By Adam Pagnucco.
With roughly six weeks to go until the primary, here is one thing on which Congressman David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks apparently agree:
Trone is currently leading in the primary election.
Why do I say that? In Trone’s case, it’s obvious – he has released multiple internal polls alleging leads of various sizes over Alsobrooks. To be fair, those polls were taken before Alsobrooks was on TV.
In Alsobrooks’s case, her apparent belief that Trone is leading can be seen from her constant negative campaigning. I’m not talking about her testy forums with Trone, in which the two regularly exchange fire, but rather about her mass emails. Since February, when she wrote that “We don’t need another millionaire in the Senate,” her campaign has blasted Trone’s self-funding on a nearly daily basis. Here is a small sample from her emails.
March 12: “Angela’s uber-wealthy opponent just set a new, nationwide spending record for self-funding in a Senate primary. He’s spent a staggering $37 million SO FAR, and our primary election is still months away. He even admitted that he’s ‘willing to spend whatever it takes, regardless of what that number is, to win this race’.”
March 19: “Make no mistake, Adam, our opponent isn’t just trying to win Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat — he’s trying to buy it.”
March 20: “In this state, the power of the many will be stronger than the power of the money.”
March 25: “My multi-millionaire opponent has dropped $38 million of his own money to blanket the state in his TV ads — but Marylanders don’t seem to be buying what he’s selling.”
March 27: “Think about it, Adam: This guy’s not building a grassroots coalition of dedicated supporters, which is EXACTLY what it’s going to take to keep this seat in Democrats’ hands in November.”
Here is an ancient maxim of politics: candidates who believe they are ahead generally don’t go negative. Candidates who are behind go negative to catch up.
Alsobrooks confirmed my theory in her reaction to the Washington Post’s poll last month, which showed Trone leading her by 7 points (and Larry Hogan leading both Democrats). The screenshot below from her March 20 email shows her campaign writing, “Angela Alsobrooks Within Striking Distance of David Trone. Closing Gap FAST.”
Alsobrooks has a great pollster, the fabulous Fred Yang. My guess is that she wouldn’t be putting out these statements if Yang found that she was leading. Another guess is that Yang is message testing and already has a good idea of what messages can best close the gap with Trone. Some of them may be positive about Alsobrooks while others will undoubtedly be negative about Trone. Whatever they are, we should be seeing them soon.
As for Trone, he is also behaving as if he is leading. His emails brag about his endorsements and discuss his policy positions. He doesn’t talk about Alsobrooks nearly as much as she talks about him. That’s classic frontrunner behavior. If you’re leading, why change up the dynamic? Both campaigns are behaving exactly as expected.
From the beginning, this question has circulated among my source network. Which would matter more – Trone’s self-funding or Alsobrooks’s support from all-star Democrats (now including Congressman Jamie Raskin)? So far, the money has mattered more. That’s not to knock the influence of Governor Wes Moore, Senator Chris Van Hollen and the other Alsobrooks supporters as it has taken tens of millions of dollars to eke out what is probably a single-digit lead for Trone. Another candidate without that money would almost certainly be trailing Alsobrooks.
I have long thought that this primary would be close in the end. I still do. Both candidates have solid records with appeal among Democratic voters, adequate funding for mass communications and a path to victory with competent staff to get there. The question now is whether Alsobrooks can surge ahead in the last six weeks or if the lead Trone has spent months constructing will prove durable.
We don’t have long to discover the answer.