up after watching the Democrat bring money back to Maryland and make his own charitable donations to good causes. “He’s allocated $300,000 to protect the rights of Muslims,” Madavaram said, “even though he married a Jewish lady. He’s a great guy. He never hesitated.”

“The Trone-Alsobrooks primary has quickly become the nastiest in the country,” said NRSC Spokesman Tate Mitchell. “Meanwhile, Governor Hogan has been traveling Maryland with a positive vision for bringing change to Washington. Larry Hogan remains overwhelmingly popular in the state, and it’s clear Marylanders are eager to see him represent them in the Senate.”

• In Politico, Ally Mutnik looked at how Democrats’ “commitment to diversity” was being tested by the Hogan threat.