Democrats lost the US Senate on Tuesday but they got a boost when Angela Alsobrooks, the executive of Prince George’s county, defeated the former Republican governor Larry Hogan for an open seat.
Endorsed and supported by Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and other Democratic luminaries, Alsobrooks will be the first Black senator from Maryland and only the fourth Black woman ever elected to the US Senate. Harris was the second, from California in 2016 and following Carol Moseley Braun, who represented Illinois between 1993 and 1999. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who won election in Delaware earlier on Tuesday, pipped Alsobrooks for third by a matter of hours. Laphonza Butler, currently a senator from California, was appointed to her seat last year.
“Thank you, Maryland,” Alsobrooks, 53, said on social media, adding: “To serve this state, my home, is the honor of a lifetime.”
In October, at a campaign event in Baltimore, Alsobrooks told the Guardian her priorities in office would include “reproductive freedom, sensible gun legislation that will help us to eradicate the gun violence that we’ve seen in an epidemic across our country … economic opportunity that considers a path forward for the middle class [and] preserving freedoms and democracy. And I think that message resonates with Marylanders.”
On Tuesday, Marylanders agreed. Among voters who spoke to reporters, Donald Huber, 72 and from Annapolis, told the Associated Press: “I don’t want to see the Senate go Republican. Simple as that. I don’t want to see it turn.”
Hogan, 68 and a popular moderate, sought to attract split-ticket voters by keeping his distance from Donald Trump and other Republican extremists, despite having the former president’s endorsement.
He claimed he would not support further Republican attacks on reproductive rights and discussed attempts to move his party past Trump, telling the Guardian in Washington last month: “I think we’ve got to stand up and try to take the Republican party back and eventually get us back on track to a bigger tent, more [Ronald] Reagan’s party that can win elections again.”
Early polling showed Hogan achieving a tie with Alsobrooks but that effort took a blow last month when he was reported to have stressed the Trump endorsement during a call with donors.
On Tuesday night, Hogan said: “We ran the kind of campaign that represents what politics can be and what it should be. We left it all out on the field, and I’m so damn proud of the effort.
“I want to congratulate County Executive Alsobrooks on a hard-fought victory. Tonight, regardless of who you voted for, we can all take pride in the election of the first Black woman to represent Maryland in the US Senate.”
Wes Moore, the Democrat who last year became Maryland’s first Black governor, said Alsobrooks “represents the best of Maryland. She’s a champion who will fight for us in the Senate to defend our freedoms, make us safer, and make not just our state, but our entire country better. Angela, congratulations on making history and I can’t wait for all we will continue to get done for the state we love.”
Nonetheless, Democrats’ hopes of holding the Senate, which they controlled by 51-49 before polls closed, were growing increasingly slim.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
