As has been the case at several joint appearances since last fall, Friday night’s debate between Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and U.S. Rep. David Trone of Potomac yielded a dearth of differences over policy issues in their race for the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Baltimore).
But that didn’t pre-empt the two from again clashing on matters ranging from their resumes to how they are financing their campaigns—along with who is better positioned to defeat the likely Republican nominee, former Gov. Larry Hogan, this fall.
Friday’s session appeared likely to be the only televised debate prior to the May 14 primary, with the start of early voting in that contest less than two weeks away. The debate–sponsored by The Baltimore Sun, the University of Baltimore and Baltimore-based WBFF/Fox 45, and broadcast from the studios of the latter–was available for viewing in the Washington area on WBFF’s sister station, News Channel 8.
Looming over the debate was a poll commissioned earlier this week by the debate sponsors showing Trone with a double-digit lead over Alsobrooks in the race for the Democratic nomination, as well as the publication Thursday of The Washington Post’s endorsement of Alsobrooks in the Democratic primary.
The encounter also took place after the latest campaign disclosure reports were filed with the Federal Election Commission this past week showing Trone–co-owner of Total Wine & More, a nationwide chain of alcohol beverage retail outlets–spending nearly $42 million out of his own pocket to largely self-finance his candidacy.
“This race will be decided by the people, by the many–and not by the money,” Alsobrooks declared at one point, while adding: “Money can’t buy you love, and it really cannot buy you Maryland.” She called for reform of the current campaign finance system “because these kinds of campaigns should be about people, it should not be about money.”
Her comments came after Trone, as he has in the past, argued that self-funding gave him an independence that he suggested other candidates, such as his opponent, lacked.
“In the last two-year [election] cycle, $1.9 billion of special interest money came into the Congress – that’s what we have to stop,” Trone declared, referring to donations from political action committees (PACs), which he has refused to accept. “We’ve got to get the money out of politics that’s really poisoning our system.”
Trone doubled-down on this front throughout the debate, and took aim at Alsobrooks in his closing statement, after she had called for an increase in corporate taxes to help deal with the mushrooming federal debt. “It’s going to be tough to raise taxes on those big companies when you’re taking all their dollars: That’s a challenge,” he told Alsobrooks.
In a “Fact Check” statement emailed to reporters during the debate, the Trone campaign cited recent FEC disclosure reports in charging that Alsobrooks had received “more than $230,000” from lobbyists for energy and utility firms, along with $25,000 from groups representing the pharmaceutical industry and another $25,000 from those associated with the insurance industry.
Campaign finance also took front and center when the two candidates were asked about the abortion issue, on which they agree in substance–with both vowing to push for efforts to codify the Roe v. Wade decision, overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, into law.
While Trone noted that his family foundation had helped to underwrite a reproductive health services clinic in Republican-dominated Allegany County near the West Virginia border, Alsobrooks–as she has done at several candidate forums in recent months–highlighted contributions made by Trone personally and by his company, Total Wine & More, to anti-abortion Republicans in states such as Texas and Georgia.
“I want to make sure the record is clear here: Mr. Trone has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the most radical Republicans who have passed the most restrictive abortion laws in our country,” Alsobrooks declared.
Trone, who at several past forums has defended these contributions to Republicans as necessary to protect the jobs of Total Wine & More employees in Republican-dominated states, did not directly respond to Alsobrooks’ attacks Friday. But he did point to the scope of his largesse to Democratic candidates at the federal level in recent years.
“Over the past couple of decades, I’ve given $20 million to Democrats at the federal level,” Trone said. “I’m the largest donor to Democrats in the last three cycles.”
The verbal jousting between Alsobrooks and Trone began in earnest about a quarter of the way into the hour-long debate over the question of the death penalty. While both have backed repeal of the federal death penalty during the campaign, Trone sought to highlight past differences between them on that issue.
One of the panel of questioners, Jeff Barker of the Sun, asked Alsobrooks about a decision in 2011–her first year as Prince George County’s state’s attorney–to seek the death penalty in a case in which four people were murdered, including two young children.
“Marylanders have spoken, and they have decided that the death penalty is no longer the law of the land in Maryland, and I agree with Maryland voters,” Alsobrooks responded, referring to a 2012 ballot referendum a year after the case in question–in which she ultimately sought a life sentence without parole “because I believe people who harm and murder children deserve the stiffest penalty available.”
Asked about proposals to repeal the death penalty at the federal level, Alsobrooks responded, “I can tell you that I would also not support the death penalty on the federal level.”
Declared Trone: “I’m the only candidate on the stage who has always been 100 percent opposed to the death penalty. We know the death penalty is racist, it feeds our systemically racist system that we have in the criminal justice area.”
Pointing to his $20 million endowment to establish the American Civil Liberties Union’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality, with 45 attorneys who “work in New York City and around the country to fix our criminal justice system that is so broken,” Trone added: “There have been hundreds and hundreds of folks exonerated by DNA evidence later on that were [sentenced] to the death penalty and were saved. Think about the hundreds of others that were not so lucky, who were not saved.”
Alsobrooks utilized the death penalty discussion to contrast the type of experience she has had in public office with that of Trone.
“I’m the only person in this race who has had the awesome responsibility of keeping our community safe,” she said. “To work to keep families of the community safe, I have had to hold mothers who lost young children, and I have had to hold husbands who had lost their wives. And I can tell you these are not easy cases.”
She later cited her experience in public administration during a discussion of the recent collapse of the Baltimore’s Key Bridge. “Voting is just one part–there are people in Washington who think voting is all of it,” said Alsobrooks–who, besides being the state’s first Black senator if elected, would be the first Maryland senator in 60 years not to have served previously in the U.S. House.
She continued: “I’ve been able not only to get the funding, but to turn the funding into real infrastructure. I have built schools, I have built hospitals, I have built roads.”
For his part, Trone – while seeking to emphasize his credentials as a “progressive Democrat” – touted his work across the political aisle in three terms in the House. “That’s what I’ve worked really hard at … in Congress – how to build that bipartisan connectivity with the other side,” he said.
Despite his House tenure, Trone continued past efforts to contrast himself with Alsobrooks, who has spent her entire career in government. “The biggest thing that distinguishes my candidacy is that I’m not a career politician who just goes from one job to the next job to the next job. I’m a public servant. I’m here to work for the folks of Maryland,” Trone declared, asserting, “I’m here to make big changes, and not to owe anybody to make those changes.”
Hogan’s surprise entry into the contest just before the Feb. 9 filing deadline loomed over Friday’s debate, as Alsobrooks and Trone also jousted in response to a question about their ability to defeat Hogan, a popular two-term Republican governor despite Maryland’s 2-1 edge in registered Democratic voters.
“Every single poll has said the same thing–I’m the candidate who can beat Larry Hogan,” Trone said. “Not one poll has said anything different. And not one poll has ever said my opponent can beat Larry Hogan, because she won’t.
“I have the resources to beat Larry Hogan. And I have the persona to win across the state…I’ve won in a Republican district.”
That gave Alsobrooks an opening to swipe at Trone for past financial contributions to Hogan, following his first campaign for governor in 2014.
“I think it’s really interesting that Mr. Trone says he’s the person who can take on Larry Hogan and beat him when, not so long ago, he was a Larry Hogan donor,” Alsobrooks said, contending that Trone provided Hogan “with the funding that he needed to carry across his agenda, which included restricting abortion care in the state of Maryland. So I believe what we don’t need is a Larry Hogan donor trying to take on Larry Hogan in the fall.”
In an email during the debate, the Alsobrooks campaign pointed to a 2018 Washington Post story that noted several businesses controlled by Trone had donated $30,000 to help Hogan retire his campaign debt four years earlier.
Alsobrooks, who has received the lion’s share of endorsements from the state’s congressional delegation and statewide officials, including Democratic Gov. Wes Moore cited this as a plus in the effort to head off Hogan. “We have a broad and growing coalition across the state of Maryland that I am so proud of. That coalition includes over 190 people elected throughout the state of Maryland,” she said.
She added, “I think it’s important to point out that six of our seven [Maryland] congressional [delegation] members–all of Mr. Trone’s colleagues–have endorsed me in this race.”
Her arithmetic was a bit off: Six of eight Democrats in the Maryland congressional delegation besides Trone, including U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Kensington and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Takoma Park, are behind Alsobrooks. Of the remaining two, U.S. Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Baltimore County is backing Trone, while Cardin has opted to remain neutral in the primary contest to succeed him.
“The insiders all thought this would be a coronation. It’s not,” declared Trone. “I’ve been the underdog from Day One.”
At the same time, Trone, too, touted his endorsements – including “the entire Democratic leadership” of the House, among them Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts. Closer to home, he pointed to a couple of prominent residents of Alsobrooks’s home county who were backing him: Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose successful 2022 campaign benefited from a $350,000 independent ad expenditure by Trone, and Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy, who endorsed Trone a day prior to the debate.
Braveboy’s endorsement came the same day as the Washington Post endorsement of Alsobrooks, which Trone sought to defuse with a bit of humor.
“The Washington Post had a lot of really nice positive things to say. And I thank them for that,” Trone said. “But, at the same time, I kind of feel like I dodged the bullet–I mean, the last time they got it wrong for governor, they got it wrong for attorney general, they got it wrong for comptroller. So let’s hope they can keep their streak up.”
Trone was two-thirds correct: In the 2022 Democratic primary, the Post endorsed two losing candidates: former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez for governor and former Baltimore District Judge Katie O’Malley for attorney general. But the Post’s choice for comptroller–then-Del. Brooke Lierman of Baltimore, who is backing Alsobrooks this year—won the primary and went on to win in November.