Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:45 a.m. March 5 to more accurately depict U.S. Rep. David Trone’s contributions to Republican opponents of abortion rights holding elected office in Georgia and Texas.
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-Potomac) made their first joint appearance in Montgomery County on Saturday in their battle for the Democratic Senate nomination–as Alsobrooks stepped up her criticism of Trone on several fronts, with the level of spending of his self-financed campaign a major flashpoint.
Sponsored by three county Democratic organizations, the sometimes raucous two-hour event packed the 700-seat Montgomery Blair High School auditorium. In separate incidents, two audience members interrupted the session demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and were escorted out by security personnel.
With 10 weeks to go until the May 14 primary, the event marked the first faceoff between Alsobrooks and Trone since a forum in neighboring Prince George’s County in early December—a three-month interval during which the political dynamics of the race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Baltimore) have changed markedly with the entry of former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan into the race.
At Saturday’s forum—sponsored by the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County, the Greater Silver Spring Democratic Club and Montgomery County Young Democrats—Alsobrooks and Trone shared the stage with five of the other eight Democratic candidates on the May primary ballot who accepted the organizers’ invitation to appear.
The five—Marcellus Crews of Prince George’s County, Brian Frydenborg of Silver Spring, Robert Houton of Bethesda, Steven Seuferer of Montgomery Village and Andrew Wildman of Carroll County—are political unknowns or novices running low-visibility, thinly funded campaigns. None have previously held elected positions, and only Wildman has run for office before, most recently as a write-in candidate for Senate in 2022.
At the time of the Prince George’s event, the winner of the 2024 Democratic primary was seen as a cinch to prevail in the November general election — a calculation turned on its head when Hogan made a surprise entry into the race three weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the December Democratic forum – during which Trone regularly lobbed verbal attacks at Alsobrooks — had followed several months during which the three-term House member was widely seen as an underdog in the primary race against the Prince George’s executive, thanks to Alsobrooks lining up endorsements from much of the state’s Democratic establishment in her bid to become the state’s first Black senator.
Since then, however, Trone’s internal polling, reinforced by a recent Emerson College independent survey has shown him taking a lead in the primary, thanks in large part to a saturation TV ad campaign running since early last fall.
That ad effort has been largely financed by Trone himself. As the multimillionaire co-owner of Total Wine & More, a nationwide chain of alcohol beverage outlets, he has so far poured more than $23 million of his personal fortune into his campaign, outspending Alsobrooks by 20-1 in the fourth quarter of 2023 alone.
Trone, who opened the forum by repeating his frequent boast of not accepting money from political action committees (PACs) or lobbyists, again derided the influence of PACs midway through the forum. “Because the PACs pay roughly $2 billion every cycle, that’s why we get bad government,” he declared.
At that point, Alsobrooks—whose campaign has been funded entirely from outside individual donors as well as PACs – pounced.
“I’m so happy to answer this,” she declared. “The congressman enjoys talking about not taking money from [PACs], and he’s rich. He’s a one-man super PAC, he doesn’t take money, he gives it. … He gives it trying to buy an election here, over and over again.”
“So it is really kind of comical to see a person who has pledged to spend $50 million trying to buy this race talk constantly about not accepting money,” she gibed. “He doesn’t give to PACS—he is the PAC.”
As the audience—which appeared to include a large contingent of Alsobrooks supporters—cheered, Trone was given the opportunity to respond by the forum’s moderator, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin.
“I was certainly not born wealthy,” said Trone, repeating the story of his early life featured in his televised biographical ads. In the ads, he talks of growing up in a farmhouse that lacked indoor plumbing, and how the family had lost the farm after his father, an “abusive alcoholic” went bankrupt.
“I started over, built a business for decades,” Trone continued. “The fact that I became wealthy, I don’t apologize for that. The fact that I’m willing to use my resources—I could leave those to my kids—but I’m putting my resources forward to try to make our country a better place, [instead of] taking money from PACs, special interests and lobbyists.”
A discussion of criminal justice issues—particularly the death penalty—also precipitated a clash, as Alsobrooks, who has spent her entire career in government, questioned the experience and leadership that Trone has exhibited during his time in elected office.
When Rubin asked Alsobrooks to talk about why she had shifted her position on the death penalty, Alsobrooks responded by recounting a 2011 case— shortly after she was first elected Prince George’s state’s attorney—in which two young children, along with their mother and aunt, “were executed horrifically” by a killer from out of state.
“At the time, the death penalty was the law here,” she noted, saying she had initially sought to have it imposed because “that individual, where the evidence was very strong, deserved the toughest penalty possible.” She added, “Marylanders decided to outlaw the death penalty,” referring to a 2012 statewide referendum. “I agreed with the change, and then sought life without parole. The people have spoken—I would not support the death penalty on the federal level, I would not support it on the state level.”
Trone—who, like Alsobrooks, is wooing the large bloc of progressive voters likely to cast ballots in this year’s Democratic primary—sought to contrast his stance with hers. “What I want to talk about is we have never supported the death penalty, never have, never will. We’ve always been against it,” said Trone, who often employs the so-called “imperial we” in conversation.
He noted his $20 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union to start an institute named for him. “We have 45 lawyers working on things like the death penalty. It was our amicus brief in Washington state that overturned the death penalty in that state,” he said of the institute’s work. “We also worked on mandatory minimums, solitary confinement, three strikes you’re out [laws]—all pieces of our criminal justice system that are so systemically racist.”
That prompted Alsobrooks, who earlier declared “I have spent a large part of my career fighting to make sure families could be in safe communities,” to go after Trone more broadly on crime and public safety.
Trone, she contended, “has never had to keep any community safe. It’s never been his role or responsibility. I’ve had to do that, which means I’ve had to make tough decisions to make sure that all families lived in places that are safe.”
Alsobrooks also charged that “it’s very easy to talk about policy, a whole different thing to actually implement the policy. Mr. Trone, I don’t expect to understand. He hasn’t had to do the work that I have.”
The Alsobrooks campaign claimed a victory of sorts following the forum. “At today’s forum, Angela Alsobrooks makes clear why she is the candidate who will defeat Larry Hogan,” read the headline of a press release issued by Gina Ford, Alsobrooks’ communications director.
The Trone campaign has put out a series of releases since Hogan’s entry into the race three weeks ago, contending it is their candidate who is best positioned to win in the fall. The recent Emerson College poll showed Trone and Hogan tied in a hypothetical November matchup, with Alsobrooks trailing the former governor by 7 points.
During the forum, Alsobrooks sought to go after both Hogan and Trone on the issue of abortion.
“I am the only person in this race who has not been compromised on this issue,” she said, complaining that Hogan “vetoed legislation when he was governor that would have expanded abortion care access. He went on to express his ignorance by saying ‘I get it. This issue is a very emotional issue for women.’
“We don’t need help with our emotions,” she declared. “We likewise do not need help with making our medical decisions. …Larry Hogan’s record is clear – he is anti-choice.”
As for Trone—who, like Alsobrooks, backs legislation to codify the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision overturned in 2022—Alsobrooks doubled down on past criticism of contributions by Trone personally and by his company, Total Wine & More, to Republican opponents of abortion rights holding elected office in Georgia and Texas.
“He said he believes in abortion care, but when he funded the elections of those Republicans who do not share those same values, he said, ‘Hey, it’s a business expense.’ I don’t think you fund things that go against your values,” Alsobrooks said. “If you believe in abortion care, then you do not support the election of people who want to ban abortion, who want to stop women from having IVF treatments, who want to fundamentally control women and their bodies.”
Trone defended his record as “100 percent impeccable on abortion,” adding, “We’ve given over $20 million to Democratic candidates around the country, at the federal level we only fund the Democratic candidates.” However, he defended his company’s contributions to Republicans at the state level as necessary to ensure the economic well-being of Total Wine & More employees.
“I’ve done business in 30 states, and in those states, [there are] 12,000 jobs” belonging to those employed by the company, Trone said. “Protecting the jobs of folks in those 30 states is really important—because they’ve got to put food on the table, they’ve got mortgages to pay, and they’ve got kids who want to get tuition” for college.
Otherwise, Alsobrooks and Trone put up a united front in taking aim at Hogan. They took turns charging that, if elected, the former governor would support Republican positions on issues ranging from judicial appointments and tax policies enacted during the administration of President Donald Trump to the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act and opposing abortion rights.
“Larry Hogan is really Mitch McConnell,” declared Trone, referring to the Senate minority leader who reportedly played a large role in recruiting Hogan to run. “[Hogan] has said all along he does not want to be in the U.S. Senate. Larry Hogan wants to be president of the United States.”
Of the other Democratics Senate candidates, Houton filed his candidacy six weeks ago. The others all filed prior to the latest Federal Election Commission deadline for campaign finance disclosure reports—Dec. 31. As of that date, three had not filed disclosure statements, indicating they had not reached the FEC threshold that require filing of reports once a candidate raises or spends $5,000. Seuferer did file a report, indicating his campaign had not raised or spent any money.
In his closing statement, Frydenborg bemoaned the frequent verbal warfare between Alsobrooks and Trone, amid the dearth of substantive policy differences between the two. “I think David and Angela have excellent backgrounds in many ways, [but] I’m very disappointed about the way they talk to each other and the sniping,” he said. “It’s not about the issues. I don’t know what they were attacking each other over—I can’t understand it half the time.”