America’s Most Bruising, Brutal, Bitter Senate Primary Is Finally Here

Read coverage of Maryland’s Democratic Senate primary, and you might think the state is on the brink of war. The closing stretch of the race, between congressman David Trone and county executive Angela Alsobrooks, has been described as “bruising,” “bitter,” having “hit a boiling point,” “brutal,” and “2024’s most brutal Senate primary.” If you think you’ve got a better word connoting misery that begins with the letter “B,” contact your nearest headline writer immediately.

But here’s a less despairing descriptor for the primary: competitive. Democrats, whose Senate campaign arm typically anoints a nominee and clears the field of meaningful complications, aren’t especially used to such competitive primaries and the sorts of attacks that come with the territory.

And the competition won’t stop after Tuesday’s election, a rarity in this state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1. In a surprise twist, former two-term Republican Gov. Larry Hogan entered the race earlier this year. While winning a Maryland Senate race is a different beast altogether than winning a Maryland governor’s race—a few “he’d be another vote for Senate Republicans” ads can do a number in this blue a state—Hogan can’t be taken for granted.

“I’ve seen some national election people, the election-Twitter people, and the people who do this kind of forecasting say, ‘Hogan has no chance,’ ” Mileah Kromer, an associate professor of political science at Goucher College, near Baltimore, told me. But, she said “you don’t discount somebody who has maintained an approval rating like that for a decade. It’s never dipped below 60 for a decade.”

Hogan’s entry, then, has added an additional layer of stress for Maryland Democrats—electability considerations—in deciding for whom to vote.

There aren’t many significant policy differences between Trone and Alsobrooks, either; this is not a race that lends itself easily to the “progressive” versus the “centrist” rubric. To the extent that the race has become hostile, then, it’s because the two candidates have little to differentiate themselves on outside of style, background, and innuendo.

The important thing to know about Rep. David Trone is that he’s exceptionally rich and, for whatever reason, eager to spend historic sums to eat lunch in the Senate dining room for six years.

Following the amount of money that Trone, the founder of alcohol retail chain Total Wine & More, has personally loaned his campaign is like staring at the National Debt Clock. At the moment, that number is above $60 million. He began advertising heavily last fall in order to build name recognition, and has never slowed down. As Semafor’s Dave Weigel reported from a recent Trone rally, Trone’s ads played while attendees were taking their seats. Over the course of 15 minutes, no ad was repeated.

Trone’s electability case is, essentially, rubbing the tips of his fingers together to remind people of his resources. His argument is one that appeals to the national Senate chessboard and to Democrats’ hopes of retaining the chamber. Since it will take cash to defeat Hogan and Trone can self-finance as much as it takes, he says, this will give national Democrats “a lot more flexibility to spend money elsewhere,” such as in Montana or Ohio. It’s a bit of a roundabout argument—Maryland primary voters should support him because it makes spending decisions simpler for Senate Democratic super PACs?—but it speaks subconsciously to Democratic primary voters’ tendency to fly to safety when choosing their nominees.

Angela Alsobrooks, a former state’s attorney and the current executive of Prince George’s County—a D.C. suburban powerhouse in Maryland politics—has been seen as an up-and-comer in the state for a while, and the only thing standing between her and her destiny is a $60 million wall.

Aside from her experience leading PG County, Alsobrooks’ team argues that she is the more exciting candidate who, as a Black woman, is more reflective of, and can better motivate, the diverse Maryland Democratic coalition. Her candidacy would be historic, as she’d be the first Black person elected to the Senate from Maryland, and only the third Black woman elected to the Senate, period.

Trone, as you might expect from a businessman who only recently entered politics, is a bit loose-lipped. It’s not hard to predict where controversy might arise in a Democratic primary between a rich white man and a Black woman, and Trone has given the Alsobrooks campaign its share of material.

In the most Veep-like moment of the campaign, Trone, during a House Budget Committee meeting, meant to say “bugaboo,” but instead used a phonetically similar racial slur. That prompted a wave of Black Democrats in the House to endorse Alsobrooks.

In Trone’s first negative ad against Alsobrooks in late April, meanwhile, one of his endorsers said, “the U.S. Senate is not a place for training wheels.” (Since when?) Trone’s team eventually scrubbed that from the ad, although Trone has used the same line itself. The comment prompted 650 Black women in politics to sign a letter saying the phrase was “not only disparaging and dismissive but also echoes tones of misogyny and racism.”

Last, Trone described Alsobrooks’ endorsers among Prince George’s County officials as “the low-level folks.” More condemnatory letters, with many signatures, were issued.

The frankly odd “bugaboo” issue aside, some of these controversies are over standard stuff in competitive primaries: Candidate A says he has better experience and better endorsers. (Alsobrooks, for what it’s worth, has the starrier roster of endorsers overall, featuring nearly all of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.) But it’s within the context of Alsobrooks’ historic bid, and Maryland’s poor track record of diversity in congressional representation, that the comments hit a nerve.

“One of the reasons we’re getting dinged is because our congressional delegation has no women—all men in our House seats, all men in the Senate,” Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, told me. “This whole idea that it’s second-tier people backing her up, ‘training wheels’—I mean, there’s just something patronizing about it. And I think when you consider that in the context of: Maryland has no women in its congressional delegation, I certainly think language like that has not helped him.”

For most of the contest, Trone had led comfortably. But in an Emerson poll last week, the first meaningful survey in some time, Trone and Alsobrooks were in a dead heat. (That Trone was the first to air attack ads a couple of weeks ago suggests private polling tells a similar story.) One could point to Trone’s verbal miscues as providing the opening for Alsobrooks. But more likely, the tightening is just a result of natural spending patterns. Trone had the airwaves to himself for months, while the more resource-constrained Alsobrooks campaign, and its outside allies, only began spending theirs in a concerted way more recently. Plus, Alsobrooks had a splashy earned-media rollout when she received Gov. Moore’s endorsement.

“Obviously, sometimes, stumbles like that do make a difference,” Kromer said of Trone. “But honestly, it’s her finally building that name recognition” that’s responsible for the tightening.

It raises some questions, too, about what $60 million got Trone that, say, $10 million couldn’t have.

“His numbers in most recent polls aren’t any different than what his numbers were, say, back in January,” Eberly told me. “If he winds up winning this narrowly, no one’s going to question, ‘Well, did he spend wisely or did he not?’ ” But, “if he goes on to lose it, you’re really going to have to look at that and ask, ‘Why would anyone spent that amount of money on a Senate seat?’ ”

Those Maryland Democrats who are still making up their minds—likely for the first time in their lives—about who’s more electable against a Republican Senate candidate can’t look to the polls for an answer. While Trone performed a touch better against Hogan than Alsobrooks did in early trial-heat surveys, the more recent ones, like Emerson, show Alsobrooks and Trone performing almost exactly the same against him. Either one, in a presidential election year, will be favored but by no means guaranteed to win after what will be an unusually competitive campaign.

Or rather, a brutal, bruising, boiling, and bitter campaign.