The increasingly negative U.S. Senate primary race between David Trone and Angela Alsobrooks is leading to greater division and hard feelings in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
Most of the elected leaders at the county and state level have endorsed Alsobrooks, but those who haven’t are increasingly vocal about it.
The latest instance of that came Thursday morning at a union office in Lanham. Surrogates of David Trone held a news conference to tout his campaign and to take more shots at Alsobrooks, though she was rarely mentioned by name.
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“We need someone who can be effective from day one,” said Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy.
And there were repeated suggestions from Prince George’s County Council member Krystal Oriadha, an outspoken supporter of Trone’s, that Republicans were “trying to intentionally infiltrate” the race by throwing money at Alsobrooks because she was a weaker candidate than Trone.
But Oriadha disputed the idea that the race has been “super negative,” in her words.
“I think there’s some conversation around record, which is fair. There’s conversation about what people support and don’t support,” she said. “That’s fair to do.”
She denied any of her comments have been personal in nature, though as one of the more liberal members of the council, she’s had frequent clashes with other colleagues as well as the Alsobrooks administration over policy.
“My colleagues see that. They see the bills I put forward. They see things that I fight for. And they see that the county executive doesn’t align with those things,” Oriadha said. “So it’s not a far stretch that I wouldn’t be able to endorse her for Senate.”
But those on the council who back Alsobrooks, including chair Jolene Ivey, believe it is personal for Oriadha and Ed Burroughs, whose suggestion that Alsobrooks would need “training wheels” initially appeared in a Trone commercial before later being edited out.
“There’s only a couple of them who are not supporting Angela,” Ivey said. “But because David Trone has so much money he just puts it on TV all the time and it makes it look like there’s all these people supporting him from Prince George’s, but thank God the polls don’t show that.”
Several former Democratic state party chairs have started putting out statements criticizing Trone for the tone of his campaign, including Thursday afternoon.
“David Trone has cast disparaging comments about women, inadvertently uttered racial slurs, and has denigrated public service. He will be challenged in building the statewide unity that is needed to win in November,” said the statement signed by Kathleen Matthews, Susan Turnbull, Ike Leggett, Terry Lierman, Yvette Lewis and Peter Krauser.
Ivey said the increasing negativity is coming from the Trone side because the race has become so tight in recent weeks. A new Emerson College poll actually put Alsobrooks up by 1 point this week, though the Trone campaign was critical of the methodology behind it. Nonetheless, internal polls conducted by both campaigns are in agreement that the election will likely be super close on Tuesday.
Both Oriadha and Ivey were confident that the party would mend the disagreements once the primary is over.
“There will be a healing but it’s going to take a lot of time,” Ivey said.
“I have friends on either side and they’re still going to be my friends either way,” Oriadha said. “My hope and what we have to do is unify after the primary.”
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