Money can’t buy love, and sometimes not elections, either.
Increasingly, Congress is a preserve of the very rich, with more candidates self-funding campaigns (see story here). Retail liquor magnate David Trone is an example of the breed.
When Trone ran in Maryland for a House seat in 2016, he spent $13 million of is own money, but lost the primary. In 2018, he spent $16 million of his money, and won. After cruising to re-election in 2020 and 2022, he decided to run in 2024 for an open Senate seat, and spent a whopping $60 million of his dough in the primary.
Although it was a crowded field of 10 candidates, his only serious opponent was Angela Alsobrooks, a black woman and county executive from the Washington D.C. suburbs. He outspent her 7-t0-1.
It wasn’t close. With all but a handful of precincts reported, Alsobrooks was crushing Trone by over 12 points, and led by over 54,000 votes. (See results here; photo above: “Ouch!”)
What happened? How did a very rich white guy, and 3-term member of Congress, lose a statewide race so badly to a county-level politician? Mouthing a racial slur in a congressional hearing, even accidentally, didn’t help. Neither did looking down his nose at his rival’s supporters — Democratic voters he would need in November — as “low-level folks.” And Alsobrooks had the backing of the state’s Democratic party (see story here).
So it sounds like Trone was his own worst enemy. It also seems you can’t always buy voters’ love. But that’s not the Beatles tune I decided to post for Trone’s Senate campaign wake; I think there’s a more fitting one for this occasion.