Twice during a recent interview, Rep. David Trone (D-Potomac) was asked about reports he is prepared to spend upwards of $40 million from his own pocket in his bid to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Baltimore).
Trone–who regularly has ranked among the 20 wealthiest members of the House and Senate in analyses of personal disclosure reports sidestepped putting a specific number on his self-financing, responding both times, “I’m going to spend what it takes.”
After pouring a cumulative $43.5 million in personal assets into four House campaigns over the past decade, recent public filings demonstrate that Trone continues to back up his prose with his pocketbook.
Trone–who invested nearly $10 million in his Senate bid as of the end of June–launched a new ad blitz in mid-September, with more than eight months to go until May’s Democratic primary. “We’ll be running ads straight through to the primary,” he said. The statewide ad buy is running on broadcast and cable TV outlets, as well as via digital and streaming platforms.
While a fuller view of the cost of the first phase of Trone’s latest ad effort will be available when the next Federal Election Commission disclosure reports are due in mid-October, a look at the Federal Communications Commission’s public access website shows Trone paying nearly $300,000 during the first week alone for ads on broadcast TV in the D.C. and Baltimore markets. That doesn’t include another $80,000 spent on Montgomery County-based cable TV systems.
Trone characterized his determination to spend “what it takes” to become Maryland’s next senator as a “mission”–a term he utilized frequently during an hour-long telephone interview.
‘I’m in this for a mission…’
“I’m not running for the Senate because I want a promotion. I’m in this for a mission,” he said.“We’re out here spending our own money because we’re on a mission to do the right thing.”
In large part, that “mission” involves what has been Trone’s signature issue since first being elected from Maryland’s 6th District in 2018: curbing opioid use deaths and making the mental health resources needed to prevent them more available.
“It’s a mission because 100,000 Americans died [from opioid use] last year, and 100,000 died the year before–and we’re better than that,” Trone continued. Alluding to the death of his 24-year-old nephew, Ian Trone, at the end of 2016–several months after he lost his first bid for Congress in neighboring District 8–Trone added: “I’m in this because my nephew died of fentanyl–it’s personal to me.”
Nonetheless, whether his personal fortune is being brought to bear for a mission or a more conventional campaign, Trone’s status as one of Congress’ wealthiest members has yielded something of a political balancing act.
Without mentioning Trone by name, his leading opponent in the Democratic Senate primary, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, is questioning how well someone with his personal fortune can relate to the everyday problems faced by Maryland voters.
(Editor’s note: Trone, Alsobrooks and the high-other profile Democratic Senate contender, at-large Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando, had been scheduled to participate in their first joint forum Sept. 30 in Bladensburg. The event, sponsored by the Latino Democrats of Prince George’s County, has been postponed until Dec. 3 due to scheduling conflicts.)
In what has become an element of her stump speech, Alsobrooks – after describing herself as a member of the “sandwich generation” as a single mother also caring for elderly parents – tells audiences: “You deserve a senator who not only fights, but understands the everyday issues that families confront at their kitchen table: challenges around economic opportunity, job creation, what we do to have access to health care. …Very often in the Senate, we have people who don’t live like the people they’re supposed to represent.”
Striking a balance with voters
Trone’s challenge has been to demonstrate to rank-and-file voters that he understands the day-to-day issues they face. At the same time, he is seeking to convince them that his wealth is more than simply a leg up over opponents during the current campaign, but that it will make him a more effective member of the Senate.
One of the two TV ads Trone launched recently, detailing his upbringing on a struggling chicken and hog farm that his parents purchased in central Pennsylvania, appears aimed at addressing both parts of this political equation.
“As it says in the ad, when I was 11-12 years old, we didn’t have toilets in the house. We had an outhouse. I grew up with that,” Trone recounted. “I also grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father. It was very difficult in many, many ways, mentally and physically. When my dad lost the farm to the bank, you didn’t just lose your job, you lost your home. …I understand what it’s like to struggle, what it’s like not to have a lot.
“At the same time, I went out and built a business literally from nothing, that was a success that created wealth,” said Trone, co-owner of Total Wine & More–an alcoholic beverage retailer that has grown to 257 outlets in 28 states. “Now, we have a chance to give back in public service.”
The latest biographical ad–entitled “Fair Shake”–ends with Trone’s long-time mantra in defense of his self-financed campaigns, with a narrator noting the candidate is once again “refusing to take a nickel from [political action committees] and lobbyists who wield such an unfair influence.”
Trone termed his stance “a really important distinction that hasn’t been made in this race,” contending during the interview: “When you take PAC money, when you take lobbyist money, you spend a lot of time calling those folks on the phone. You spend a lot of time tracking those people down for a meeting, and that’s time you could spend listening to Marylanders and getting ideas about…building coalitions with other people to get bills passed.
‘The system is rigged against ordinary people…’
“The system is rigged against ordinary people because the PACs and the lobbyists last cycle spent $1.5 billion – and that’s what we’re going to talk about, over and over.”
Trone’s political challenges in the current contest don’t end with the size of his personal wealth and his willingness to utilize it to his advantage. Along with Alsobrooks and Jawando, he is actively courting Democratic progressive voters–many of them up for grabs in the wake of the July decision by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Takoma Park) to pass on a Senate bid to seek re-election.
“We’re very much part of the progressive group in Congress,” contended Trone, who sometimes employs the “royal we” plural pronoun in referring to himself. “You look at our voting record for things like abortion, LGBTQ, labor votes.” He pointed to himself and Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Baltimore) as the two members of the Maryland House delegation with 100% lifetime voting scores from the AFL-CIO.
The lifetime vote ratings of Progressive Punch –created by a wealthy California-based social entrepreneur–present another perspective on Trone’s record. While Raskin is scored as the House’s fifth most progressive member in Progressive Punch’s latest rankings, Trone is 120th – placing him toward the middle of the 212-member House Democratic Caucus. It’s a finding that appears to reflect the politically marginal nature of Trone’s House district, which extends from Montgomery County to encompass all western Maryland and is the state’s most competitive congressional seat.
Part of Trone’s case for possessing progressive bona fides predate his congressional tenure. He noted that Total Wine & More under his leadership two decades ago instituted benefits for same-sex partners while “banning the box”–prohibiting questions about criminal history before a job offer is made. “Those were things that were not done 20 years ago” by most companies, Trone declared.
Trone also boasted of being “an [American Civil Liberties Union] member for decades,” while “donating roughly $20 million to the ACLU to form the Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which has 45 lawyers across the country working on all the criminal justice issues.” It’s an outgrowth of a period early in Trone’s business career, when he was arrested three times after running afoul of Pennsylvania’s restrictive laws governing the sale of alcoholic beverages.
“While having great progressive credentials, what’s important is that we also have the ability to work across the aisle,” said Trone, as he ticked off the names of several Republican conservatives in the Senate with whom he has worked with on opioid use as well as criminal justice legislation. Alluding to the narrow partisan divide in the Senate, Trone added, “As a Democratic member of Congress, I’ve built coalitions with Republicans to get them on board – because if I don’t have 10 Republican votes in the Senate, nothing becomes law.”
Working across the political aisle
Trone is relying on his record of working across the political aisle as a major argument for his elevation to the Senate. “If among 50 [Senate] Republicans, I can find 10 that care about addiction, that care about racism in our criminal justice system…I think I can find 10 that support LGBTQ rights, I can find 10 that support abortion rights,” Trone insisted. “But we’re going to have to sometimes reframe the issues.
“We can see innovative ways to bring Republicans on board. I think I can do that, without any question,” he added with his trademark confidence.
But many in the Democrats’ progressive wing are dubious, if not dismissive, of such optimism given the current state of the Republican Party in the Trump era. Trone, in turn, is dismissive of fellow legislators who opt for the cable TV soapbox rather than coalition building.
“With any politician, any politician at all–if their goal is to be on MSNBC, CNN or even Fox for the conservatives, that’s a really lousy goal. Politicians should be what’s called a public servant. That means they should be working on listening to people, finding out how they can be helped, come up with ideas and solutions to help them overcome their struggles, and then finally put together coalitions to help them and get those bills over the finish line. None of that as far as I, that I can see, involves going on CNN or Fox.”
Such comments bespeak a hard-charging style on the part of a legislator who is not universally loved or even liked by some colleagues in the Maryland congressional delegation. It helps to explain why Alsobrooks, who has emerged as the candidate of the state Democratic establishment this race, has nearly 100 endorsements from elected officials around Maryland.
Notably, of the eight Democrats other than Trone who comprise the Maryland congressional delegation, four–including Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Kensington–have endorsed Alsobrooks, who lacks prior experience on Capitol Hill. None of his delegation colleagues so far have backed Trone.
Trone, while saying that those who have endorsed Alsobrooks have “generally” given him a heads-up before doing so publicly, sidestepped questions about the reasons offered by his colleagues in declining to endorse him. Sources close to the delegation, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, cited limited collaboration by Trone with other Democrats in the delegation as a factor in the endorsements.
While members of the Maryland delegation have frequently worked together to organize events to highlight issues or legislation, with high-ranking federal officials sometimes brought in, these sources said Trone tended to organize such events on his own, often with no more than belated notice to other delegation members.
Endorsements
For his part, Trone has garnered 27 endorsements by House members outside of Maryland while adding, “We’ll be getting ready to do another big rollout.” Of the current congressional endorsements, seven involve colleagues who since the beginning of 2023 received campaign contributions from Trone of either $3,300 (the current per election maximum individuals can donate under federal law) or $6,600 (the limit any individual can give to a candidate during a two-year election cycle covering both the primary and general elections).
Trone’s status as a major Democratic Party donor predates his election to Congress, and, in recent cycles, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the campaign arms of House and Senate Democrats as well as to individual colleagues who have found themselves in competitive re-election races.
To be sure, Alsobrooks’ endorsement edge also reflects a desire among many Democrats not only to elect the state’s first Black senator in a state in which one-third of the residents are Black, but also to put a woman in the delegation for the first time since former Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Baltimore) retired in 2016. Trone, in turn, appears to be stepping up his appeals to minority voters, as evidenced by his recent large ad buy for the TV market serving the majority-black city of Baltimore.
“I have supported personally and financially an incredible number of Black, Latino and AAPI candidates all across the United States and locally,” Trone said, returning to a topic that has been among the self-described “missions” of his congressional career.
“I’ve given probably 300 speeches to criminal justice groups, and I talk every day about how Black and brown Americans don’t have access to the resources that I had,” he said. “Folks who are Black and brown, who represent 82% of those who are incarcerated, realize we’ve gone from an era of slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration…. I’m personally invested in fixing the systemically racist criminal justice system.”
Amid his bid to reach the Senate, Trone also indicated he would like to endorse a woman for the Democratic nomination to succeed him in the 6th District. A half-dozen are running or are poised to run. Meanwhile, multiple sources say the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee–the campaign arm of the House Democratic Caucus–has worked to recruit former Frederick County Executive Jan Gardner, who recently endorsed Trone for Senate, to run to succeed him.
“I’m definitely on record as saying that I’d love to see a woman in the seat in the 6th District,” said Trone. “I haven’t made any decision yet on endorsements. But that’s certainly something we’re going to consider, and that we’re going to look at very hard.”
