Alsobrooks wins Democratic primary for US Senate seat, Hogan wins Republican primary

In the bid to fill the open seat left in the United States Senate by U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who chose not to seek reelection, Republican candidate former Gov. Larry Hogan and Democratic candidate Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks are set to appear on the ballot in November, each winning their respective party primary on Tuesday night.

“Marylanders made their voices heard, and now Angela Alsobrooks will lead our charge to keep Maryland blue and ensure that Marylanders' values are represented in the Senate,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., in a Tuesday evening press release by the Maryland Democratic Party.

Van Hollen had endorsed Alsobrooks in the primary over his congressional colleague, U.S. Rep. David Trone, D-6^th, who called Alsobrooks and conceded the election on Tuesday evening.

The Republican Hogan spoke to the path ahead for his campaign in a release of his prepared remarks after declaring victory on Tuesday night.

"Tonight, the campaign for Maryland and America's future begins," he said. "With your help we’re going to bring our case for strong, proven, effective and independent leadership directly to the people of Maryland — all across this state."

The locations of the election night events on Tuesday for the candidates aiming to be Maryland’s next United States senator and replace the three-term Democrat Cardin were significant.

U.S. Rep. David Trone, D-6^th, a three-term congressman representing a district largely in Western Maryland, shifted his base of election night operations to Baltimore, the state’s largest city and Cardin’s hometown, in a bid to take the conventional path from the House to the Senate.

Now the major parties’ nominees — Hogan and Alsobrooks — will follow in the footsteps of former U.S. Sen. Joseph Tydings, D-Md., who was the last U.S. senator to represent Maryland not to take that path from the House. Tydings started his Senate term back in 1965 after being a U.S. attorney in Maryland.

Alsobrooks and Hogan declare victory in the U.S. Senate primary

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks hosted her election night event at a convention center in Greenbelt, a city in the northern portion of her native county and the one that she currently leads.

Her site selection and the result Tuesday symbolizes a shift of political representation in the state somewhat away from Baltimore, where both Cardin and the only female Senator in state history, Barbara Mikulski (who stepped away in 2017), were elected prior to their congressional careers.

(Greenbelt is also slated to be the new home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters, a move that Alsobrooks counts among the successes of her political career so far.)

She conveyed her thoughts on what the election was about during an interview Tuesday morning outside a polling place in Baltimore.

“This is about the future,” said Alsobrooks, of the election, “This is really about the kind of state we want to build and the kind of country we want to build, and I think it’s been a really amazing experience to talk to voters and try to earn their trust.”

And while the Democrats maintain a more than 2-1 voter registration advantage in Maryland, the state’s former governor, Hogan, is seeking to switch the balance of power in November, both in a state currently represented by two Democratic senators and in the nation, where Democrats, combined with Independents (who caucus with the Democrats), hold a slim majority of seats in the U.S Senate.

He hosted his election night event at a hotel in Annapolis, the state’s capital where he resided for eight years after being elected twice as Maryland’s chief executive. He nodded to that history in his prepared remarks on Tuesday night.

“Most Marylanders and most Americans prefer straight talk to empty rhetoric and they think it’s time for less talk and more action,” he said. “That’s what I did for eight years as your governor, and it’s exactly what I'll do in the United States Senate.”

Hogan aims to win the seat in Washington and break with the recent political history of the last four decades by becoming the first Republican U.S. senator elected in Maryland since 1980.

To do that, he will have to defeat the candidate backed by the Democratic establishment in the state, including the current governor, Wes Moore.

Alsobrooks overcomes spending, heads to general presidential election

What was unconventional about the primary campaign was the spending by Trone. Coming on the heels of a multimillion-dollar U.S. House reelection campaign in 2022 (over $12.5 million), Trone more than tripled that sum in his statewide search for a U.S. Senate seat in the past year.

His self-funding, backed from his business as co-owner of Total Wine & More, a chain of alcohol retail stores, did not deter Alsobrooks, who expressed confidence that spending gap could be overcome during an interview last month in Trone’s current congressional district.

“I have a lot of confidence in Marylanders that money won’t decide the race, but the people will,” said Alsobrooks, during an April 13 interview at the Allegheny Events Center in Western Maryland’s Flintstone.

The overall positive tenor of the Democratic primary took a slight turn in the final weeks as candidates and their proxies released ads and statements criticizing the other Democratic candidate. The Republican primary was largely less controversial, particularly after a Republican candidate backed Hogan days after the former governor entered the field in February.

The upcoming general election for U.S. Senate in Maryland comes in the same year as President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, a Republican, are expected to be atop ballots as the nominees for their respective parties for the position of commander-in-chief.

Trump, who has a federal case pending against him related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Hogan, who was considering a run as a Republican for president until last year, clashed as recently as 2022 when the pair picked different candidates in Maryland’s gubernatorial primary. The Trump-backed candidate won the state’s 2022 primary before losing that year’s general election by more than 500,000 votes to Moore, who holds the office now.

In his concession speech Tuesday night at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, Trone pointed to the current White House occupant as he urged support for Democrats, including in the Senate.

“The most important thing we have to do is reelect Joe Biden,” he said.

This year’s Presidential General Election Day is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Maryland's U.S. Senate race: Hogan, Alsobrooks win primary contests