Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
Maryland Democratic senatorial candidate Angela Alsobrooks poses for photos with students during a voter registration event at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, October 3, 2024.
This story is part of the Prospect’s on-the-ground Election 2024 coverage. You can find all the other stories here.
SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND – Angela Alsobrooks is on the road again.
It’s another campaign stop, this time at a large retirement community in leafy, suburban Montgomery County, which has the vibes of a college town that managed to grow large and dense enough to rival a “real” city. Montgomery County is one of the most affluent, diverse, and well-educated counties in the country.
Alsobrooks, the Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat replacing retiring Sen. Ben Cardin, is from neighboring Prince George’s County, which is similarly exceptional, having been ranked as the first- or second-most well-off majority-Black county in the country for at least the past two decades. She’s served as county executive in Prince George’s County since 2018, and is a former state prosecutor.
In general, the D.C. metropolitan area, or DMV—including the nation’s capital and several bordering counties in Maryland and Virginia—is solidly blue. Six years ago, Marylanders re-elected Alsobrooks’s Senate opponent, Larry Hogan, making him the state’s first two-term Republican governor since the early 1950s. GOP support in the state is concentrated on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland, which are mainly rural, while the population centers in Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties and in Baltimore are heavily Democratic. Yet Hogan is well known and still viewed favorably by a majority of Maryland voters.
When I pulled into Riderwood Senior Living, the pleasant lady at the gated front entrance didn’t seem to recognize Alsobrooks’s name, and seemed unaware that the homegrown politician—a local with working-class roots who may soon become Maryland’s second woman and first Black senator—was in the building. Neither did the patient woman at the front desk, who clicked around the computer system to find out exactly where within the sprawling complex Alsobrooks would be speaking, before directing me toward an auditorium in one of the adjoining buildings.
The senior home’s spirited Democratic club, though, turned out in force to hear Alsobrooks talk, and to ask their questions.
I grew up mostly in Montgomery County myself (I had high school friends who worked at the retirement home), and I live in nearby Northwest D.C.; and so I naturally began making some guesses about the group. But pretty soon, the staffers I chatted with informed me that Riderwood residents are not primarily from Maryland, and that folks came to live there from all over the country, including the South and especially the East Coast. One woman I chatted with said that she and her husband had moved up from Morgantown, West Virginia.
I noticed quickly that the entire crowd of roughly 65 elderly residents was white, except for one Latina woman sitting in the row behind me, and two Black nurse assistants who were aiding a couple of the attendees. The majority were women.
The candidate was now standing directly in front of the elevated stage. Alsobrooks had barely begun before she stopped, tapping the microphone a couple of times and pacing a few steps to her left, trying to solve an audio feedback problem. Organizers started barking directions; the candidate continued repositioning herself; the mic continued its unwelcome whistling.
Angela Alsobrooks has served as county executive in Prince George’s County since 2018, and is a former state prosecutor.
As Alsobrooks shuffled, I started getting the feeling of unease one sometimes gets when watching an awkward moment unfold on TV. Then, I realized I was the only one. The feedback issue lasted just seconds before Alsobrooks suggested out loud that she should probably get on the actual stage, and immediately started a light jog, around the platform and up the steps.
She was totally at ease, as was the rest of the audience.
As it turns out, this was Alsobrooks’s fourth visit to the senior home. She’s been crisscrossing the state, making stops across Maryland on a “Defend Our Majority Tour,” a reference to her central message that a win for her opponent could give Republicans control of the Senate and empower a legislative agenda that most Marylanders are opposed to, especially on reproductive health care rights.
That message, and Alsobrooks’s whole presentation—a party loyalist whose platform neatly parallels Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign—was well received; and that seems to hold true for a number of the other communities around Maryland that Alsobrooks has visited. By the end, there was little doubt that she had probably won over the few audience members who were not already planning to vote for her.
Indeed, the most interesting issues in the historic election are about whether Hogan can convince a significant number of Democrats to vote for him; whether the Democratic Party has done enough to raise Alsobrooks’s profile; and whether any of that matters more than the record amounts of outside money being poured into the race, much of it by right-wing billionaires supporting Hogan.
AS THINGS STAND, ALSOBROOKS is the favored candidate, even though Hogan’s popularity as a former governor has made for a tight race at times, in a state where registered Democrats more than double the numbers of registered Republicans. A Democratic loss in November would certainly register as a major missed opportunity for the party, and a huge steal for the GOP.
Hogan is a moderate conservative, by today’s metrics, and is pitching himself to voters as a “maverick” who will counter the current partisan divisiveness and stand up to extremists in the Republican Party when he disagrees. Republicans have spent about $34.9 million on ad time for his campaign, compared to $25.2 million for Democrats, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. But Hogan will need to convince about one-third of Maryland Democrats to vote for a Republican, and to risk their party losing control of the Senate, while Alsobrooks doesn’t need much crossover support to win.
Some state and congressional Democrats, and Alsobrooks herself, say that she should not and will not take anything for granted. Some of the candidate’s own voters also remain somewhat wary. In September, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Gary Peters, said that Alsobrooks “needs to be known by folks across the state,” and Sen. Cardin added that “she’s not as well known as we’d like to have her.”
Yet Alsobrooks has maintained a lead in every poll since August. A survey released Wednesday, less than two weeks before Election Day, showed 40 percent of likely voters supporting Hogan, and 54 percent supporting Alsobrooks, a five-point gain since September, according to the poll by Emerson College Polling/DC News Now/The Hill. Another Washington Post/University of Maryland poll released Thursday showed that 52 percent of likely voters support Alsobrooks—a one-point increase since September—and 40 percent support Hogan.
Maryland Public Television
Democrat Angela Alsobrooks and former Maryand Gov. Larry Hogan (R) take part in a televised debate, October 10, 2024.
Concerns about Alsobrooks’s name recognition cannot be attributed entirely to her campaign; she has in fact been making her pitch all across the state, making multiple campaign stops daily. She was about an hour away, in Baltimore, before coming to the retirement community in Silver Spring on October 17th. A day earlier, she was in Easton, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, before appearing alongside Democratic Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in the state capital, Annapolis.
That crowd, at Annapolis City Dock, was thinner than in the D.C. suburbs. The members of two environmental advocacy groups supporting Alsobrooks outnumbered residents who showed up.
Still, when I asked her about the issue during another campaign stop on Tuesday, Alsobrooks rejected any suggestion that she isn’t accessible.
“We’ve really been everywhere across the state,” Alsobrooks told me. “Part of the evidence for that is that in the last reporting period, from July 1st to September, we not only raised $14 million, but you should know that 37,700 Marylanders contributed $200 or less to our campaign.” She added that her previous two events, in Baltimore and in Harford County, were equally well attended.
Connor Lounsbury, a senior adviser to Alsobrooks, told me that she has likely covered a historic amount of ground in Maryland, partly due to the unusually competitive nature of this year’s race.
“She’s been on the Eastern Shore probably more than any Democratic candidate in a long time,” Lounsbury said. “She was very adamant as soon as she won the primary that we are going to go everywhere, we don’t care whether it’s a blue, red, or purple town.”
IT TAKES SOME EFFORT TO AVOID hearing about Hogan and Alsobrooks if you live anywhere in the D.C. metro area.
Attack ads about Alsobrooks improperly claiming certain property tax deductions are constant, paid for by various outside interest groups and political action committees. Alsobrooks reportedly received a tax break meant for senior citizens on a D.C. home that was transferred to her by her grandparents, which saved her several thousand in taxes between 2005 and 2017. She has said that she was unaware of the tax credits, and has contacted the city to correct and resolve the issue.
Meanwhile, during his term as governor, Hogan approved millions in competitive awards to spur construction that included a project being developed on his own family’s property, Time magazine reported last week. Time also reported last month that Hogan approved millions in competitive affordable-housing awards for developers who were clients of his real estate brokerage firm. Hogan has denied any role in selecting the projects at issue and has said that he did nothing wrong with regard to the affordable-housing awards.
The reporting about Alsobrooks claiming undeserved tax credits notes that she would have saved about $14,000 over roughly 12 years, while the reporting about former Gov. Hogan’s self-dealing implicates millions of dollars in value and property.
Although both candidates are facing questions about ethics, Alsobrooks’s criticisms and the attack ads against Hogan—which are not as ubiquitous—have focused on his anti-abortion record and linked him to the broader, extremist Republican caucus, rather than anything about the reported self-dealing. That makes some sense, given how much Hogan’s party is out of step with most Marylanders’ views, especially on abortion.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Angela Alsobrooks speaks on the second night of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, August 20, 2024.
The former governor vetoed a bill in 2022 that would have expanded abortion access in Maryland, and then withheld funding for new abortion providers, even after lawmakers overrode his veto. (Hogan has said during the current campaign that he would support legislation that makes Roe v. Wade the law of the land, although pro-choice groups have characterized his new stance as insincere.)
The negative attack ads boosting Hogan were the subject of the most pointed remarks from Alsobrooks’s friendly audience at Riderwood last week.
At least twice, members of the elderly audience seemed to be dispensing advice to their preferred candidate.
“I think you should have something … to counter” those ads, one elderly man said.
Alsobrooks called out the “billionaires who don’t live in Maryland” that are funding the attacks and explained that she has always paid her taxes. She added that most residents dislike the ads, and said she would have one of her own coming out soon that will address the matter.
Later, another resident from New York repeated the point. “The attack ads do resonate,” he said. “I would suggest you make your explanations brief and pointed, because much of it will go beyond most people.”
It may be a fair point.
HOGAN HIMSELF HAS OFFERED a response to Alsobrooks’s tax issue that was surprisingly favorable toward his opponent. When the issue came up during an October 10 debate between the candidates, Hogan said that Alsobrooks “had some explaining to do,” but added that he was unsure whether voters should be making their decision based on her apparent tax mistake.
That’s effectively an admission that the most significant criticism she has faced as a candidate is actually a nonissue. But, to the Riderwood questioners’ point, Alsobrooks’s campaign and her outside supporters haven’t prominently highlighted Hogan’s words, nor his own ethics scandals.
Lounsbury told me that Alsobrooks is focusing on transparency. “The best defense is just being blunt, and Alsobrooks has been very transparent that she stepped up to help her grandmother,” and that she is now handling the underpayment issue. “Hogan has decided he wants to wage a personal war and that’s his prerogative.”
Alsobrooks does regularly point out in stump speeches that Hogan has often praised her in the past; he once commented that he couldn’t remember a better county executive, after acknowledging that his own father was one. The two candidates in fact had a long-standing and amicable relationship before the Senate race.
Meanwhile, the ads about how Alsobrooks “dodged” thousands in property tax payments continue, on TV, web and social media, radio, and even in direct text messages.
Maryland’s Future, the super PAC running the anti-Alsobrooks ads, is funded in part by wealthy Republican donors, including Harlan Crow, the real estate executive linked to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to reporting earlier this month by The Baltimore Banner. Some of the anti-Hogan ads are funded by EMILY’S List, which works to elect Democratic women.
Thus far, Alsobrooks has received endorsements from numerous national Democrats and party boosters, including former President Barack Obama. Hogan has received—and has effectively declined—an endorsement from former President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday morning, Alsobrooks’s team released a new campaign ad featuring Vice President Harris. The press release included a link at the bottom to recent reporting about the massive amounts of outside spending in the race.
Later that afternoon, the candidate made another stop on her home turf in Prince George’s County, where a group of residents packed into a small barbershop to speak with her.
“It’s a competitive race,” Alsobrooks said on Tuesday. “We’re not taking our foot off the gas until we get through Election Day, but we feel good.”
