By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) May 22, 2024; see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Note: all poll numbers and poll margins are rounded to nearest whole numbers unless otherwise indicated

SILVER SPRING—While votes are still being counted and, after detailed research, I fully expect my current sixth-place tally to shift into at least fifth out of ten overall candidates in the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary (and I will be writing more about why I am proud my bare-bones campaign was able to outperform likely half the other candidates soon, once all votes are counted), there is absolutely no question as to who is the clear, resounding winner in this race: and that is Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

She “Veni vidi vici”-ed this primary like a black female Julius Caesar.

As in sports and war, there is doubt about who will triumph in political contests.  Whoever is up at halftime or in the middle of battle is not guaranteed to win.  What matters in the end is hanging tough, competing, and how you finish, how many points you put up when the clock has stopped, where you are when the fighting, battle, and war ends. And in this undercovered-by-the-media Democratic primary, with no statewide official or celebrity running, when few people paid much attention until close to the end, it is now clear to me from the admittedly limited polling data and the crystal-clear election results that when people did start paying attention, they went bigtime for Angela and she won over so many undecided voters rapidly towards the end of the race, far more than any other candidate.  And thus, her double-digit victory announced to doubters (including myself,), Maryland, and America that, yes, she can win.

In this race, I always intended to compete seriously, and that I did, standing on stage with Angela and debating her five times.  During the debates (“forums”), in our discussions before and after these events, and at two events in which I was not participating as a candidate, she was always respectful and polite in her personal interactions to me, even when we had a disagreement, even though I never broke out past 1% in the polling.  She even surprised me with an unexpected hug at one point.

I’ve seen this woman up close and in person, sat next to her and even shared a mic that we had to keep passing back-and-forth between us while debating, heard her answers and opinions, witnessed her quiet fierceness exhibiting her composed passion for the issues, for justice, for Maryland, for people.  I’ve seen her improve over time as a candidate as well, and all I can say is, she finished strong, closed out like a pro, and I am proud to have lost to such a worthy competitor.  Now I see much of what her biggest champions—our governor, Wes Moore; our U.S. Senator, Chris Van Hollen; and my U.S. Representative, Jamie Raskin—have seen when they endorsed her well before the race had ended.

Angela is a lifelong Marylander who has been leading where she was and been active politically since her days on the student government in her high school.  By now, she has dedicated nearly three decades to public service in Prince George’s County Maryland, first in 1997 as the first Assistant State’s Attorney tasked specifically with dealing with domestic violence, then as the first woman elected to be Prince Goerge’s County State’s Attorney 2010, then in 2018 as the first woman elected to be Prince George’s County Executive and the first black woman to be elected as a county executive anywhere in Maryland.  And if you are a person with even an ounce of wisdom, you know that black women on average face more discrimination, have less support, are underrepresented in leadership, and have to work far harder than white men, white women, and even black men to get where they are professionally and politically.  And she has the chance to become only the third elected and fourth overall African-American woman U.S. Senator (after Carol Moseley Braun, now-Vice President Kamala Harris—a longtime supporter of Angela’s, whom Angela considers a “quintessential big sister”—and the appointed Laphonza Butler).

At this point, I can say that Angela Alsobrooks has earned our respect and our support, and I say that as a former competitor and as someone with nearly two-and-half decades of experience engaging in national-level and international-level political, public policy, and geopolitical issues. Another thing I am going to say is don’t underestimate black women who organize: Angela is a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (founded at nearby Howard University in Washington) sister and, as we are talking about the state outside of the South with the largest African-American population, we can expect her sorority sisters in Maryland—and also at Howard, in Washington, and across the nation—to be a potent force working on the ground and online to helping to propel Angela into the U.S. Senate.  She has deep roots in the state’s second-most-populous county and the support of the vast majority of the major statewide Democratic politicians known and loved by the Marylanders they represent and govern.  She has shown she can generate passion, defy expectations, and finish dominatingly yet with grace and dignity in hotly a contested race under a national spotlight.

I had my concerns during the race, but Angela Alsobrooks has shown me and many others in Maryland she is a force of nature to be reckoned with, a formidable candidate able to overcome stiff competition, an even-keeled, thoughtful, deliberative candidate and public servant who is capable yet humble, a fighter yet respectful, compassionate yet a prosecutor, one who can help lead our nation on the U.S. Senate floor as we fight for truth in an age of disinformation and preserving our democracy against the extremism of insurrectionist Trump’s MAGA fascism.

Even though Larry Hogan is a decent man, was a popular two-term governor here in Maryland, and may oppose Trump, insurrectionism, and fascism, he will still be voting far, far too often with Trump’s disgusting cultists who form the core of House and, yes, Senate Republicans, whose ranks Hogan seeks to bolster.  Angela will protect a woman’s right to choose and voting rights, she will vote for more funding for the people of Maryland not to cut the budgets of much needed-programs, and she will encourage economic development while holding crooked CEOs accountable and pushing for profits to be shared with workers not just CEOs.

The choice is clear: to replace Ben Cardin, we need Angela Alsobrooks, not Larry Hogan, not any Republican, but we need Angela Alsbrooks not just because she is a Democrat but because she really is great for all of the reasons I have outlined above.  Don’t just vote against Hogan, vote for Angela Alsobrooks.

I’m all in for Angela.  Are you?  You should be.

Now is the time to get behind Angela!

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my candidacy and ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) May 13 2024; see and all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Note: all poll numbers and poll margins are rounded to nearest whole numbers unless otherwise indicated.

SILVER SPRING—Analysts say Maryland could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.  One of the two frontrunners—U.S. House Representative David Trone—has spent more money by far than any candidate in U.S. Senate History (over $61 million of his own money so far).  The other frontrunner—Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks—would be only the fourth black female U.S. senator in U.S. history (and only the third elected) and has spent nearly three decades in Maryland politics.

And yet there was only one televised debate this whole race, (three weeks ago, only about 45 minutes when you factor in commercials, with short answers).  In the five debates I participated in:

• None of those debates were televised
• Alsobrooks was there for all five, Trone just the first
• Only one had a high quality recording produced by the actual organizers of the debate (the last one, at Angela Alsobrooks’s own church and moderated by famous sports broadcaster Lou Holder; this debate received no press coverage!); several had official recordings so bad they were difficult to understand and only had decent from video taken by one of the campaigns.  With one debate, the one at Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church, one Pete French of the church decided to withhold its recording, even after I pressed him personally to release it to the public.
• One debate received no press coverage (as mentioned), two only received local coverage: one in Frederick from the Frederick News-Post, one in Baltimore from Afro News (I stood out in both articles and received substantial coverage in both); only the first debate with Trone was covered by more than one outlet (so of five debates, one received no coverage, three received coverage from just one newspaper, one from more than one, not including my own coverage).
• Several of the debates were very sparsely attended.

Some questions:

• Why was only one-second tier campaign meticulous about recording these five debates?
• Why did neither of the frontrunners’ campaigns, each with millions of dollars, ensure they had their own recordings of debates?
• Why did none of the local TV stations cover these debates?
• Why was there such precious little media coverage in general of these debates, nor even more profiles or interviews with the candidates?
• For a statewide race, why were county local political organizations left to organize debates and not the state party at all?
• For a statewide race, why didn’t state and local party organizations cross-promote these events (we are talking a few social media posts, e-mails, and listing on calendars)?
• Why was there only one independent credible non-internal poll for the entire last month of the race?
• Why did some church official appoint it to himself to block the release of a high quality recording of a debate and why did other campaigns not demand its release?

The answers are that Maryland Democratic Party leaders did not want to have a highly publicized series of debates because they had mostly aligned behind Alsobrooks and did not want two leading Democrats in the state to damage each other too much, nor did they want any other voices—such as mine—crowding a race that they wanted to be a coronation for Alsobrooks, with Trone’s success ruining their plan and them sticking to the do-nothing minimalist approach.  This was a nervous approach that betrayed any sense of transparency or openness for the primary and one that suggested they were fearful of what a more competitive primary might do to the standing of their chosen candidate.  They were likely banking on certain big endorsements (Gov. Wes Moore, superstar U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, Sen. Van Hollen, the Washington Post) getting her across the finish line with undecided voters, which may be exactly what is happening if the most recent poll is a good sense of where the race is.

But with so little polling in this race and especially with only one single independent poll during the final month (as of the writing of this article, literally just one non-internal poll from Emerson, with an internal partisan poll funded by an organization backing Alsobrooks and therefore not nearly as credible surprisingly mirroring the result the Emerson poll).  Prior to that Emerson poll, four independent polls had Trone handily defeating Alsobrooks (including an Emerson poll in February), one poll had him tied with Hogan and her losing to Hogan, and both lost in all other polling, but there has been nothing for a month until this second Emerson poll, which gives Alsobrooks a slight lead within the margin of error and both double-digit leads over Hogan.

One. Non-biased. Data. Point. In. A. Month.  Only one poll with either beating Hogan.

So basically?  Who the hell knows what’s going to happen.

I trust Emerson, but I never make broad conclusions on a single poll.  But what we should conclude is that the race has tightened, is probably close, and it’s hard to know who will win tomorrow.  Momentum is clearly with Alsobrooks, but there is also clearly low early-voter turnout, which could mean a good result for Trone who has dominated the early polling and airwaves.  So, it’s a wash.

As for me, it’s virtually impossible for me to win.  But in the poll in which I was included, while never leading for third place, I was always in the margin of error for third place. 

So vote for me!  Why?  I have seen the strengths and weaknesses of these candidates up close and in person.  They are doing better than before, but Larry Hogan is a tough, top-tier, A-list opponent: the best Republicans could possibly wish for.  I remember when Scott Brown won as a Republican for U.S. Senate in the Obama era in freakin’ Massachusetts.  The arrogance and taking-voters-for-granted attitude I have seen has not impressed me.  They can do better.   I’ve been the only candidate to seriously challenge them and elevating me to third will send the right message.

Until the last Emerson poll, neither Alsobrooks nor Trone had beaten Larry Hogan in a single independent poll.  In the last, they won by 10 and 11 points, respectively.  But Larry Hogan has barely started campaigning, barely spent any money, and barely gotten media coverage during his GOP primary, in which he is dominating and which is not competitive.  Bottom line is, Hogan can more can bounce back if that Emerson poll is accurate (and, again, I believe it roughly is).

And now I’m going to tell you the weaknesses of both Trone and Alsobrooks.

Trone has spent an insane amount of money: over $61 million of his own money.  He should be dominating this race, then, whether Alsobrooks and Hogan.  But now Alsobrooks is ahead in the latest poll (by a bit) and he has only led Hogan in one independent poll.  He is also an older straight white man at a time when that tends to not generate much enthusiasm among the Democratic electorate.

But Alsobrooks should also be winning easily.  Unlike Trone, who has been in Maryland politics for just five years, Alsobrooks has been a fixture in Maryland politics for nearly three decades and has the endorsements of Gov. Moore, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Sen. Van Hollen, and The Washington Post.  She should have been ahead the whole time in Maryland, especially as an African-American woman in a state with the largest black population proportionately outside of the South. And for a candidate who struggled with name recognition and was behind in the polls, sitting on $3.1 million at the end of 2023 and about $3.2 million at the end of April was simply not the right strategy; even if she wins, had that money been spend on advertising earlier and therefore shaped the race more, she’d have won by a larger margin.

That so many Democrats are doubtful of either candidate shows that they have a lot of room for improvement, especially against a Larry Hogan who left office as governor of Maryland with an 81% approval from Democrats.

And for both frontrunners: there is no reason I should have more specific plans on my site than both of them, and that is the case.  They are applying to be one of two legislators for Maryland in the U.S. Senate and cannot even post detailed legislative proposals on their site.

I will gladly support whoever becomes the nominee, but both campaigns have been dismissive of the threat Hogan poses in the era of fighting against Trump’s MAGA insurrectionist fascism.  Such hubris is not a path to victory, and these campaigns need to understand their weaknesses and address them.  Vote for me to send a message: we cannot afford to lose Ben Cardin’s seat to Republicans and these campaigns needs to listen more to outside voices like mine.

Now is the time to raise my candidacy to be an integral part of this race, now is the time to spread the word, now is the time to donate to my campaign, now is the time to really get things going.

See related articles Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my candidacy and ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) April 22, 2024; *UPDATED April 30 discussing Trone’s misrepresentation of polling; see related Twitter thread and all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Note: all poll numbers and poll margins are rounded to nearest whole numbers unless otherwise indicated.

SILVER SPRING—The state of the Maryland Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated by Ben Cardin is dismal (as I have warned before), with Larry Hogan beating (sometimes crushing) either frontrunner in all credible independent recent polls.  While both U.S. Representative David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks are both good people and fine Democratic politicians with solid records, their campaigns are failing Democrats and others who want to ensure that the U.S. Senate seat held by the retiring Ben Cardin for over seventeen years and by Barbara Mikulski before him for thirty—two Democratic Party legends—stays occupied by a Democrat.  With its candidate consistently polling far behind her primary rival, the campaign of Country Executive Alsobrooks has become desperately dishonest (sadly, more on this just below), and while Trone’s campaign should feel good about his lead over his primary rival, that he is still not beating Hogan in a blue state after spending nearly $42 million of his own money is downright humiliatingly embarrassing and bodes ill for Democratic efforts to keep Cardin’s seat blue as he is the candidate the keeps performing better against Hogan in polling between himself and Alsobrooks.

A dismal state for the Democratic primary, indeed.

Desperation and Dishonesty from the Alsobrooks Campaign (and Internal Polls 101)

(*Update April 30: to be fair, the Trone campaign has also been blatantly dishonest about Trone’s polling. In Trone’s latest ad, he says: “The polls say I’m the only candidate who can beat Larry Hogan.” This is false, as I will explain below, because that is nowhere near what “the polls” suggest. To be fair to him, the only poll that had him tied—the one from back in February discussed below—has him technically at 42.3% to Hogan’s 41.7% in the crosstabs, but the unofficial rules of how polling is reported and disseminated to the public involve the common practice of reporting the rounded numbers with no decimal digits, so in this case, tied at 42% and well within the margin of error; there have been only three major credible independent polls since then and all three have had Trone behind, the latest by 13 points. Yes, all these polls had him doing better than Alsobrooks against Hogan, but Trone clearly said “the polls” as in more than one, and even citing the one where he was reported as tied, would be misleading, and doing better than Alsobrooks is not the same as beating Hogan, so this was blatantly misleading (if he had said “the most competitive candidate,” that would have been honest). And Trone’s campaign has not released any internal polls for the general election matchup in all of 2024. Neither has Alsobrooks, suggesting both their internal polling against Hogan is brutal (more on how/why/when internal polls are released below). There was one internal partisan poll that is funded by a Democratic group from mid-November all the way back in 2023 giving Trone a 49%-34% lead over Hogan months before Hogan entered the race, but none of Trone’s numbers against Hogan have looked anywhere near that since then and that is ancient history as far as polling goes. So, again, there are not even any recent internal polls to suggest he “can beat Hogan,” let alone independent polls, which are much more credible and accurate than internal polls, as the discussion below will explain.)

I want to preface this section by noting I don’t believe County Executive Alsobrooks was personally involved in any of what I am about to describe: she has always been cordial and respectful in person to me and she only gives the impression that she is an honest, sincere, kind person working hard for the people.  But it must be noted that the campaign of Angela Alsobrooks yesterday sent out a deceitful, dishonest e-mail to its supporters, misrepresenting one of the campaign’s own internal polls—that is, a poll that is paid for by the campaign itself and often (as in this case) not released with the usually full data or crosstabs—as a poll from national news outlet Axios.  The e-mail innocuously opens by noting “A new poll just dropped,” and the graphic of the poll has the Axios logo on it.  No further description or link as to the source of the poll is provided, so most readers would simply assume the poll was an Axios poll, given the logo (full screenshot of the email below):

Except if you go to the Axios article that discussed the poll, within the article itself, its bylined author Stephen Neukam writes “Alsobrooks is within the margin of error against Trone, according to internal Alsobrooks campaign polling obtained by Axios.”  Thus, compounding the misleading logo, the use of a ”a new poll” when the people writing this email were well aware that it was their own campaign’s commissioned poll is absolutely also a deliberate obfuscation, and, to make matters worse, the use of Axios’s logo on the graphic to mislead readers to clearly make them think the poll is by Axios when the campaign itself was the party responsible for providing its own poll directly to Axios even further compounds the sinning.

This trifecta of dishonesty is simply disgraceful and goes beyond anything near relatively acceptable so-called “spin;” rather, we have two examples if information being deliberately withheld from readers—that the poll was an internal Alsobrooks campaign poll and that the Alsobrooks campaign gave the results to Axios—and a full-on misrepresentation by putting the Axios logo on the poll graphic, giving the clear impression this misleading labeled “a new poll” is an Axios poll, all in order to confer fake legitimacy on the poll by making it appear it is not an internal poll and allowing the impression to be clearly conveyed to the reader that the poll is from the independent news outlet Axios.

The partisan internal poll as described by Axios highlights that Alsobrooks is at 40%, just 3 points behind Trone at 43% (with 17% undecided) and within the margin of error.  There is also a third omission falling within the realm of normal spin: another poll—this one a far more credible, independent poll put together by The Baltimore Sun, Fox 45 Baltimore, and the University of Baltimore at just about the same time as the Alsobrooks campaign’s internal poll—had Alsbrooks 19 points behind Trone, 29% to 48%.  Now, it’s normal for a campaign to highlight a more favorable poll even if also perhaps misleading in that that the poll the campaign chooses to highlight may be unrepresentative, but it is downright dishonest to tout your own internal campaign poll as “a new poll,” suggest visually that it is a poll from a major news outlet, and then omit that your own campaign fed the poll data to that news outlet: this is far from normal and should be called out as simply wrong.

Why is it important do sharply distinguish between internal polls and other polls?  Let me explain if you’re not familiar with internal polls.  Internal polls released by a campaign are self-selected datapoints and usually not the full or transparent set of data: the parts that are shared are deemed by the campaign to be favorable and are chosen to be shared with the public because the campaign thinks it will benefit in some way from the information being released.  Most internal polls are not released and what is released tends to be the best possible tidbits among other tidbits and other internal polls that are not to selected to be released.

Furthermore, partisan internal polls average out to be significantly more favorable in their results towards their preferred candidate than independent polls not paid for by such a campaign and should, therefore, be taken with a full salt-shaker, not just a grain of salt even if they are not useless.  Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight for some time banned the listing of internal polls on its site and later would actually show that it had adjusted internal polls by changing the results to account for that bias in favor of the candidate by reversing the bias away from the campaign’s preferred candidate.  Simply put, internal partisan polls are generally less accurate and far less transparently disseminated to the public and generally should, as a result, be trusted far, far less than non-partisan independent polls.  Thus, it is truly a sign of the desperation of the Alsobrooks campaign at this stage, about a month before the primary and about two weeks before early voting, that it released an internal poll still showing her down three points to Trone (accounting for the bias, this poll actually does not suggest she is close to Trone or really closing in, but those who don’t know about the bias of internal polls can be fooled by this presentation). 

Considering all this, this play by the Alsobrooks campaign breaks major principles of honesty and attribution in attempting to pass off one of its own polls to readers as a “normal” “from” Axios poll in order to give the false impression that polling data has Alsobrooks in a close race with Trone.  For the data absolutely does not show this: in four credible independent non-partisan polls beginning in February, Alsobrooks was down 15 (17% to 32%), then 7 (27% to 34%), then 9 (33% to 42%), and, most recently, 19 points (29% to 48%) to Trone.  In this context, passing off an internal poll as having Alsobrooks down just 3 points (40% to 43%) as indicative is the overall state of the race is highly misleading.

As noted, it falls within the normal realm of political spin and campaign advocacy to cherry-pick the best polling for your candidate and present that to voters while not stressing other less favorable polls.  But this is not what the Alsobrooks campaign did with this e-mail to all of its followers: it presented its own internal poll as “a new poll”—not as its own internal poll—and presented it as an Axios poll and, on top of that, did that when the campaign itself had provided that data to Axios.  This is a form of lying to voters and is disinformation: deliberate misrepresentation, misattribution, and omission to dupe voters into thinking its candidate is far more competitive than any of the credible data indicates.

But now we must also talk about journalistic integrity: the reporter, Stephen Neukam (I tried to contact him directly but received no response), and/or his editors at Axios were either engaging in blatant advocacy designed to unfairly boost (from a journalistic perspective) the Alsobrooks campaign or were not discerning or careful enough with their work to realize they were being coopted by the Alsobrooks campaign to push a misleading agenda about the state of the race, with Neukam’s article’s title being “Hot Dem primary in Maryland tightens a month before election;” to be fair, as a journalist myself I know that often we reporters are not the ones who craft the title and that editors often do that in ways me might not choose to for our own work, but the point is, Neukam or his editors or both did present a clearly misleading picture with that headline but also some of the text within the article by putting out an Alsobrooks campaign internal poll as evidence of a tightening Democratic U.S. Senate primary race between Trone and Alsobrooks when only that less credible internal poll deliberately provided to Axios by the Alsobrooks campaign presented such a picture and the other more credible independent, non-internal, non-partisan polls had shown Trone with a much larger lead: the latest poll with Trone leading Alsobrooks by 19 was just days away from coming out on April 16 when the Axios article was published on April 12, but the latest independent poll before that had come out on April 2 and gave Trone a 9-point lead, and, as noted, the other two previous polls had also given Trone a far larger lead than the 3-point lead of the Alsobrooks campaign internal poll.

Are we getting into the weeds here?  Sure.  But we reporters are like mechanics who are responsible for fine-tuning and checking out what’s under the hood for the customer.  And what has happened here is that a used car salesman has lied about what he sold his customer or was not professional enough to know what he as a salesman picked up was not in good working order before selling it, either knowing the car was messed up or getting hoodwinked by the seller he got it from before selling to the customer.  In this case, I am the mechanic, pointing out what is not working under the hood to the voters, raising questions about Axios and Neukam and clearly finding wrongdoing by the Alsobrooks campaign.

There have to be consequences and learning here.  Both Neukam and Axios should review what happened and be careful in the future not to present any internal polls as game-changers or indicative or the real state of any race, especially one provided directly by that poll’s campaign to them; at best, such an internal poll should be an aside detail in a larger article, it should not drive a headline claiming to portray the state of a major high-stakes primary race: this is just good journalist practice to avoid overstating internal polls (and a single poll in general) and Axios needs to do better.  And the Alsobrooks campaign should reprimand or perhaps even fire the staff responsible for framing that e-mail’s contents the way it was framed.

In the end, any political campaign must establish and preserve trust with its supporters (current or prospective), and a breach of that trust by deliberately feeding them disinformation about polling, the nature of the polling, and who produced the polling to paint an unrepresentative picture of the level its candidate’s competitiveness in order to paint a far more favorable picture for the candidate than the reality in order to, in turn, raise money from people reading that disinformation is a serious affair that is a test for the campaign and its integrity, its very ability to be honest even when the going gets tough.

As I stated in the beginning, I very much do not believe County Executive Alsobrooks herself was personally involved in generating the disinformation in this e-mail, but the campaign does bear her name and she is responsible for the staff she and her senior staff select as well as all of the content put out by their campaign.  So while I do not believe she would do anything like this, if nothing is done to correct this serious breach of trust exhibited by that email, if steps are not taken to prevent any reoccurrence of anything similar, it would call into question her ability to lead, to run a major political office, and to put people in place who will properly react to such breaches of trust when discovered.  While I can understand the pressure in a race to raise money against a very wealthy opponent who has heavily outspent you when the real polling has you down significantly and the primary is just weeks away, there is no excuse for this behavior exhibited in this e-mail, nor for ignoring such behavior or letting it slide.  Still, this is an opportunity for her and her campaign to show leadership by doing the right things, by issuing an apology and a correction and disciplining those responsible for the disinformation email discussed herein.

Alsobrooks Also Has Other Issues

Apart from the disinformation email, the Alsobrooks campaign can fairly be accused of being less than stellar in its approach.  The e-mails you get from her campaign nearly all come off as if they are written by AI, lacking substance and pizazz, and nearly all asking for money and centering on asking for money, many of those complaining about how much money Trone has spent (and boy, we will get to that!).

Yes, Trone has spent a lot of money, but Alsobrooks has raised a lot, too: not that far from $7.2 million through the end of March, including $2.1 million for 2024’s first quarter.  But you’d be hard-pressed to understand how that money has been spent.  Is it on quality e-mail communications?  Certainly not.  It is on television ads?  Nope: Alsobrooks has only just started putting out TV ads in mid-February (and not that many since then until the past few weeks).  Which begs the question: why?  Because she has significant amounts of money she is not spending.  History tells us that striking first helps: you frame the race that way and put your opponent on the defensive, forcing him to react, while also raising your own profile earlier and generating more attention and thus drawing more money earlier: spending more early means you can raise even more later in a reinforcing feedback loop.  And the March Washington Post/UMD poll had 58% of respondents saying they had “no opinion” when it came to Alsobrooks to 46% saying the same for Trone while Hogan had a 64% favorable rating.

But even with her massive challenge with a clear majority of voters not knowing who she is or much about her, for Alsobrooks, of the more than $4.9 million she had raised by the end of 2023, over $3.1 million had remained unspent at that time (“cash on hand”).  After the end of first quarter of 2024 just a few weeks ago, Alsobrooks had nearly $3.2 million cash on hand unspent and for the entire campaign, had spent less than $4 million; in contrast, Trone had spent nearly everything he had, with just under $1 million left unspent at the end of March and spending over $41.6 million by then.

Folks, this represents two very different strategies.  Trone’s is to leave it all on the field and to be the one who shapes the race and garners notice and recognition (much) sooner rather than later, but it is not clear what Alsobrooks’s own strategy is: people are already voting by mail and early voting starts May 2, in ten days.  What is she waiting for??

If Alsobrooks loses, her people will claim it is because she was so heavily outspent.  But that will not necessarily be the reason why as more money doesn’t always mean victory.  In U.S. Senate general election races, the bigger spender has lost in about one-fifth of the races in the past two decades.  And at the presidential level, Bernie Sanders outspent Hillary Clinton in 2016 and lost while she outspent future insurrectionist Donald Trump in the general election and lost; Biden was outspent in 2020 by Bernie and some other rival Democrats, too, all who lost; and Trump was outspent by some of his rivals in the 2016 primaries (remember Jeb! and his $100 million?) who lost and has been outspent by some of his 2024 primary opponents.

Again, I don’t know what Alsobrooks is spending her campaign’s money on, but her TV ads starting so late in the primary may have doomed her campaign, especially seeing how many ads with which Trone was flooding the market.  She should have been advertising on TV towards the end of 2023 and she had the money then to have done so, which would almost certainly have garnered her more name recognition and then more money and more support.  We will never know if it would have been enough, but the Alsobrooks campaign has hardly been running an A-game campaign that looks capable of upsetting a higher-spending rival: a much-better-run campaign can beat and has beaten a less-well-run campaign even if that less-well-run campaign outspends it, but if you aren’t even running a particularly good campaign, money is hardly the beginning or the end of your woes or the clear reason for a loss, for which it looks as if Alsobrooks is heading.

Alsobrooks has also had a harder time explaining how her experience as a county executive and state’s attorney translates well into the work of the Senate, while Trone’s efforts in the House translate perfectly to Senate work as they are both concerning federal legislative positions.  As I have discussed before, this is in part because voters have long-deemed county executive work to be less relevant and less transferable when it comes to the U.S. Senate, only exceedingly rarely sending someone in that position directly to the U.S. Senate.  Additionally, while Alsobrooks has touted specific accomplishments as a county executive, it is unclear what distinguishes her from other country executives in terms of her record: sharing a debate stage with her four times, I have not heard rank her accomplishments relative to other county executives in the state or make an evidence-based case that sets her apart from other county executives in general, whereas Trone is quick to tout that he is one of the most objectively bipartisan members of Congress and the most effective of the entire Maryland delegation.  Thus, Trone sounds more like a senator that she does talking about what he does as a leader and has been more effective in explaining what makes him unique and stand out among his peers.

Additionally, Trone has also garnered an impressive number of endorsements from prominent Democrats in Alsobrooks’s own Prince George’s County as well as U.S. House Minority Leader (and hopefully soon-to-be-Speaker) Hakeem Jeffries, an African-American and one of the country’s most prominent and powerful black politicians in a race where Alsobrooks is definitely highlighting the historic nature of her candidacy as an African-American woman.

Furthermore, while I have seen Trone generate a more dynamic response from audiences with a somewhat more energetic and dynamic style, Alsobrooks is more reserved and careful with her approach.  I experienced this most keenly observing the two at a NAACP forum last month in front of a mostly-African-American church audience in Fort Washington.  I was a bit surprised that Trone seemed to connect more viscerally with that audience than Alsobrooks, who by no means did poorly but was not having the same dynamic effect as Trone was.  So cautious and reserved can be a good strategy if you have a large lead, but reserved and careful is not a good strategy when you are down significantly and consistently in the polls.  In particular, the Alsobrooks campaign keeps projecting an “everything is fine” vibe even as she has consistently polled significantly behind Trone and has always polled worse against Hogan than Trone (her best number against Hogan—40% to Hogan’s 44%–came from the March Goucher College poll, which had a significantly smaller sample size than the other independent polls and is likely less accurate as a result), continuing as they have without making any major adjustments since he entered the race.  Echoing my sentiment, the main Baltimore Sun reporter covering this race, Jeff Barker, yesterday came out with an article titled “Alsobrooks isn’t running as if she’s behind in Maryland’s US Senate primary.”  So others are also perplexed by this approach besides me…

And while I am certainly aware of gender and race dynamics—it is easier for a white man than a black women to speak more openly and worry less about consequences—the difference is still there and everything can matter and come under scrutiny for any candidate in a high-profile contest like this one.  Also, in general, her staff members at these events have seem more protective and hovering than those of Trone.  I admit these are anecdotal observations, but Alsobrooks seems great as a person and shouldn’t be seen as needing protection in a race like this by her staff but even more exposure.

To conclude, I am not sure who is helping Alsobrooks make these calls, but it sure does not seem as if her senior staff have served her well.  As a significant underdog to Trone as far as polling and money, waiting to spend millions and adopting a more reserved and careful approach is not a path to victory.  Getting the twin powerhouse endorsements of rockstar Maryland U.S. House Representative Jamie Raskin and The Washington Post—Trone would certainly have liked to have received either or both and they should persuade some undecideds—perhaps they think those endorsements will be enough to close the gap along with increased spending on ads late in the game, but that may very well be overly optimistic and is likely downright risky, given the size of the gap between her and Trone indicated in credible polling (that latest Sun/Fox/UB disastrous-for-Alsobrooks poll with her down 19 came weeks after Raskin’s endorsement but before the Post’s), and Trone is sure to surge more of his own money into advertising these last few weeks, too.

Trone’s Mortifying Polling vs. Hogan in the Context of Record Spending

In case you thought I was going to let Trone off easy or was even endorsing him here, this section will make it clear I am not.  Trone has put a staggering amount of his own family fortune into this race: some $41.7 million.  If this sounds like a lot, it is: it’s the largest amount a self-funder has ever poured into a U.S. Senate primary in American history, with the next highest person and amount not even reaching $30 million.  And while he seems to have a comfortable lead over Alsobrooks and would be the favorite to win the primary at this point, his numbers for a possible matchup against Hogan, while better than Alsobrooks’s, have ranged from troublesome to dismal: the first independent credible poll in February had him tied (42%-42% vs. an 8-point deficit for Alsobrooks), then he was down 12 (49%-37% vs. a 14-point deficit for Alsobrooks), then down one in that likely-less-accurate Goucher poll with the smaller sample size (42%-43% vs. a 4-poit deficit for Alsobrooks), then down 13 points (40%-53% vs. an 18-point deficit for Alsobrooks).  For both candidates, these are terrible numbers in a very blue state against a Republican in the era of Trump, and while Alsobrooks has spent far less and is a county executive as opposed to a member of Congress, meaning lower name recognition is more of an excuse for her, for Trone and the nearly $42 million spent through up through the first quarter, this is a terrible result: even flooding the airwaves in the most recent polls has him either trailing in heavily-Democratic Maryland or losing by double digits, the latest poll having him down 13 points.  With all the money spent, I worry this suggests Trone has more of a ceiling relative to Alsobrooks, but that may not be the case.  But I do worry that after so many commercials (if you watch non-streaming-service TV, you must have seen his ads and likely a lot), there could be a sizable chunk of voters that are more than a little hesitant to back him in the general election.

And while Alsobrooks has incessantly criticized his level of self-funding in a rather classist manner I have criticized before (in contrast to his hollow attacks on her as a “career politician”), strategically-minded Democrats like myself and some party leaders welcome the idea that during a general election, national Democratic Party efforts and the efforts of liberal allies and big leftist donors can count on Trone self-funding and turn their money and attention to other competitive races across the country.  But many other voters will not be thinking about that, and while I have mentioned that Alsobrooks is not the most dynamic or energetic speaker, I do worry that Trone being easily stereotyped as an old rich white guy will not help generate enough enthusiasm, especially compared to the idea of the much younger African-American female candidate in Alsobrooks.  Then again, enthusiasm isn’t everything, lots of less-enthusiastic people still vote and Trone so far has consistently been ahead of Alsobrook while also doing better against Hogan, even if he still loses to him.  In this case, time will tell and I am honestly torn at this point as to who is the better candidate against Hogan, as is much of the rest of the Maryland electorate.

Speaking of Trone having a more dynamic, freewheeling, colorful style than Alsobrooks, while often an asset, this also can lead to him making gaffes that Alsobrooks would not make.  One example of this was at the aforementioned NAACP forum, when he said he we need to “beat Larry Hogan like a rented mule” (this drew laughs but also groans and a mild, playful rebuke from the moderator; if there were PETA or vegetarian/vegan folks in the audience, that sure did not help Trone with them).  Another gaffe was at a House hearing last month in which Trone quite seemingly inadvertently substituted an old racial slur for the word “bugaboo,” a mishap that generated negative coverage nationwide and outrage on Twitter but might not have done too much damage.

Interestingly, of the six Maryland U.S. House Democrats who are not David Trone, five have endorsed Alsobrooks to just one of Trone’s Maryland Democratic U.S. House colleagues endorsing him, while Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore and Maryland’s  other U.S. Senator besides Cardin, Chris Van Hollen, have also endorsed Alsobrooks.

Conclusion: It’s Late in the Game but We Need These Candidates Need to Do Better or We Need Someone Else (ME!)

Even after my first debate with Trone and Alsobrooks (and the only one on which I shared the stage with Trone as he did not attend the next three while Alsobrooks did), it was clear that the performances I saw from both, while ok, were not stellar and not anything that would make me feel particularly confident in either debating Hogan (not that that they were bad, but when you are down a lot to an opponent, you have to be able to clearly beat them in several areas and debates are one of those key areas).  I am just worried that neither are particularly strong against Hogan and the polling we have thus far with neither beating him in a very Democratic state suggests my worries and those of others are justified.

Sure, polls can change over time.  It’s possible for Alsobrooks to overcome her deficit with Trone, and it’s possible for either to overcome their deficits against Hogan.  But that is not guaranteed, they do not seem to be on the path to a general election victory now, and it’s going to be too close for comfort in a state where a Democrat should easily win.  And that is, simply put, because we do not have better candidates.  The frontrunners’ current approach—that they are projecting confidence against Hogan without making any serious adjustments since he entered the race even after polling consistently shows them not beating him—is not reassuring.

Because of these campaigns’ complacency and the lack of journalists trying to push them on why they are polling so badly against Hogan in a blue state, I think it is necessary for someone else to be a third person in the weeks we have left in this race to draw attention to these issues and their shortcomings and to perhaps present a third alternative voters can rally behind.  I think I am the only Democratic candidate who can do this: the other candidates I shared space with on four debate stages so far totally avoided these issues, could not provide answers of any depth on a number of pressing topics (in contrast see me answering in the debates here and I even outshone the only frontrunner who attended in one of the debates!), and did not garner anywhere near the media coverage I have: I am the only candidate besides Trone or Alsobrooks still in the race to be quoted by any major news outlets, including The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun (see details of my coverage here).  I am likely third in the sense that I have a far greater presence on social media than any of the candidates (close to more than the Trone and Alsobrooks campaigns combined on Twitter) and more news media mentions than any other second-tier candidate, so I will come up far more easily and quickly for voters searching for information about other candidates, and once they get to my site, they will see I have by far the most detailed policy proposals of any candidate.  So for all those reasons, I believe I am likely to come in third but I need your help to really make a statement and make sure the frontrunners get the message that they need to do better!!

Look, I am not going to mislead any of you by inflating my chances of outright winning this race: I have not polled above 1% yet (technically 1.2% *but see April 30 update above that discusses rounding in polling), and it is far more likely that I can be that voice that helps hone the candidates and their campaigns and push them to adjust to be in a better position against Hogan than it is likely that I would actually win the nomination (though stranger things and political miracles have happened).  Maybe if I finish third on an upcoming poll, I can leverage that to be on stage with Trone and Alsobrooks in an upcoming debate (there’s only been one televised debate so far and just this past Friday—which only has about 4,200 views on YouTube—pretty ridiculous!) but I need you help for any of this to happen.

If I finish a strong third set firmly apart from all the other candidates after Trone and Alsobrooks, I think I can make that case publicly more effectively and perhaps even garner more influence on the party nominee and his or her campaign during the general election.  If you are concerned about what I have discussed here or are hesitant at all about the frontrunners, vote for me to let them know they need to step up their game and change course to earn your general election vote.

In the Democratic presidential primary, voters voting “uncommitted” to protest the Biden Administrations policies on Israel and Palestine amidst the Gaza war have been heard and acknowledged by Biden and his people in tense and difficult circumstances, and I have long-argued that Biden is already shifting policy in major ways behind the scenes to stand up more for Palestinians that are not yet apparent to most under a horrific geopolitical setting, but the point is that movements aiming to have a symbolic affect in political primaries can affect the conversation and garner attention at the highest levels.

We need better from Trone and Alsobrooks if one will be our standard bearer to keep Cardin’s seat blue for Democrats to better fight Trumpist MAGA insurrectionist fascism and I can play role in making that happen and, though it’s a longshot, maybe a political miracle can happen and I will be your nominee.  Whatever the outcome, whether the nominee is Trone, Alsobrooks or myself—and I will support whomever the nominee is enthusiastically—supporting me will help Democrats’ odds of winning in November because a bubble mentality and complacency is the path to losing in November.  Hogan may not be Trumpist, insurrectionist, or fascist, but he will vote far too much with MAGA so we have to win in November!

Bubbles in politics are nothing new and are quite common, but are not only dangerous in people governing but also with more extremist segments among the population.  They are also dangerous in campaigns, and the lack of self-awareness emanating from the two main frontrunners’ campaigns in the Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic primary should give all Marylanders and Americans united against insurrectionist Trump’s MAGA fascist extremism great cause for concern.  We need these candidates and their senior staff who think everything is going just fine and no major adjustments are needed to get out of their bubbles and I am the only candidate who seems willing to push them in this direction.  Spread the word and donate so we can put Democrats in the best possible chance to keep Cardin’s seat blue and defeat Hogan this fall to fight MAGA in the Senate!

See related articles Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my candidacy and ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 26, 2024; *UPDATE April 8: Afro News finally posted coverage of the March 21 eleven days later on April 1; Brian was quoted more than Alsobrooks; see related articles: March 19 Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, March 6 Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option?, and March 2 Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Correction appended: this article earlier misstated the length of Sen. Mikulski’s Senate term.

SILVER SPRING—To paraphrase what I wrote recently after my second Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic primary debate, if a debate happens but is not covered by the media, did it really happen as far as voters are concerned?

I am afraid the answer is no.

A Candidate Failed by this Maryland Primary Process

I write now as a candidate perhaps cheated by history in gross fashion, but in a way we may never know fully or be able to quantify to what degree.  To start, I would like reiterate the facts of the only credible independent poll to come out in 2024 at the time it was released, the mid-February Emerson College/The Hill/DC News Now poll:

For the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary:

• Undecided 37%
• U.S. Representative David Trone 32%
• Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks 17%
• and all other candidates combined (including me) totaling 14%.

For the general election:

• Trone tied with Hogan at 42% with 16% undecided
• Alsobrooks down 37% to Hogan’s 44% and 19% undecided

Those general election numbers are clearly a horrific result for Democrats in a blue state race for a seat held for 17 years by Democrat Ben Cardin and held for by Democrat Barbara Mikulski for the thirty years prior to that.

But since that poll, in the first two debates of 2024 (see my writeups of both and also video here; there was only one exclusionary debate beforehand in early December in which I was not allowed to participate), one other candidate besides the two frontrunners—Trone and Alsobrooks—and only one other candidate was quoted by major press outlets after those debates, by The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun after the first and by The Baltimore Sun after the second (quoted twice, as much as the only other person quoted, Alsobrooks; Trone did not attend): me, Brian Frydenborg.  Quickly setting myself apart from the rest of the second-tier candidates in terms of substance and quotability, and with an online presence with more social media followers for my Twitter account than the campaign accounts of Trone and Alsobrooks combined while I was ramping up my campaign, it would seem I could be considered the third candidate in the Democratic primary.

Now, of course, that is open to debate, but think of it this way: media coverage for unknown candidates and for undecided voters is often the decisive factor, as most voters don’t go to rallies or events but read the news to learn about candidates or go to the candidates’ websites after seeing them covered in the news.

I will herein now present an alternative history as food for thought, and then look at what actually has just happened.

What Could Have Been…

Just a few days after that second debate on March 16 and riding a surge of being the only other candidate given serious attention by the mainstream press after Trone and Alsobrooks, The Washington Post/University of Maryland released a poll on March 20 that showed both Democratic frontrunners losing by 12 points or higher to Hogan.  But it also showed Brian Frydenborg in clear third place in the Democratic primary, significantly ahead of all the other second-tier candidates even as he was not that close to either Alsobrooks or Trone and with still many undecided voters.  Separating himself from that pack, Brian was contacted by several major outlets, including The Washington Post, quoting Brian not just on the state of the race and his concerns with both Democratic frontrunners but also on some of his own positions and experience.

The very next day, the third debate—a bipartisan one—in which Brian participated was held in Baltimore and covered by all the local Baltimore television stations as well as multiple newspapers.  Neither Trone nor Hogan attended, but Brian’s performance not only stood out for his energy and passion, but his specific command of details and history, in contrast to Alsobrooks, whose performance was fine and with good responses, but was far less energetic and detailed.  Brian often got more audibly engaged positive responses from the audience than Angela did, and while some of the rest of the Democratic candidates might have drawn some laughter with humor and antics, none compared to either Frydenborg or Alsobrooks in terms of giving substantive, direct, and knowledgeable answers to the questions asked.  It was the two of them and everyone else far behind, but the relatively unknown candidate Frydenborg not only held his own against the county executive frontrunner, but exceeded her performance.  His passionate framing of the failings of the two-frontrunners’ campaigns, the Democratic Party organizations and allies in Maryland, and the media with its general lack of coverage in producing a situation where Democrats are losing badly Republican opponent in the race to succeed Ben Cardin in the U.S. Senate.  In contrast, Alsobrooks gave relatively normal answers and projected unreassuring confidence for a potential matchup against Hogan for someone who was down 14 points to him in a blue state.

The media writeups and television coverage of the event—all the local Baltimore stations and papers with some of that coverage spreading—all of sudden introduced a new candidate more forcefully to primary voters besides just a few quotes in a few articles, a candidate who was articulate, passionate, and able to discuss the issues in detail while also giving voice to their anxieties about the state of the race and of potentially losing Cardin’s Senate seat to Republicans.  Thus, profiles in papers and television interviews followed, and while the next poll out still showed Brian significantly behind Trone and Alsobrooks, he had still risen even further and was clearly the only other candidate making waves, clearly establishing himself as the third candidate in the Democratic primary, with a snowball effect of more donations and more media coverage reinforcing each other that ensured his voice was heard and having an effect and keeping his trajectory in the polls an upward one in the weeks to follow.

The Sad Reality Failing Democrats, All Maryland Voters, and the Nation

I said that this was an alternate history.  Now for what really happened.

To reiterate—because this is so important—The Emerson/Hill poll had shown that the collective support of all the second-tier candidates (14%) was just 3 points behind Alsobrooks in second place (17%), with more voters than even those supporting first-place Trone (32%) saying they were undecided (37%).

In the fictional history, the next poll included the second-tier candidates: this was the only responsible choice given how much collective support the second-tier candidates had that was so close to the level of support of the number-two candidate in Alsobrooks—the 3-point gap within the 3-point margin of error—and given how the largest bloc of voters in the poll was not supporting any candidate but was undecided.  In such a context, any respectable pollster not including the second-tier candidates would be ridiculously irresponsible, but in the real world, that is what was done: the Post/UMD poll was actually released on March 20, as happened in the alternate history, but it excluded all of us second-tier candidates, including myself—the only candidate from that second tier and besides Alsobrooks or Trone tier to be quoted by the Washington Post or Baltimore Sun from the past two debates, as I have pointed out before.  And given all that, relative to all the other second-tier candidates, for me there was an excellent chance that I would have risen more than any of them and surpassed all of them to legitimately claim third place then and there in this Democratic primary race.  But with not being included at all, it is not possible to know this and not possible for voters to have an accurate, full picture of a potentially volatile contest.  So no bounce recorded and no media exposure as a result of such a poll just before my third debate, which could have even partly framed the debate itself.

To make matters even worse, while in my alternate history there was still ample media coverage of the third debate to allow my forceful and stand-out performance to reach the voting public even if I was inexcusably excluded in that latest poll, there was no media coverage in real life: no local sites, no local TV stations, no newspapers, period, (*April 8 update) until, that is, Afro News finally published coverage on April 1, eleven days after the debate; still, better late then never and I was quoted more than Alsobrooks!

“We’ve got to be real about what is coming at us,” said U.S. Senate Candidate Brian Frydenborg (D), during the forum at New Psalmist Baptist Church. “Hogan 50–Alsobrooks 36,  Hogan 49–Trone 37, that is not where we need to be as Democrats. What that means is that despite the best of intentions and two quality frontrunners, we are failing.”

For a debate less than two months before the primary and less than six weeks before early voting, this is just an absolute collective disgrace on the part of the local media (*April 8 update) apart from Afro News, and it still should have published its account much earlier.

If you’re disappointed by now, here’s another harsh dose of reality: while the event was organized by the League of Women Voters of Baltimore City (LWVBC), the host for the event was Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church and they were in charge of the recording and streaming of the event.  Before the debate, I asked about the status and quality of the recordings.  I was directed to a Pete French, who assured me that the Church recorded all their services and that they were professional quality (I mentioned that previous “official” recordings had sorely missed the mark in quality).  He made it clear that an audio, not a video, recording would be made (strange, why not record video, what are we hiding from voters here?) and that no decision had yet been made on whether that recording would be released.  I pressed him on this, noting how it would really be a disservice to the public to not share the recording.  He declined to explain why they were going about this in such a secretive way and clearly did not feel he had any obligation to offer any further explanation, making it clear he would not say anything further of substance at this point on this issue.  I must admit I had a bad feeling about whether or not this recording would be released given his polite yet clearly dismissive attitude; also, days earlier, I had asked if the organizers might offer any rides from the main Baltimore-Penn Station connecting to DC since the Church was on the outskirts of the city and I was coming from DC—about an hour away by public transit from Baltimore-Penn Station, and was told no; when I introduced myself to Farmer, he asked me with an amused and perhaps condescending tone if I was the candidate who has asked for a ride (an Uber had been suggested, which would have been prohibitively expensive, but I eventually learned that Baltimore had a subway and was able to take that out).  After this exchange before the debate during the introductions while we were on stage, it was announced that the debate would be live-streamed.  I asked one of the staffers for that link to be provided so I could share with all my followers online, and she said she would get that for me.  It never came.  After repeated inquiries after Thursday’s debate, I learned on Sunday from the Facebook account of LWVBC that the New Psalmist Baptist Church—specifically Pete Farmer—had decided not to release the audio to the public.

Even with the oddness of our exchange I had in-person with Farmer, I was still flabbergasted and deeply offended by this decision, sure for myself, but even more so for the people of Maryland.

They may be a church, but who in the hell did they think they were keeping this debate from the larger voting public?  This furthermore went against what the LVWBC website had stated, that “The event will be recorded and made available online”:

To be honest, though, this triple whammy—a major polling firm making an exclusionary and totally inexcusable decision to not include second-tier candidates despite the results of the previous poll as characterized earlier, literally zero media coverage of the debate (until this piece you are reading now by yours truly *April 8 update: and until Afro News‘s artile eleven days later)), and then the New Psalmist Baptist Church recording the event but then the person in charge of the decision on whether to release the recoding deciding against its release despite my personal entreaties to have them released made directly to him in person—is par for the course for this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary this election cycle.

Fortunately, there is one available unofficial partial video taken by one candidate’s staffer by mobile phone of the debate that is missing most of the opening statements but has the rest (you can hear me speak at 12:36, 28.24, 43:43, 1:01:07, 1:18:11, 1:33:30).  You can clearly see that my alternative history description from above is accurate: the only difference from above is that there was no news media coverage (April 8 update: until Afro News eleven days after the event).  And the debate was well attended, so there is still a chance for it to have some impact, though because of what I outlined above, that impact will surely be minimal unless somehow my coverage here makes a difference and that video gets a lot of views.

Time for Democrats to Panic and Adjust and Why I am the Solution (Even if You Support David or Angela)

The Problems with Candidates Trone and Alsobrooks

It is mistakes and attitudes like the above that, if nothing changes, make Republican Larry Hogan the favorite to win in November.  Yes, here we have two candidate frontrunners and their campaigns running their campaigns in such a problematic way that Hogan is beating them badly and either most or close to most voters don’t even have an opinion on them: 46% when it came to Trone and 58% compared to Alsobrooks, while Hogan had a 64% favorable rating.  And when he left office in Maryland in January 2023 not that long ago as one of the nation’s most popular governors for years, a final poll had him with a 77% approval rating, including 81% with Democrats (even matching their approval of Biden), higher than with Republicans (68%).  And this was a Republican governor in a heavily-Democratic state!  Additionally, his approval was 81% with African-American voters to 76% for white voters.

So here we are heading into a general election with two far-lesser-known frontrunners running far behind the far-more-well-known Larry Hogan: David Trone 12 points behind—49%-37%–and Angela Alsobrooks down 14 points—50%-36%.  “Don’t worry, once voters get to know them in the general election, they’ll be fine, plus, we have the abortion issue!” is not just an extremely naïve, hubristic, non-sequitur response, it is incredibly risky and a losing mentality.  We have no idea if any of that ground will be made up (I would suspect some would be but hardly think it’s a given that enough of it will be, and though I think Alsobrooks just picking up the endorsement of rockstar Rep. Jamie Raskin—our modern Daniel Webster in the House—will big a serious boost in her fight with Trone it may not be enough to get her past Trone, only time will tell), let alone whether the gap will get worse for either candidate.  And abortion rights are not really particularly at stake in Maryland with a 102-39 Maryland House of Delegates Democratic majority, a 34-13 Democratic majority in the Maryland Senate, and with Democratic Governor Wes Moore running the state, not in the way they are at risk in purple swing and Republican-controlled red states with local leaders or extremist right-wing courts trying to impose sweeping restrictions on women’s bodily and reproductive autonomy.  But that or some other version of “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine” is the dangerous mentality I am hearing from the frontrunners and their supporters.

This should be even more worrying when one consider that certain key parts of the base will be less than enthusiastic about supporting an old white guy who was a billionaire retail alcohol mogul for decades before entering Congress just five years ago or a former county prosecutor with what especially some on the left would view as a controversial record in that role.  And neither have the stature or big-time political experience Ben Cardin had in 2006 or Larry Hogan has today.  These and other weaknesses are being ignored or denied, and not testing the candidates on these grounds before Larry Hogan would challenge them on in a contest that would involve many Republicans and independents, not just Democrats, is a plan for failure and losing.  As I noted in my concluding speech, Obama was a much better candidate having faced off against Clinton in 2008 before he went up against McCain.  We need a third person in this race to toughen or hone these Trone and Alsobrooks into being much more competitive against Hogan or consider an alternative.  I can play both roles better than anyone else among the second-tier Democratic candidates in this race.

Trone may have way more money than Alsobrooks, but she had raised just under $5 million before last quarter’s reporting date at the end of 2023, no small amount.  I can promise you that if I had $5 million, this would be a very different race with a very different feel.

The Problems with the Maryland Democratic Party and its Affiliates

As I have noted before, the Maryland Democrats’ plan has failed thus far and needs to change dramatically.  If I was involved in the Maryland State Democratic Party, my plan would have been and for the rest of the primary is now simple:

1. Encourage every organization sponsoring any primary debate or candidate forum to reach out to all other Democratic Party organizations in the state to cross-promote and cross-post about all these event on their pages and social media.
2. I would also ensure all local papers, local news sites, and local television stations would be listing all these events well-ahead of time and prominently as a matter of public interest.
3. I would engage national- level outlets, especially The Washington Post, in addition to C-SPAN to engage in much more coverage.
4. I would have the state party interview each and every Democratic candidate and post video on our site, YouTube, and social media, as well as transcripts.
5. I would have the state party during these final weeks organize two to three more debates in the final less-than-two months of the primary.  The questions would not just be about issues but also the candidates’ possible weaknesses and their strategies to win against Hogan.  I would include all candidates for at least the first one or two debates, pay to commission an independent and respectable non-partisan poll or two from a major pollster, and have some sort of polling cutoff based on non-partisan polling available (right now, just two polls) for the final debate or two.  I would find a way to get these televised live on public access television, perhaps C-SPAN, and definitely streamed online live and posted online after.  They would not be amateur, cell-phone quality, or inaudible or unintelligible as has been the case thus far.
6. I would have the state party provide assistance to any involved or sponsoring organization to further all these ends.

The insanity here is that all six of these are no-brainers and should have been happening on some level partly since late in 2023.  There is no excuse for the lack of coordination, cross-promotion, and not properly recording all these debates/forums and not properly making them publicly available on the internet, period.

The Problems with the Media

And as a journalist, I for damn sure wouldn’t depend on outreach to know about these events and cover them.  I would prioritize coverage of these events, make sure they are listed in an “upcoming events” section within the politics section with links to the event pages, and sure as hell not let a situation occur like what happened with the last debate when it was not covered at all.  Lost pets, fraternity hazing, and traffic accidents are not more important.  If outlets are short-staffed, bring on some interns if necessary to cover, but have someone there covering no matter what for every single primary debate (plenty of college kids can at least sit and take notes).  There should be alerts in the days before on the news organizations’ homepage, and this should be especially prominently featured on the homepage up top on the day of the event.

All this is so absolutely basic that it shouldn’t need to be said, anything less is gross negligence.  But this is not happening and so it very much needs to be said, and this is just damn pathetic.  This needs to go for all the main local papers and The Washington Post, all the local-interest sites, and all the local television stations.  There is no excuse for anything less.  And, as I noted before, if you’re a newspaper associated with a poll, you sure don’t exclude second tier-candidates under current conditions for the reasons outlined earlier.

Conclusion: Candidates, the Party, and Media: Help Me Help You Do Your Jobs

In the end, the top candidates’ jobs are to put themselves in a position that make it the most likely they will defeat their opponents.  In the end, the Democratic Party and its allied organizations’ jobs are to promote events as much as possible so as to generate real public and media interest and ensure voters can make informed decisions over months of a competitive primary process that for much of its duration is open and gives all comers a real chance to connect and get their message out to voters and the press, along with making sure the process forges candidates into stronger versions of themselves better equipped to take on a formidable general election candidate if there is such a candidate and, boy, there sure is this time around, clearly much more than was anticipated.  Andin the end, the press’s job is to cover all this in substantive ways and to also raise awareness and so that voters can stay informed and not just take candidates’ and the Party’s words without scrutiny and context.

With the polling where it is and factoring all of the above into the equation, it is obvious none of this is happening now.  And I don’t see signs of any adjustments or self-awareness that adjustments need to be made.   And either they change what they are doing and how they are doing it or Larry Hogan’s odds of winning Ben Cardin’s seat for Republicans will be high, far too high for my liking at a time when having more Democrats to stand up to Trump’s MAGA insurrectionist fascism is essential because the survival of democracy in America itself and the whole post-World War II U.S.-led international order are at stake, under assault from an unholy alliance between Trump and Putin.  So no, we cannot afford to have even one of the best possible Republicans in Larry Hogan—in votes, the GOP equivalent of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), breaking often with his party on key issues—to replace Ben Cardin, we need a Democrat.

At the last three debates, I was the only candidate who talked about the frontrunners’ (increasingly) poor polling against Hogan and the major crisis for Democrats in both Maryland and the U.S. Senate this represents.  None of the moderators so much as asked anything even remotely related to clear and present dangers this reality presents for Democrats’ prospects in a deep blue state.  So I see only one solution to correct course: make me the third person in this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary race so I can light a fire under the ass of all the major actors involved to either forge the frontrunners into being more Hogan-ready than their current 12-14 point disastrous deficits or to present a third alternative if they are unable or unwilling to adjust.

Whichever role I end up playing, me being that clear third person in this Democratic U.S. Senate race in Maryland seems to be the only way to maximize our changes to keep Ben Cardin’s seat blue.  The current course and status quo of the press coverage along with the Democratic candidates and Democratic establishment here in Maryland are failing and making it far too likely that Hogan and Republicans will win.  I am the only Democratic candidate willing to admit this, let alone call for action to address it and be a leader by acting accordingly.  I therefore deserve to at least be the third candidate in this race and be part of the discussion from now until May 14, not for my sake, but for all our sakes and for the sake of a Democratic victory in November.

But I need your help to make this happen.  Even if you support Rep. David Trone or County Executive Alsobrooks, they are not currently on a path to beating Hogan or even close, they need help and need someone to push them to be better.  And like it or not, there is no other candidate that can do that in this race at this time besides me.  So please support me, spread the word, and donate to my campaign for the sake of the party and keeping Ben Cardin’s seat blue to better fight against Trumpist MAGA insurrectionist fascism in Washington, the most important fight that must take precedence before all others.  Hogan is a nice guy, not a fascist nor an insurrectionist, but he will still vote too many times with those who are, and that is why we must defeat him, and that is why I’ve got to be the third person in this race.

See related articles Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my candidacy and ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 19, 2024; see related March 6 article Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and March 2 article Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—At a debate with a small audience—more people came to see Julia Ioffe interview CNN’s Jim Sciutto about his new book at Politics and Prose in Washington—at which Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and another second-tier candidate came in each with a small crowd of supporters and/or staff hard in the tank for their candidate and determined to show vocal support, candidate Brian Frydenborg—myself—made a surprising showing, offering some of the most detailed answers and generated significant applause after many of his statements and answers despite not having a single supporter or staffer present (but by the end of the debate, I seem to have won at least a few of former).

A Frontrunner Who Could Not Easily Outshine Second-Tier Competition and a Second-Tier Candidate (Me!) Who Held His Own Against a Frontrunner

Don’t just take my word for it, you can see/hear for yourself when I speak in this video of the full debate (at 16:20, 23:37, 30:16, 45.:11, 51.:55, 58.44, 1:05:32, 1:23:34—things get a little crazy during my conclusion because of a Gaza protester, who I wished I could have engaged and probably could have won at least partly over with what I had to say).

In some ways, I feel I “won.”  This is like one of the lowest seeds nearly beating a top seed in an away arena in the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament or a very low-ranked national squad tying against a home powerhouse in the soccer World Cup group stage play.  When such things happen, the story focus is on the upstart underdog overperforming, and I feel that is a fair take here, too.  The other candidates with staff and/or supporters they organized to bring to the event—people who were literally there to show support for specific people not named Brian Frydenborg—had to contend with a person in myself who pretty much no one there knew yet who still held his own and earned applause and support not from anyone who was literally there to cheer for him but who showed respect for him solely based on his ideas and delivery and articulation of them.  So if anything, this could be seen as a victory for me and a defeat and an embarrassment for Alsobrooks, who has raised millions of dollars, been active in Maryland politics for decades, and had a clear following present at the debate.  The other candidate I mentioned had the loudest support of all—the loudest person there was recording the debate for this candidate and gets credit for the video linked to earlier—his core showing of staff and supporters often outshining support for Alsobrooks—again—one of the two frontrunners in this race (the second, Rep. David Trone, backed out at the last minute, perhaps judging that he was far enough ahead of Alsobrooks in polling that there was more for him to lose than gain by attending).

That Alsobrooks could not generate more people to show up or more vocal support at a Baltimore event in which two virtually unknowns—including me, with no predisposed crowd support—can demonstrate anywhere near-comparable crowd response is troubling for Alsobrooks, perhaps giving some explanation as to why in the best polling she runs behind not just her Democratic main rival Trone but former Maryland Governor Republican Larry Hogan as well.

To be clear, I am not saying Alsobrooks performed poorly in the debate: her answers were consistently good even if sometimes coming off as listy, general, meandering, and less-detailed than my own (again, listen for yourselves and don’t take my word alone).  So her performance was not bad or anywhere near bad.  But as one of the top-two candidates (and by far so) in the primary, Alsobrooks should have displayed a crowd support and performance that blew everyone else there—all three second-tier candidates—out of the water.  That this did not happen is reason to feel less confident in her candidacy and how her campaign is being run, and while I would also caution not to read too much into any one event, with less than two months to the primary this situation was still shocking.  I essentially have no campaign organization and have no staff, but if I had raised the millions in funding she has, the setting for this debate would have been much different, that much I can say.

As it is, Alsobrooks and myself were the only two candidates who actually answered the questions in a way that demonstrated a range and depth of understanding on the issues and experience dealing with them.  As was the case in the last debate in which I participated, I was also the only candidate quoted outside of the two top-tier candidates by a media outlet: this time, with Trone absent, only myself and Alsobrooks were quoted directly by The Baltimore Sun in its writeup, each twice.  This is how I was quoted in the article:

Alsobrooks didn’t mention Trone during the roughly 90-minute forum. One of the four candidates who did attend — Brian E. Frydenborg of Montgomery County — said Trone “should be here tonight.”

and

The Emerson College polling showing Hogan even with Trone [and seven points ahead of Alsobrooks] “should make us all terrified because it’s worrisome,” Frydenborg said during the forum. “We cannot afford to have a Republican voting with Republicans in the Senate.” Democrats currently hold a 51-49 Senate majority.

I even had a small crowd of voters come up to talk to me after the debate and the discussions went for some time.  So, again, for this reason and all the above reasons, I feel you could argue I at the very least came in second, but could also say I tied with Alsobrooks or even won considering what was very much stacked against me and relative expectations (high for her, none for me).

Yet sadly, my performance may not even matter…

Where Is the Media??

If a Democratic U.S. Senate Primary happens in the woods and there is no media there to cover it, is it actually happening for most voters in Maryland?  I sort of jest, but not really: local media coverage has been nonexistent or wanting greatly far too often depending on the outlets involved.  For my own two debates, I can only give The Baltimore Sun high grades as it is the only outlet to have covered both.

As noted above, that debate discussed herein was just one event.  So it would also be a mistake to oversell the effect or importance of this event.  I am certain Alsobrooks and Trone are both far, far more ahead of me, that one of them will very likely be the nominee and not me, but part of the reason this effect will be so limited and that my chances of winning are so low is that the local press, let alone the national press, are mostly not covering these events.  And to me this is mystifying.  As I noted regarding the last debate at the beginning of this month, there was no local TV coverage: restaurant fires, lost pets, car accidents, and fraternity hazing were all larger priorities.  The local outlet Maryland Matters was absent at both debates; the local paper Baltimore Banner was at the last one, but not this one in Baltimore (strange considering the paper’s name).  I found no local TV station coverage for this more recent one, either.  And while sometimes this is at least partly on the organizers not reaching out enough, as a journalist here, I can say regardless of whether or not the organizers are contacting journalists, it is the job of the journalists to keep track of and cover these events themselves.  And here in Maryland, they are clearly failing in their jobs, whether television stations, newspapers, or websites, with the admirable exception of The Baltimore Sun and its intrepid Jeff Barker filling this role for it.

There is absolutely no excuse for this.  With Hogan’s entry, Maryland’s U.S. Senate race is one of the most interesting and important Senate races in the whole country, so there is certainly reason for more national-outlet coverage, but that the local outlets cannot even be bothered to cover this race properly now with less than two months before the primary and less than six weeks before early voting begins is an absolute disgrace.  I keep going around and asking Marylanders if they even know who is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate, and most of the time they can’t mention one, let alone two, of the frontrunner candidates.  More often, they know Hogan is running.  And this is in a blue state.  Sure, some of is this because both Trone and Alsobrooks are fairly obscure when it comes to statewide recognition: most voters don’t even know who their U.S. House representative is, let alone their county executive.  But a lot of it is also the lack of media coverage.  All these local outlets should be covering all the candidate debates and there should be far more interviews with each candidate, including myself.

It’s as I wrote on my campaign website before the last debate:

To explain why this event and others like it are so important, I want to tell a story from the incredible book Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, by local son of Maryland Scott Shane, a friend and mentor and an incredible reporter and author who covered crime, national security, and the Soviet Union/Russia for decades first at The Baltimore Sun (as a result he played himself on The Wire!) and later at The New York Times, winning two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting.  He tells the story of a young, “boyish physicist” named Arkady Murashyov who ran in the 1989 Soviet elections for the Congress of People’s deputies, the first contested elections Russia in over seventy years since the 1917 election that the Communist Bolsheviks made sure did not end up counting for much on their quest for power by coup and terror.  Debates between candidates were televised live, and in one race in a district north of Moscow, the unknown Murashyov debated “older, better-known, and more conservative competitors” for over two hours, arguing that Communist one-party rule was the root of all the USSR’s problems.  Amazingly—in a society under some of the worst oppression on earth for some seven decades with no competitive elections or free debates in public throughout this era—Murashyov won the seat and became the leader of the Congress’s “radical” wing.  As Shane writes: “Without the televised debate the unknown Murashyov might well have lost” (pg. 151).

This says everything about why I need this debate and am counting on attendees and viewers to spread the word about what I know will be a powerful appearance by myself.

Voters need more exposure, not less, from their candidates.  It is remarkable that in 2024, Maryland has had such a closed race with so few events in which the candidates can stand up to public scrutiny and scrutinize each other with now there being only ten weeks left until the primary and early voting beginning before then.  Instead of being about name recognition of spending on television advertisements, let’s make this race about ideas, plans, and qualifications.  Let me be your Murashyov, a breakout star who can upend this race and be an injection of youth and fresh ideas I am ready to run with hard for Maryland and the nation.

Lack of Media Coverage Limiting Voter Engagement and Awareness, Suppressing New Voices

If these past two debates with me were properly covered and both were given properly-recorded high-quality recordings for all voters to easily see and access, I like the odds of my surging now at least somewhat in the polls, if not to the levels of Trone and Alsobrooks, at least clearly to third-place apart from all the other second-tier candidates.  And maybe that will happen still, but without coverage, without voters actually being able to see me perform well and comparably side-by-die a sitting U.S congressman and a sitting county executive, it will be so much harder and who, really, will ever even know about my debate performances?  How will voters even know the differences between the candidates or their ability to hold their own on a debate stage?  Why is the local media AND national media not prioritizing this?  And why aren’t the Democratic Party organizations and affiliated groups clamoring to promote these events and ensure proper attendance, let alone press coverage?  The only answers that make sense are that the Democrats’ plans a.) did not plan for Trone to be ahead of Alsobrooks and b.) did not plan for Hogan to be the GOP opponent, which I explained in more detail earlier. 

But it’s time to adjust now, and there is little time left since early voting starts in less than six weeks and the primary is less than two months away.  So consider me a Plan B: I can hold my own on the debate stage, get this race focused on detailed discussions of the issues and how to beat Hogan, and at least help push the frontrunners out of their comfort zone to be better prepared for Hogan on one end of the spectrum and offering a possibly viable third alternative on the other.

So let’s make this a three-person race by supporting and including me through to the end and let the voters decide: at the last two debates, I was the only second-tier candidate able to speak in detail on the full range of issues, and since neither front-runner is current polling ahead of Hogan in the most credible poll, voters deserve to be able to explore other options.  So it’s time for the press to do its job and start properly covering this race and for Democrats to push hard for that coverage, lest they sleepwalk into Larry Hogan giving Ben Cardin’s long-held seat to Republicans, a disaster we must avoid for so many reasons.

See related articles Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!  This is part of a series of articles discussing my ideas to fix America as a future U.S. Senator.

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 6, 2024; see related March 2 article Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—Until recently, the assumption was that whomever won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate would be the next U.S. Senator from Maryland, replacing Ben Cardin’s long-held seat.

But the entry of relatively-recently-former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a two-term Republican who was one of the nation’s most popular governors during his tenure and left office in early 2023 with ridiculously high approval ratings, into the race has rapidly shifted this thinking: Inside Elections downgraded the rating of the Maryland Senate race from Solid Democratic to Likely Democratic, as did the Cook Political Report’s Senate Race Ratings system.

But Saturday’s candidate forum debate gave Democrats even more reasons to worry about the November Senate race.  This weekend’s debate—moderated by The Washington Post’s hero columnist Jennifer Rubin—was the first Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic primary debate of 2023 and only the second overall between the folks who form the pool of potentials to challenge Hogan, taking on increased significance and stakes than if Hogan had not entered the race, but before we get into the debate, we need to look at how we got here.

The Maryland Democratic Party’s Plan Has Failed

First, let’s talk about Maryland’s Democratic leaders’ approach to this.  It was clear early on in this race that they had planned beforehand to consolidate behind Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks depending on certain circumstances, and those circumstances were met and met some time ago: there is no doubt she has the most impressive list of endorsements of any candidate in this race by far when it comes to Maryland politicians.  And I want to be clear: it’s great that Country Executive Alsobrooks has deep relationships with fellow officials and lawmakers throughout the state, speaking to her star power and deep roots established over decades of hard work and results in the state.  Part of this may have been motivated by all the buzz around No Labels and Larry Hogan making a Senate run from him seem distant until recently—perhaps the idea being that without a serious Republican challenger, picking an up-and-comer who only had county-level experience as an office-holder would not matter much in the end—but it is hard to know what exactly was going on in this behind-the-scenes process.

U.S. Representative David Trone’s entry into the race, obviously, was not a welcome development for their plan.  Whatever that plan was, it was not to put together a significant series of prominent public events put together by the statewide Democratic Party to put Alsobrooks, Trone, or any other competitors on the stage to face scrutiny from the public and from each other in actual debates: the chance to do that came and went long ago.

Here we are now, then, with little over nine weeks to go until the primary and both candidates having little name recognition statewide and facing little scrutiny or even media coverage thus far with a far more competitive general election on the horizon after the entry of Larry Hogan, known by virtually everyone in the state.  Rather than be tested in a rigorous primary process, the two main candidates have been kept from what in many cases in many states would have been a more robust, open, and public contest.  And now time is running out: the May 14 primary is fast-approaching and early voting begins May 2, less than two months away.

And this second debate event was only held at that two-month-away mark, just a few days ago.  Neither of those two events were run by or vigorously promoted the state Party, neither were properly broadcast live (there was a Zoom video broadcast that was later posted for the latest debate, but the audio/video quality, pathetically, was horrific: my middle school plays had better audio/video quality by far than the video of the last debate that is the only video posted thus far; still, you can make out most of what I say quite clearly with if you’re willing to trudge through).

In fact, all of 2023 went by with only one minor debate in Prince George’s County and that came only early in December, one that was deliberately closed and not even trying to open a broader discussion: the event, organized by Latino Democrats of Prince George’s County (LDPGC), limited participation to just three candidates: Alsobrooks, Trone, and Juan Dominguez, the sole Latino running in the race, with a $200,000 fundraising threshold requirement for participation that was suspiciously close to the total that Dominguez had declared raised by that point.  To be clear, I am not implying any sort of nefarious collusion between Dominguez’s campaign and LDPGC, and I have connected with Juan repeatedly, who has always been friendly, respectful, candid, and professional towards me.  I did try to engage with LDPCG repeatedly and the interactions were repeatedly rude, dismissive, and perfunctory, it being all too clear they wanted nothing to do with me.  While I hope to improve my relationship with the organization in the future, it was crystal clear to me they did not want an open forum of any kind, just the two major candidates and the one Latino candidate, with a fundraising threshold conveniently designed to keep everyone else out and just the right threshold to allow Juan to participate.  Such a constricting, limited, undemocratic approach based solely on a financial metric seemed wholly inappropriate for the very first debate of the primary season, especially in the Democratic Party.  I made my displeasure publicly known at the time and even successfully crashed the event, garnering about as much TV coverage as the three candidates on stage.  In any event, the respectable Juan, whose voice would still have been a thoughtful one in this race had he stayed in, has since dropped out of the Senate race and is instead running for Congress in Maryland.

My best guess was that the Maryland Democratic establishment (to the degree you can call it that: I am no conspiracy-theory-minded Bernie Sanders voter) that had decided on Alsobrooks (not saying Alsobrooks or her campaign were part of this) decided once after Trone entered the race that their endorsements would still be enough and that the best thing would be to shield her from a vigorous competition with Trone that might do damage unnecessarily and/or even give an advantage to him, their non-preferred candidate, but that, hey, either way, the Democratic nominee was expected to easily win against whatever Republican would be nominated.

But now that Larry Hogan has entered the race, neither Alsobrooks nor Trone have been tested nor challenged much in any kind of tough debate format thus far during this election cycle, and there won’t be any more debates after May 14 until, presumably, one of them would debate Larry Hogan.  The only way for the candidates to be forged into sterner stuff, to have them really get experience on the field of battle in this particular campaign before debating Hogan, are the remaining primary debates. Without another candidate making substantive challenges to the two frontrunners (and I make the case below why that should be me), we should not expect a dramatically better debate performance from either Trone or Alsobrooks in any of the other remaining primary debates than their performance from this weekend, nor first debate, whoever get the nomination, against Hogan.  And that should worry us all.

About the Debate…

Soon into the debate, it was clear that two of the five second-tier candidates were utterly unprepared and have no business running; they literally declined to answer multiple questions on the grounds that they just straight-up admitted they know little to nothing on the issues in question.  Two others out of the five made points almost exclusively related to one to two of their pet issues and generally failed to connect their candidacy or experience to the broader set of issues.  One of these two spoke very slowly and said little, the other more articulate and more seriously, but neither will have any impact on the race.

The two frontrunners Trone and Alsobrooks did just fine, neither really outperforming the other or damaging or gaining at each other’s expense in a significant way.  While overall their answers were generally competent and articulate—each definitely having some good moments and good points—both had some pretty bad moments, too.

At one point, Alsobrooks was unwilling to answer a basic question as to what is something she should have done differently in her career as a public servant: she entirely dodged the question and just talked about how “listening” is important, coming off as insecure and inauthentic in being unwilling to just give an honest answer about a simple lesson learned.  Even before that, Alsobrooks was asked a simple question about her evolving position on the death penalty.  She took up the full allotted time to answer to give a word salad that gave no clear indication of what her current position on the death penalty was.  Trone, understandably, responded by essentially saying: “You didn’t answer the question at all, what the heck is your actual position?”  Alsobrooks then responded by… attacking Trone for being rich (yes, really).  Not just rich, but really rich.  And for spending a lot of that rich money of his on this race, in which he is polling comfortably ahead of her (though there is so little independent/non-partisan polling that it’s still actually possible the race is wide open).  Her attacks on him had nothing to do with the issue being discussed or the question asked and just came off as her trying desperately to hit him in a rehearsed way on his wealth and to portray him as an out of touch rich guy, a line of attack that seems to be 90% of her attacks against him in general, a large portion of her campaign e-mails and communications, and certainly most of her attacks against him during the debate, with at one point Alsobrooks calling Trone a one-man super PAC.  Such a charge is not really accurate or fair since his situation is that he is a person who is largely funding who own campaign, which is most definitely not a super PAC.

I recently addressed Alsobrooks’s gratuitous classist attacks against Trone, as well as Trone’s silly attacks against her as a “career politician,” though I think when I made it clear over the weekend in my debate introduction that attacking someone for being a career politician would be like attacking Ben Cardin—the man whose seat they are trying to replace and who had forty years of government experience before running for the U.S. Senate—I might have preemptively discouraged Trone from using that line of attack against her; still, he might have felt comfortably enough ahead not just with the one mainstream poll but with his consistent campaign polling that (even some are polls his campaign organized, still shows him up along with an independent poll as up by a lot) that he might have decided to not use that line of attack against her on his own regardless of what I said, but if he had tried that line of attack, my introduction would certainly have deflated such an attack.  He was definitely less aggressive in attacking her than she was and than he was at the December LDPGC debate.

As for Trone, at one point he fumbled what should have been a great opportunity from moderator Jennifer Rubin, who asked how he would win over independents and Republicans.  He started talking about how to beat Larry Hogan, not really answering the question, so Rubin cut him off and pressed him.  He then basically said he didn’t need Republicans.  Not only was this cringeworthy, it avoided playing on an obvious strength of Trone because he represents a rural district with a lot of Trump voters.  This was a totally unforced gaffe, one he realized because he later gave the answer he should have: that if anyone could win over independents and Trump voters between him and Alsobrooks, it would be him given the nature of his district, his bipartisan record, and his background as a businessman.  Instead, it is is disturbing that he could have whiffed so easily on what should have easily been a home run for him.  And like Alsobrooks, he did not look that good when they mixed it up.  Finally, he, too, often came off as giving lists that voters might not have understood, but was generally strong in touting his record and accomplishments, especially when talking about his objectively strong bipartisan record in the House (conversely, every single member of the county council—the legislative branch at the county level in Prince George’s County—with which Alsobrooks has to deal is a Democrat, a point Trone could have made to contrast his political experience favorably against Alsobrooks’s but failed to).

And while each often gave good answers, they didn’t seem stellar.  As noted, sometimes they listed accomplishments in such a shallow perfunctory way without really explaining them, though I would give Trone a slight edge because talking about his work in Congress was more transferrable to being a prospective U.S. senator than some of the accomplishments Alsobrooks touted.  To be fair to her, that is an issue not so much with her specifically as with the nature of county-level executive politics compared to legislating at the Congressional when it comes to running for Senate—which is part of Congress—and it’s one of the most serious issues I have and that many others have and will have with Alsobrooks’ candidacy: that as a county executive, even if she was the best county executive in the nation, that type of government experience is just of such a different nature and of such a different level and type of work done compared to legislating and working within the Senate that is will be seen as many as not the right kind of experience for the job.  Conversely, a member of the House like Trone has a type of experience that is much more relevant to and like the work of the Senate.  In other words, this point—and it is a big one that Alsobrooks has not been pressed to address on the campaign trail, by Trone or by a media highlighting, understandably, the historic nature of her candidacy making her possibly the first African-American U.S. Senator in Maryland history and only the third African-American woman elected and the fourth overall in U.S. Senate history—is her political Achilles’s heel and she cannot afford not to address in a deeply thought-out, deeply competent way.  While the historic nature of her candidacy is most certainly to be celebrated, that does nothing to address the concerns raised by what we can call the “county question,’ which would be just as valid were we talking about a County Executive named David Trone whose candidacy would not the historic nature that Alsobrooks’s candidacy clearly does.  Yet some of her supporters in the audience when I raised this point on stage and with whom I spoke after were in denial about this and dangerously seemed to think this was a non-issue.  It may be for her enthusiastic supporters—and many of them are enthusiastic—but it is almost certainly going to be one of the top concerns about her candidacy not just in the primary but certainly even more so if she were to face off directly against Hogan, a contrast that would be her biggest weakness apart from her relatively lack of name recognition compared to Hogan, who left office with as high as a 77% approval rating little over a year ago as a Republican in a deeply blue Democratic state.

I already mentioned that there was a real failing in terms or producing a quality audio/video recording in the past debate, but I want to be clear that this and other failings were not the failings of the main organizers and sponsors—the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County, Montgomery County Young Democrats, and Greater Silver Spring Democratic Club—which undertook a Herculean effort to organize this event with their partners, stepping into the galactic-sized black hole left by the state Party and other major Maryland Democratic organizations in failing to produce the only real open debate so far (again, that earlier one was prohibitively exclusionary).

I will also say that most of the local news media absolutely failed on this event: some of the top local weekend stories in the area had to do with someone killed in a crash, a bus driver finding a missing person, a neglected dog found in a park, a fire at a restaurant, and the University of Maryland suspending its fraternity/sorority events…  Nothing from the local television stations on this event at all.  This isn’t responsible local journalism.  I also contacted and engaged in a conversation with C-SPAN with the blessing of the main organizer to get live TV coverage, but it was too difficult on short notice to arrange coverage at the time.

Yours Truly, the Clear Third Place in the Debate (No, Really!)

Three newspapers, including two major ones, did actually cover the event, and I received substantive coverage in two out of the three, including both big ones.  Rubin’s own Washington Post actually quoted me:

But even lesser-known candidates framed themselves as an alternative to sending Hogan, who left two terms in office with high job approval ratings, to help tip the razor-thin balance of power in the chamber toward Republicans.

“We need a Democrat, not Larry Hogan,” said candidate Brian Frydenborg, a journalist who has never held public office.

The biggest Maryland-based paper, The Baltimore Sun, also quoted me:

The other five Democratic candidates have struggled to compete with Trone and Alsobrooks for money and attention in the race.

“Let’s make this a three-person race. We can do better,” said one of them, Brian E. Frydenborg of Montgomery County, a writer, researcher and consultant.

Apart from me, no other candidate besides Rep. David Trone and County Executive Alsobrooks were quoted in these three papers.

A local outlet that did actually cover the debate, MoCo360, quoted me, too, again making me the only candidate quoted apart from the two front-runners:

In his closing statement, Frydenborg bemoaned the frequent verbal warfare between Alsobrooks and Trone, amid the dearth of substantive policy differences between the two. “I think David and Angela have excellent backgrounds in many ways, [but] I’m very disappointed about the way they talk to each other and the sniping,” he said. “It’s not about the issues. I don’t know what they were attacking each other over—I can’t understand it half the time.”

A new local outlet, The Baltimore Banner, decided to poke fun at me for partaking of honey in between questions; reporter Pamela Wood could have followed up on such Pulitzer-worthy reporting with an inquiry and that would have revealed I was recovering from severe bronchitis and that the honey was part of my doctor-recommended efforts to keep my voice functional, but apparently honey is more on the minds of Maryland voters than the substantive answers I gave to serious questions, despite the applause some of those responses generated from the audience even though I literally had only one person I actually knew attending and most of the audience was composed of supporters of Trone and Alsobrooks, with even one of the second-tier candidates having a respectable support group in the audience.  I had at least as much applause as that other second tier candidate with a small following present, and I think actually more.  All this in spite of Honeygate!

Considering that I was the only second-tier candidate who was substantively quoted by The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and MoCo360, and considering I had at least as much or more applause than any candidate other than Trone or Alsobrooks, I think it is absolutely and objectively fair to declare myself a third-place finisher in this debate, far ahead of the rest of tier-two even as I am, admittedly, far behind the two frontrunners.  Yes, it would be delusional on my part to even suggest I am somehow nipping at the heels of Trone or Alsobrooks and I will not.  Still, anecdotally, almost everyone I spoke with from the audience told me I was in their top three.  But anecdotes aside, by using the type of media coverage and applause I received as relatively more objective measures and, as few metrics beyond that are available, there are none other to award a third place, even if it is distant one.  So I fairly award myself what I admit, again, is a distant third place in my capacity as a political analyst, a role in which I have a pretty good track record for years now.

Conclusion: Reasons to Seriously Worry, Reasons to Seriously Support Me (or at Least Keep Me in the Debates!)

Both Rep. Trone and Country Executive Alsobrooks are impressive, accomplished individuals; both have accomplished more in their lives than I gave (though I will point out I am 11 years younger than Alsobrooks and 25 years younger than Trone).  But I still believe my specific type of experience makes me a better candidate specifically for the U.S. Senate: over two decades of engaging academically and professionally with national-level and international-level issues on-the-ground from Washington to Jerusalem compared with far less—less than a quarter of that just—for Rep. Trone and none for County Executive Alsobrooks.  If we were going to be voting for the best business leader or best county-level leader, I would recommend voting for Trone or Alsobrooks, respectively, over myself.  But we are not.  We are voting for an office that I am many would agree that would be better filled by someone with more experience on the relevant issues and how the work at the Senate and international level, and that person—the only person fitting that description—in this race is me.  And frankly, I think Congress would be a lot better off with far more policy wonks, academics, and serious researchers in office than there are now: it is their work that often enables people like Rep. Tron and County Executive Alsobrooks to craft and execute the best policies in Congress and county government, respectively.

While Trone was spending most of his life running an alcohol retail business, I was engaging on issues ranging from gun violence to racism, from genocide in central Africa to the Israeli occupation of Palestinians, from terrorism to humanitarianism and all while Alsobrooks was involved in the important issues at the county level in Prince George’s County, but not on these issues as they play out at the U.S. Senate-level and international-level.  Trone’s accomplishments as a businessman are impressive as is his work in the House, as are Alsobrooks’s achievements in Prince George’s County.  But I have by far the most experience with the relevant issues at the level a senator will be engaging with them and it is not even close.

In a race where none of us can compete with the relevant resume Ben Cardin brought to the table when he ran in 2006, my diverse set of experience spread out over more than two decades can be said to be more relevant to being qualified to be a U.S. senator than many more years as a businessman (and just a few in Congress) or many years as a county-level politician.  At the very least, voters deserve to have the chance to hear from and engage with a journalist and academic such broad and deep expertise on the national-level and international-level issues at stake in this race in addition to hearing from a businessman recently-turned Congressman and a top county-level leader.  Let’s broaden the conversation, allow voters to make a more informed decision, challenge the frontrunners to be better candidates if one of them is to face Larry Hogan, and open up the Democratic Primary to be a three-person race before complacency, false assumptions, a reluctance to have the frontrunners go through a rigorous primary that would make them better candidates, and questionable levels of the type of relevant experience might hand a crucial Senate seat to Larry Hogan and the Republican Party at a time when America is in the fight of its life against internal Trumpist insurrectionist fascism aided and abetted for nearly a decade by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his fascist allies.

Does this all mean that we should panic?  No.  But does it mean that we should be worried about the final outcome of this race in November?  Yes.  Would allowing a third candidate like myself—a candidate of substance and seriousness who wants to focus on issue and experience, who has respect for the Democratic Party and the two frontrunners, can operate on the spectrum of presenting a viable alternative on one end to, on the other end, training the frontrunners to be better candidates by forcing them to: address their weaknesses, answer hard questions, and defend serious challenges to their ideas and qualifications—be better for everyone involved—Democrats, the two frontrunners, Marylanders, and all Americans—no matter who wins the primary?  Yes.

Whether for a better primary or a better candidate, vote for and support me for U.S. Senator for the great state of Maryland or increase the risk of a Hogan—and Republican—victory in November.

See related March 2 article Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

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Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!  This is part of a series of articles discussing my ideas to fix America as a future U.S. Senator.

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 2, 2024; *UPDATE 3/19: further discussion and a correction when it comes to the rarities and risks of a county executive as a U.S. Senate candidate; see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—The two-frontrunners in this Senate race have shamelessly attacked each other not primarily on the issues, but on accusations they would not dare level against Ben Cardin, the man they are trying to replace, even though they are applicable to him and should not count as a negative.

We can’t replace a man of the stature and accomplishments of Ben Cardin with just anyone.  And we sure should not replace him with someone with relatively little national-level policy or no international affairs experience, as Cardin has long been a leader on both the national and international stage.

Disappointing David

I am writing about Rep. David Trone’s repeated attacks against County Executive Alsobrooks as a “career politician.” Well, let’s look at the amazing Ben Cardin’s career up until his successful U.S. Senate campaign: even before graduating first in his class at the University of Maryland School of Law, he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and began in 1967 what would be 20 years in the chamber, the last ten of which he served as its Speaker, only the second Jewish-American to do so.  He would then run for the U.S. House, where he began serving in 1987 for another 20 years.  That was 40 years of government experience he had, then, when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006, winning the election and holding that office in the more than 17 years since then.  In each chamber—the Maryland House of Delegates, the U.S. House, and the U.S. Senate—Cardin was a leader and chaired multiple important committees, working on major issues of both national and international significance.  He has been a leader on, among others issues, environmental policy and international human rights—the latter including the landmark Magnitsky sanctions legislation he bipartisanly coauthored with the late Sen. John McCain, targeting Russian and other officials responsible for human rights violations.  This legislation of Cardin’s so drew the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin that his agents approached the Trump campaign in that infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016 to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for relief from the Magnitsky sanctions in effect (an odious incident I have written about in detail).  A career politician to be praised with a career to be proud of, to be sure.

But Rep. Trone attacks County Executive Alsobrooks for being a career politician.  Like Cardin, she also went to the University Maryland School of Law until graduating in 1996, after which she worked as a law clerk before becoming an assistant state’s attorney for Prince George’s County from 1997-2002, when she began working in various roles in the Prince George’s  county executive office from 2002-2010.  That year, she won election as the Prince Goerge’s County state’s attorney, a role in which she served the county from early 2011 to late 2018 for nearly eight years until she won election and began serving as its County Executive.

From Rep. Trone’s attacks, we are supposed to look negatively at Country Executive Alsobrooks’s nearly three decades of public service because she has made public service her career.  While using “career politician” as a pejorative—almost as a form of attacking identity as public servants—is commonplace in today’s politics, it is a non-sequitur and beneath Rep. Trone, distracting from his solid five* years of public service in the House.  Should we think less of him were this to be many years of service in the House as a “career?”  Is a career as a businessman running a major wine retail company superior to one of public service?  Do not many public servants constantly engage with their constituents, hearing directly from them and assisting them and making a difference in their lives?  Are assumptions that “career politicians” are “out of touch” and “don’t know how the world words” themselves non-sequiturs?  Again, these do not logically follow as lines of attacks and make no sense.  Rep. Trone should do better than that and engage with County Executive Alsobrooks on substance and the issues rather than denigrate public service.

Alsobrooks Also Guilty

Country Executive Alsobrooks cannot be said to be treating her opponent better, sadly.  A disappointingly large number of her campaign e-mails are fluff, simply asking for money, or attacking Rep. Trone by dismissing him simply as a rich guy “buying” the campaign with a lot of money.

Some history here is relevant: Bernie Sanders, of all people, outspent Hillary Clinton in 2016 and lost while she outspent future insurrectionist Donald Trump in the general election and lost; Biden was outspent in 2020 by Bernie and other rival Democrats, too, all who lost; and Trump was outspent by some of his rivals in the 2016 primaries who lost and has been outspent by some of his 2024 primary opponents who lost or will not win.  Increasingly, money doesn’t equal victory and a good or even better candidate with better-run campaign can defeat a much-better-funded opponent.  As for wealth, Senator Gracchus is instructive in Gladiator: “I don’t pretend to be a man of the people.  But I do try to be a man for the people.”  Some of the greatest American presidents—Washington and FDR, for example—were wealthy elites, as is Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the greatest Speaker of the House in American history.  John, Bobby, and Teddy Kennedy may all have been born with silvers spoons in in their mouths as part of a dynasty, but they fought hard for working class Americans and were some of the most beloved figures in modern American political history.  Such classist attacks are beneath County Executive Alsobrooks and avoid the real issues at hand.

Country Executive Alsobrooks has also attacked Rep. Trone indirectly in ageist terms in addition to the wealth issue: her pinned tweet—the message she and her campaign wanted to emphasize above all else—for quite some time until just days ago made a big deal about age, with text that reads: “The average U.S. Senator [sic] does not live like or think like the people they represent.  My name is Angela Alsobrooks and I’m in the fight for all of us because your concerns are mine too.  Vote for me on May 14th for U.S. Senate” with a video highlighting amidst a backdrop of mostly old, white, male faces that the average age of a U.S. senator is 64 (Trone is 68 and a billionaire through his Total Wine business).  The unmistakable takeaway of County Executive Alsobrooks is that “Old rich white men don’t represent you, so don’t vote for them, vote for me instead because I’m not those things!”  Alsobrooks is a 53-year-old African-American woman and much of her messaging is that her gender, race, and, it seems now, age are some of preferred reasons why she thinks she should be a senator and not Trone (I am 42 and have much less wealth than either Trone or Alsobrooks, does that mean I am a better candidate?).

I didn’t see Ben Cardin in Alsobrooks’s backdrop, but it may as well have been included. Certainly, Cardin had some wealth by 2006 and he was that exact average age of 64 highlighted by Alsobrooks when he ran.  Alsobrooks, then, may as well be attacking Cardin for being an old white man of wealth who, along with most other senators, “does not live like or think like the people they represent.”  So ageism is fair “political” game, as in the unfair and just-plain-inaccurate ageist attacks against Joe Biden, who despite his age (and in part because of his wisdom coming from it!) has the best first few years in office of any president in my lifetime and the most substantive legislative accomplishments in his first few years of any president since LBJ, myopic media coverage and the ignorance and irrational emotions of far too many voters be damned.  Speaker Pelosi also was subjected to unfair ageism; the way Alsobrooks attacks Trone, she may as well attack Pelosi and Biden while she’s at it.

To be clear, I absolutely know the obvious truth that we need a more representative Senate, along with many other institutions, and I have called for addressing the gross imbalances in Senate representation.  In principle, I welcome more diverse candidates, including those meeting Country Executive Alsobrooks’ demographic profile.  But candidates need to take a page from the historic candidacy of Barack Obama: not have one’s identity be the cornerstone of one’s sell in a political campaign (even if it is included), but ideas and vision.  Just ticking off a policy list in message focused on attacking an opponent based on his identity or privilege—not his ideas, values, or record—fails the Obama test and simply adds to the cynicism and an identity-focused politics that often (though not always) proves to be more shallow and divisive than focusing on the issues and the differences between candidates on them.

We Must Ask for Better: Consider Me a Third Option!

Both Trone’s and Alsobrooks’ attacks on each other not only do a disservice to each other, to voters, the Democratic Party, and the issues, but also to our amazing leaders like Biden and Pelosi who have led us exceptionally well through troubled waters, and, yes, those leaders include Ben Cardin, whose massive shoes they are trying to fill and seem ill-fit to do so based on these and other factors.

I am looking to quickly establish myself as the #3 Democrat in this race to fill Ben Cardin’s legendary shoes, giving the two sniping at each other discussed above some real competition.  I fully admit that I do not have anywhere near the relevant experience that Ben Cardin had when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006, but neither do Rep. Trone or County Executive Alsobrooks.  I call on each to end their cynical attacks against each other not focused on the issues and policy, which need to be the center of the conversation.  They can do better, and so can we.  That’s why I am running, and while I mentioned that the three of us pale in our relevant resumes, that does not mean that do not I possess far more experience in relevant areas than either of the two frontrunners.

While I am impressed with Trone’s record from his one-and-a-half terms in the House—five* years in Congress—that is not very deep, and however impressive his much-longer record as a businessman running Total Wine is, I have always felt business experience is commonly overrated when looking at political candidates: it is notable that there have been only two major party nominees for the presidency in U.S. history who were businessmen with no serious public service experience—Republican Wendell Willkie who challenged FDR in 1940 (and who wasn’t such a bad guy) and, ahem, insurrectionist Trump (who is an absolutely terrible man)—and this is quite telling: a liberal version of Mitt Romney with less government experience is not ideal for the Senate.  For most of his life, Trone has been focused on his family and his business, and that’s great: that’s the American dream.  But I do not consider that a plus weighed against a career of public service or working on the major issues the Senate is tasked with handling, so though I am happy to have Trone in the House building on his new record of public service there, the Senate as a legislative institution benefits from more public policy experience in candidates.

*UPDATED DISCUSSION 3/19: And as impressive as Alsobrooks’s not-to-be-derided career as a public servant of Prince George’s Country for many years is, I looked and tried hard to find any example in U.S. history of a someone who went from leading a county to going directly into the U.S. Senate: I could not find one for some time with the search terms I used, but after weeks of back-and-forth, some Alsobrooks supporters themselves discovered and pointed out that Joe Biden in 1972 and Chris Coons in 2010 both went from being county executives in Delaware to U.S. senators (Coons beat the amateurish and laughable Tea Party Republican Christine O’Donnell, a former self-proclaimed practitioner of witchcraft, in the general election; Biden’s youthful campaign and historic win over half-a-century-ago over an old Republican incumbent who had been considering retirement was far more impressive and an exceedingly rare occurrence; Larry Hogan is certainly neither of these people and presents a far more formidable challenge). These two examples hardly change the reality that virtually no candidates goes from being county executives directly to being in the U.S. Senate. After all, there are over 3,100 county or county-equivalents in the U.S. (not including U.S. Territories) and the only two examples we came across were thus far were two people spread out over nearly forty years from one of the smallest states in the Union—Delaware—with just one single U.S. House representative and some of the smallest pools or both population and office-holders from which to draw U.S. Senate candidates (perhaps we can uncover a few more? Let me know if you do! But even if there were ten or more further exceptions, it would not change the underlying rareness). With over a century of direct popular elections for the U.S. Senate and thousands of county leaders each year as potential candidates, that only two are identified thus far by those Alsobrooks supporters does not make a strong case that county-executives in terms of their office and responsibilities are considered, generally, prime U.S. Senate candidates. And there is good reason for that: it’s not that county-level issues and workings are less important than state-level or federal-level ones—they are not: we need great public servants and policy at the local level as much as at the state, national, and international levels—it’s that we are truly dealing with apples and oranges. They are not legislators as state legislators are, with very similar roles and responsibilities.  The issues county executives handle are of vastly different scales, approaches, and mechanisms.  The learning curve would be extreme and far from ideal. If this were not the case, we would have seen far more county executives in U.S. history going directly into the U.S. Senate from those county leadership positions. But we almost never do (conversely, I also do not think most U.S. Senators would be ideal to handle Alsobrooks’ roles and responsibilities or those of any other county executive). This is not about Alsobrooks as an individual, then, but the different nature of the two offices. Given how extremely rare it is for anyone of any background, race, or gender to go from county executive directly to U.S. Senate, the burden is on Alsobrooks and her supporters to make the case as to why, specifically, the experience of a county executive is is particularly transferable to the U.S. Senate’s current environment—beyond simply stating how great they think she is—rather than the burden being on voters who are skeptical to justify their skepticism against popular well-known Larry Hogan who has a profile across the state that far exceeds that of either frontrunner and a lot of bipartisan support in his victories as candidate for governor. None of this means that it is impossible for Alsobrooks to beat Hogan (for now she is still polling far behind Trone, though), and if she won the nomination I would be proud to support her, but it does make her candidacy a far riskier one and anyone thinking this will not be an issue for many voters in the general election against a candidate of the stature of Hogan are deluding themselves; pretending this does not matter matter and refusing to deal with it in the primary before it would definitely become an issue in the general election does not serve to forge Alsobrooks into her strongest as a candidate and hardly puts her in the best possible position to defeat Hogan if she were to win the nomination.

Again, both Trone and Alsobrooks would be facing the popular recently-former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who has already shown his ability to win statewide office as a Republican in a heavily-democratic blue state.  But we need a strong Democrat to defeat him because to defeat MAGA Trumpist insurrectionist fascism, we don’t need Ben Cardin’s seat filled by the Joe Manchin of the Republic Party, not matter how moderate he is.

Yet the lack of both Trone’s and Alsobrooks’s experience engaging on national-level and international-level issues disturbs and worries me; it did before Hogan entered the race and it worries me more now.  The latest non-partisan poll showed Trone in a statistical tie with Hogan and Alsobrooks losing handily to Hogan (less-reliable campaign/partisan polls also show a muddied picture).  None presented a strong outlook for Democrats against Hogan, and while these numbers can change, this is not a good sign and a sign that voters are looking for something more.

That can be me.

Ben Cardin was a leader not just on national-level issues, but international ones.  I am the only one between myself and the two-frontrunners who has any serious international-level experience: both my academic and professional careers for over two decades have produced top-notch international affairs understanding and analysis.  From being a journalist, academic, and analyst to studying and living over five years in the Middle East (ask me about Israel and Hamas, and compare to what the frontrunners have or don’t have to say), from political work and consulting in the U.S. to working in Jordan in the NGO, international development, and humanitarian aid fields, I bring a type and longevity of experience on national- and international-level issues that both the frontrunners lack.  I have been published by numerous major institutions and publications in the U.S. and abroad, with a global audience and more Twitter followers than the two frontrunners’ campaigns combined (and let’s expand that lead!).  My expertise ranges from Russia’s war in Ukraine—my work on that being praised by former military leaders, a sitting congressman, and even Ukrainian government officials—and Russian election interference to gun violence and racism in America (I’ve been attacked by the NRA and Russian trolls for good reason!).

Perhaps most importantly, I have by far the most detailed plans and legislative proposals on a range of issues on my site compared to my frontrunners’ less robust policy sections on their sites.  And while I may not have held elected office, understanding the nuts and bolts, the inner workings, and complex dynamics behind Senate-level policymaking, international diplomacy, and war and terrorism can be just as valuable and even more so in making an elected office work, especially as a U.S. senator.

So if you want the person who will avoid petty attacks and with the longest record of engagement on national- and international-level issues and the most-detail plans to make talk of change a reality, vote for me, Brian Frydenborg, to represent Maryland in the U.S. Senate.

*Corrections appended: Rep. Trone has served five years in the U.S. House, correcting an earlier mistake of citing three years of service; after some Alsobrooks supporters pointed out two examples of country executives who went directly to the U.S. Senate (both from Delaware), I discussed that after earlier stating I had been unable to find examples.

Come see Brian debate other candidates, including the two frontrunners, TODAY in Silver Spring, moderated by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. I wrote about why this debate is so important for me. Register here now as space is filling up! You can also sign up to watch via Zoom here! See related March 6 article Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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