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Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who
trails Rep. David Trone in the polls, is hoping that
a new endorsement from the Washington Post will help her turn her fortunes around with a month to go before Maryland's primaries.
In a Thursday editorial backing her for the Democratic nod, the Post praised Alsobrooks' record in office and noted she "would bring valuable diversity to the Senate" as "the first Black woman elected statewide in Maryland."
While it's rare these days for newspaper endorsements to have an impact at the ballot box, the Post's could be the exception.
As Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin alludes, the paper remains influential in Montgomery County, which is the state's largest and borders Washington, D.C., just opposite Prince George's.
Notably, Trone's House district includes part of Montgomery, so the Post's support could help Alsobrooks make inroads in the county, where she's likely less well-known. The paper’s decision to favor Alsobrooks also cuts against past practice: When there's been a credible Montgomery-based candidate in competitive Democratic primaries in past statewide races, the Post has typically gone with just a such choice.
That includes
Tom Perez, who finished a close second in the 2022 primary for governor, and
Chris Van Hollen, who won the 2016 race for Maryland's other Senate seat; both carried Montgomery County in their primaries. In the 2018 governor's race, meanwhile, the top Montgomery candidate, state Sen. Richard Madaleno, took just 6% in the primary. The Post that year went for Alsobrooks' predecessor,
Rushern Baker, who lost to Ben Jealous 40-29 statewide but held Jealous to a tighter 36-32 win in Montgomery.
Analyst James Newton further
highlights an older primary where the Post's endorsement might have been the difference-maker: the 2006 Democratic showdown for the very same seat that Alsobrooks and Trone are now seeking. That race featured a matchup between Rep. Ben Cardin and former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, whose districts were both based in the Baltimore area rather than the populous D.C. suburbs.
But with
the Post in his corner, Cardin carried Montgomery County and narrowly beat Mfume for the nod by a
44-41 margin before winning in November. (Carding announced his retirement last year.) Alsobrooks may not have designs on winning Montgomery outright, but her goal will at least be to prevent Trone from running up the score there, and the Post's endorsement could help.
Separately, a group called Fight Corporate Monopolies
has launched a new ad campaign targeting Trone, which HuffPost's Daniel Marans
says is backed by a buy "in the high five digits" and will air on streaming platforms.
Its new spot slams Trone both for his business practices and his alleged abusive behavior toward a delivery worker at an Arizona outlet of Total Wine, the giant alcohol retail chain he founded.
A narrator first attacks Trone as an unethical monopolist, claiming his company was "sued by President Joe Biden's Administration for illegally crushing competition from small businesses." Last year, the Federal Trade Commission
filed a petition in federal court demanding that Total Wine comply with subpoenas regarding an antitrust investigation.
The ad then references a 2021 incident
first reported last year by the conservative British magazine The Spectator in which Trone, according to a police report, allegedly told the worker, "I will fucking end you" and "I will execute you," purportedly because the worker had stacked his deliveries on the store's floor.
Trone does not appear to have been charged in the incident, and
in a statement to Marans, his campaign says he "never made the statement" the ad describes. Marans adds, though, that the candidate's staff "did not respond to questions about Trone’s views on antitrust policy."
But while Alsobrooks has reason to welcome the new support, Fight Corporate Monopolies' outlay is dwarfed by Trone's massive spending.
As analyst Rob Pyers points out, Trone
has now spent almost $42 million of his own money on his campaign, which
Rubashkin observes smashes the previous record for self-funding in a Senate primary, the $30 million spent by Democrat Blair Hull in Illinois in 2004. (Hull lost that primary to none other than Barack Obama, who spent just a seventh as much, though
adjusted for inflation, Hull is still ahead of Trone.)
thehill.com
