With three months until the May 14 primary, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks began airing paid TV ads this past week—nearly five months after her leading opponent for the Democratic Senate nomination, 6th District Rep. David Trone of Potomac, launched a statewide TV ad blitz.
While the Alsobrooks campaign did not offer comment on how long their initial advertising effort would remain on the air, the ad buy appears to be a relatively modest one. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s public inspection website, it totals just over $100,000 ($102,000 for broadcast stations, $5,000 for cable advertising) for two weeks of paid spots in the Baltimore TV market.
So far, the Alsobrooks campaign has not purchased any TV time on broadcast or cable channels in the pricier Washington market, according to the FCC website, in contrast to the Trone campaign—whose latest filings with the Federal Election Commission show him spending nearly $6.7 million on TV advertising statewide, including both the Baltimore and Washington markets, in the final three months of 2023. It translates into an average of more than $1.1 million on paid TV ads every couple of weeks.
Despite what the Alsobrooks campaign regularly touts in press releases as “record-breaking fundraising” on their part, the self-financed campaign by Trone—multimillionaire co-owner of Total Wine & More, a nationwide chain of alcohol beverage outlets – clearly has overwhelmed Alsobrooks’ resources.
In turn, Trone’s ability to rely on his personal fortune prompted Alsobrooks, in the closing months of 2023, to forge organizational alliances with some high visibility supporters—such as Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Kensington) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York)—to supplement her fundraising in efforts to win the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Baltimore). Her financial challenges mounted last week with the surprise 11th hour entry of former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan into the contest, who she is likely to face in November if she is able to get by Trone in the primary.
Although Alsobrooks’ initial TV ad—which began running barely three days after Hogan jumped into the contest—is largely biographical and mentions neither Trone nor Hogan by name, it takes a not-so-subtle swipe that could be seen as aimed at both.
“The average U.S. senator is 64 years old, worth $16 million,” the 52-year-old Alsobrooks, a career government official, declares at the outset of the ad. “And the last time they went to the grocery store—I’ll let you decide,” she continues. “I’m Angela Alsobrooks, and that’s not me.”
Trone, 68, regularly ranks as one of the 20 wealthiest members of Congress, based on analyses of the annual financial disclosure reports senators and House members must file annually.
While the personal wealth of Hogan, 67, may lag behind Trone’s, he founded a series of real estate brokerage and development companies four decades ago that have thrived in recent years. According to personal tax returns released when he sought re-election as governor in 2018, Hogan took in about $2.4 million in corporate earnings during his first term, while he was on leave running the state.
Personal wealth aside, if Hogan—an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump—emerges from an eight-way Republican primary likely to be largely populated by pro-Trump voters, he will hardly lack for campaign funds in the fall.
Hogan’s entry into the Senate race—about which he had spent the previous year repeatedly disavowing interest—was reportedly engineered in large measure by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as the latter seeks to wrest back the Senate majority from the Democrats after a four-year interregnum.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a so-called leadership political action committee (PAC) controlled by McConnell, poured a total of $290 million into competitive Republican Senate candidates around the country in the 2022 election cycle, according to the non-partisan Open Secrets, a Washington, D.C.-based independent organization that tracks money in politics. The Senate Leadership Fund is all but certain to invest heavily in a Hogan candidacy this fall.
Well before Hogan’s entry into the contest, Alsobrooks—facing a primary battle against an opponent who has vowed to spend “what it takes” from his personal fortune to win—moved to create three so-called joint fundraising committees, according to FEC reports filed at the end of January that cover the final three months. These joint fundraising committees allow Alsobrooks’ campaign to split costs and share proceeds with fundraising efforts by such leading supporters as Van Hollen and Gillibrand.
In the final quarter of 2023, when Alsobrooks took in $1.78 million in outside donations (less than 15% of the $13.5 million that Trone reached into his own pocket to contribute), joint fundraising committees were responsible for about $100,000 of what the Alsobrooks campaign committee—Alsobrooks for Senate—was able to collect. Nearly half of this–$47,500—came from a committee called Victory Now for Alsobrooks, a joint fundraising operation with Van Hollen, who does not face re-election until 2028.
Alsobrooks’ joint committee with Gillibrand, the Alsobrooks Gillibrand Victory Fund, did not report transferring money into the Alsobrooks campaign committee during the last three months of last year, although Gillibrand’s leadership PAC, Off The Sidelines, donated the $5,000 per election maximum that a PAC is allowed to a candidate campaign committee. (Gillibrand, up for re-election this year, is heavily favored to win a third term.)
The remaining transfer from a joint fundraising committee during the last quarter of 2023 came from an entity called the Alsobrooks Victory Fund, an arrangement between the Alsbrooks campaign committee and a newly formed Alsobrooks leadership PAC—dubbed ALSOPAC—that registered with the FEC in early December. The Alsobrooks Victory Fund sent $52,000 to the Alsobrooks campaign committee.
For many years, leadership PACs were the province of veteran members of Congress—such as McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund or AMERIPAC, created more than 30 years ago by former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-St. Mary’s County), a leading supporter of Alsobrooks’ Senate candidacy. Leading congressional incumbents utilized these leadership PACs to funnel money to colleagues facing tough re-election races and to aid candidates for open seats—while collecting political chits in the process.
However, in recent years, creation of leadership PACs has spread to non-incumbent candidates, such as Alsobrooks, prior to their reaching Capitol Hill. Asked why Alsobrooks had created her own leadership PAC, her spokeswoman, Gina Ford, described it as a “routine fundraising tool” in an email.
While use of leadership PACs among non-incumbent congressional candidates has arguably become more routine in recent years, it’s also been controversial at times. That’s because of a practice known as “swaps,” first highlighted about a decade ago by the Center for Responsive Politics, the predecessor organization to Open Secrets.
A swap in these instances involves one candidate donating the maximum amount from his or her leadership PAC ($5,000 per election, $10,000 per election cycle when both the primary and general election are taken into account) to the campaign committee of a second candidate. The second candidate then returns the favor and donates a similar amount from his or her leadership PAC into the campaign committee of the first candidate.
To be sure, there is nothing illegal about this practice. But it has been criticized as taking advantage of a loophole to get around current election law, which prohibits a candidate from making a contribution from a leadership PAC that he or she has created and controls directly into his or her campaign committee.
It should be noted that, as of Dec. 31, ALSOPAC—which had registered with the FEC less than a month earlier, on Dec. 7—had not engaged in such swaps, according to FEC disclosure reports. ALSOPAC reported just $2,000 in receipts and no expenditures as of the end of the year. Whether ALSOPAC opts to take advantage of swaps with other friendly candidates to bring in additional campaign funds won’t be known until the next FEC reports are due in mid-April.
The imperative for the Alsobrooks campaign to be innovative in how it utilizes current campaign laws in response to Trone’s massive self-funding is underscored by an analysis of a 1,531-page FEC disclosure report filed at the end of January, all but about 180 pages of which are filled with the names of donors and the amounts they contributed.
Of a total of $1.78 million raised during the fourth quarter, nearly $290,000—or about 16%–can’t be utilized by Alsobrooks’ campaign to secure the Senate nomination in the May primary. That’s because 105 contributors donated more than the $3,300 per election that an individual donor is permitted under law to give to a federal campaign committee. Nearly two-thirds—63—of those 105 “maxed out” and donated the $6,600 limit that an individual contributor is permitted to give over a two-year cycle for the primary and general elections.
The Alsobrooks campaign is allowed by law to retain these excess funds in an amount of up to $6,600 per contributor—but donations more than $3,300 must be separated, and can be utilized only if she wins the May primary and goes on to compete in the general election.
Because $272,000 of the funds raised by Alsobrooks during the second quarter of 2023, following her announcement of candidacy, and $152,000 raised in the third quarter also fall into this category, it appears that approximately $713,000—nearly 23%–of Alsobrooks’ $3.12 million campaign treasury as of Dec. 31 was off-limits, pending her winning the primary and becoming the party’s nominee.
Such obstacles on the revenue side of the Alsobrooks campaign are reflected on the spending side, with Alsobrooks’ expenditures of $730,000 during the fourth quarter of the year representing barely more than 5% of the $13.7 million spent by Trone. For example, Alsobrooks’ total expenditures were less than one-quarter of the $3.2 million spent by the Trone campaign just on digital media advertising in the last three months of 2023.
Meanwhile, Trone’s disclosure reports show that he employed a total of 47 campaign staffers during that three-month period, nearly four times the 13 listed on Alsobrooks’ reports.
Last summer, the chatter among Democratic insiders was that Alsobrooks – seeking to become Maryland’s first Black senator, with the lion’s share of endorsements from leading Democrats in the state and with Black voters comprising more than 40% of the primary electorate – had a virtual lock on the nomination. There was widespread speculation that Trone would drop out of the race and instead seek re-election to his House seat.
Today, the narrative within those same Democratic circles is that Trone is the candidate with the momentum. Indeed, his willingness to dip into his personal fortune to underwrite a nonstop media blitz since last fall has resulted in name ID and approval scores resulting in low double-digit leads against Alsobrooks—in recent polls by his own campaign, along with an independent Emerson College survey released Thursday showing Trone with a 32%-17% lead.
Ultimately, with the new Emerson College poll showing nearly 40% of the Democratic primary electorate undecided, the race for the nomination may turn on the size and frequency of the TV and digital advertising effort that the Alsobrooks campaign can afford to mount during the next three months.
But the dynamic of the post-primary race – in which the winner of the Democratic primary was seen as all but waltzing into the open Senate seat in the November general election – was turned on its head with Hogan’s surprise entry into the contest a week ago.
Trone supporters already have been arguing in earnest that their candidate – with a no-holds-barred style complementing his very deep pockets — is best positioned to take on Hogan, whose boasts of bipartisan consensus during his governorship were periodically punctuated by acerbic criticism of the leadership of the overwhelmingly Democratic Maryland General Assembly.
Trone himself has been seeking to stoke this narrative, with a Trone campaign release earlier this week headlined: “As The Race For U.S. Senate Evolves, Trone Is The Only Candidate Who Can Beat Hogan.”
But the Emerson poll, the first published independent survey of the Senate campaign, offers something considerably short of a definitive read on the race. The poll, sponsored by The Hill newspaper and the DC News Now TV news broadcast, shows Hogan and Trone in a 42%-42% tie, with Alsobrooks trailing Hogan by 44%-37%.
The survey, which has a plus or minus 3-point error margin, was conducted this past Monday and Tuesday, just three days after Hogan entered the race. How much the political dynamic may change in the coming weeks and months is a very open question, as both Alsobrooks and Trone ramp up efforts to tie the popular former two-term governor to McConnell – a Democratic bete noire whom a Hogan victory could help restore to the majority leader’s post next year.
Future independent public opinion surveys in what has suddenly become one of the country’s marquee races of 2024 may help to answer whether whom the Democrats nominate will make a significant difference in a Senate race against Hogan – along with just how much money and media could ultimately affect the outcome.