Democrat Angela Alsobrooks wins Maryland Senate seat as Republican ex-governor Larry Hogan flounders

Angela Alsobrooks has kept Maryland’s open Senate seat in the Democratic column after a victory over Republican Larry Hogan, a popular two-term governor of the state.

The race quickly became one of the most unique (and expensive) in the country. Democrats, thanks to Mitch McConnell’s maneuvering, found themselves spending millions to defend an open Senate seat in a deep-blue bastion, one that the party would otherwise likely brushed off as a distraction. That was thanks to McConnell’s successful overtures to Hogan, the state’s popular former governor of two terms, who had previously turned down offers to run in the GOP presidential primary against Donald Trump. He had also dismissed the idea of running for Senate as recently as last year.

Alsobrooks, by comparison, ran with the backing of Governor Wes Moore and much of Maryland’s Democratic political establishment at her back — though a number of Latino politicians, including some from her home county, backed her primary opponent. The current executive for Prince George’s County, Alsobrooks has run on the improvements her county has made on fighting crime as well as the specter of a Republican-controlled Senate resulting from the loss of Maryland’s seat. Political insiders in Maryland speculated that Alsobrooks won many allies in the state Democratic Party, including Moore himself, when she declined to run against him for governor in 2022.

Her win means that Maryland’s Senate seat will not fall into Republican hands, a result that would have almost guaranteed a GOP majority in the upper chamber come January.

And the victory of Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware means that two Black women will be serving in the US Senate together for the first time in United States history.

Polling of the race for the past two months leading up to November 5 largely showed Alsobrooks leading her Republican opponent. Maryland notably hadn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since the late 1980s.

Hogan had promised to govern as a centrist maverick in the Senate, with a willingness to buck his party and Donald Trump in particular. Alsobrooks ran her campaign closely aligned with Vice President Kamala Harris following the latter’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, andis expected to be a progressive Democratic vote in the Senate.

On a press call Thursday as the final day of voting began in Maryland, a Hogan campaign official said that the race had been a battle to define the governor and battle what he called “really dishonest and cynical tactics from national Democrats”, who had poured millions into the race to attack the ex-governor over his stance on abortion.

Election day returns were slightly delayed due to high turnout, particularly in Democrat-heavy areas in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. Alsobrooks took an early lead with mail-in ballots and early votes, an expected development for the Hogan campaign, but the lead quickly looked insurmountable.

Though the governor called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade’s protections into law, Democratic groups launched attacks over a bill Hogan vetoed in 2022 that would have expanded the range of medical professionals able to provide abortion care in Maryland to include midwives, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. It also would have expanded coverage for abortion services under Medicaid.

Republican-aligned groups battled back, however, and sought to tie Alsobrooks to crime statistics in Prince George’s County, her home. While Hogan himself abstained, some also honed in on Alsobrooks for wrongly-claimed tax deductions.