US Senate campaigns release campaign finance reports. Here's a deep dive into the numbers.
The contours of the campaign finances of the Democratic United States Senate candidates have been well-known for months, but new Federal Election Commission reports filed on Monday make the picture of all candidates clearer with primary Election Day less than a month away.
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and U.S. Rep. David Trone, D-6th, are the two Democratic candidates for Maryland’s open Senate seat who have spent over $1 million since entering the field last year. Former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, who started his campaign in February, has spent more than $390,000 during the two months since entering.
“Your biggest competitor in a primary when you jump in to begin with is name recognition,” said Bruce Larson, professor of political science at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He called the millions spent on advertising “hugely” important in increasing name recognition.
For Hogan, who has previously won statewide elections, the “competitor” of name recognition may be less adversarial than for his top Democratic counterparts, who are for the first time on the ballot across the whole state of Maryland.
Days before the latest quarterly financial reports were filed, during separate interviews with a Maryland USA Today Network reporter at the Allegheny Events Center in Flintstone, the Democratic candidates assessed the effect of money on potential Maryland voters. Their responses were reflective of the imbalance of cash contributed so far by the candidates.
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‘Marylanders won’t let money decide a race,’ Alsobrooks says
Alsobrooks, whose April 15 report for the period ending March 31 showed $7.1 million in total receipts and about $4 million spent, did not make or receive any loans to her campaign.
“Marylanders are very savvy,” said Alsobrooks, during an April 13 interview, “I have a lot of confidence in Marylanders that money won’t decide the race, but the people will.”
“The people will hear my experience,” she said, “they’ll hear my passion for our state, and they’ll hear my passion for the families of Maryland and hear my effectiveness.”
“I have a record of having been effective as state’s attorney, county executive,” Alsobrooks said.“Marylanders won’t let money decide a race. They’re going to make sure that they select the person with the right experience.”
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Trone: 'It's really important to have resources to tell your story'
Trone, whose April 15 report for the period ending March 31 showed $42.4 million in total receipts and about $44.7 million spent, has loaned or guaranteed his campaign $41,771,000.
“It’s really important to be able to have the resources to tell your story, to tell the issues that you care about, and why you care about them, what you want to do on those issues,” said Trone, the owner of a multi-billion dollar company, Total Wine & More, a chain of alcohol retail stores.
“Unfortunately,” said Trone, during an April 13 interview, noting the multiple media markets in Maryland (to include Baltimore, Washington, and another in Salisbury), “it’s expensive.”
“The commercials we’ve kept them very interesting, very focused, and very upbeat, and positive,” Trone said.
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Trone campaign spends over $9 million this year so far on “media buys”
Those commercials have come on televisions during the NFL playoffs in the Baltimore area, during March Madness in between Washington and Baltimore, and during weeknight "Jeopardy!" as far north as Pennsylvania, where the D.C.-area ABC station reaches across the Mason-Dixon line.
In the first three months of the year alone, the Trone campaign spent over $9 million on 10-plus “media buys” with a D.C.-based company, Canal Partners Media, which places advertisements on tv and elsewhere.
But television commercials alone are not the only thing on which the Trone campaign has spent money, according to the Federal Election Commission reports.
This year, Liquid Soul Media, a Georgia-headquartered company, was the recipient of over $200,000 of funding from the Trone campaign for “radio buys.”
Trone has been on the radio each of the last three years, dating back to his 2022 congressional campaign even prior to his May 2023 entry in the field to replace U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.
Gambit Strategies, another D.C.-based company, has been the recipient of $4.5 million in the first three months of this year for “digital buys.” Ads for Trone for Senate have run online, ranging from locations from the website for the (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail newspaper in Western Maryland to on Hulu streaming on the Eastern Shore in Salisbury.
The ads have not been limited to the airwaves or on screens either. They’ve been in mailboxes.
AMS Communications, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company, has been the recipient of over a half-a-million Trone campaign dollars this year alone for “direct mail.”
Trone ads for “abortion access to all Americans” landed in Western Maryland and D.C.-suburban mailboxes alike in early April. Since last year, for an example, over a half dozen 8.5-by-11 multipage Trone ads have been sent to just one household in Prince George’s County.
So far, this year alone, the Trone campaign spent money on campaign sign supplies at Home Depot, spent thousands of dollars on contributions to state legislators and central committees, spent thousands of dollars on multiple consulting services, and thousands of dollars at barbeque restaurants. The campaign made dozens of purchases at Starbucks totaling hundreds of dollars, and made one purchase at the Laurel location of Trone’s Total Wine & More for $176.49.
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‘Half of all money we spend on campaigns is wasted,’consultant says
Whereas the Trone campaign so far this year received about 200 contributions, including those from himself, according to the Federal Election Commission reports, the Alsobrooks campaign has hundreds more receipts, including those from within the state and from across the country, with many contributions coming to the campaigns through the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue.
The Alsobrooks campaign has spent a couple million dollars so far this year, including nearly $100,000 on “online advertising” with the D.C.-based company Break Something Inc. and over $800,000 on six “media advertisings” with a Pennsylvania-based company, “Grassroots Media.”
Her ads, too, ran on tv during March Madness in the area between Washington and Baltimore.
About $22,000 in “direct mail production” was received from the Alsobrooks campaign by EMILYs List, a political action committee, whose stated purpose is to “work to elect Democratic pro-choice women.”
Thousands of dollars have also been spent by the Alsobrooks campaign on catering and multiple consultants. In a couple of instances, the Alsobrooks campaign spent thousands on “contribution refunds” paying back money given by a pair of contributors who had roles as state legislators.
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The Alsobrooks campaign emphasized not the money spent, but the “grassroots movement” in an April 9 press release, which noted the number of volunteers (over 3,000) knocking on doors, making calls and sending text messages to potential voters.
In that sense, the campaign is mirroring Trone’s Republican challenger in the last election, who hoped to replicate the success of now-U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who defeated Trone during his first bid for Congress in 2016 despite a $10 million-plus difference in funding.
Trone’s challenger in 2022, then-state Delegate Neil Parrott, R-Washington, lost that election, whereas Raskin, a state senator in 2016 (who has since backed Alsobrooks in her bid for U.S. Senate over his once Democratic competitor and current congressional colleague), won.
During an April 15 interview, Larson, the Gettysburg professor and co-author of the book, “Congressional Parties, Institutional Ambition, and the Financing of Majority Control,” quoting a campaign consultant’s aphorism, put the issue of money in political campaigns this way.
“Probably half of all money we spend on campaigns is wasted,” he said. “We just don’t know which half.”
Maryland’s presidential primary, which includes the voting for U.S. Senate and for the U.S. House of Representatives, is scheduled for an Election Day of Tuesday, May 14, 2024.
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Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.
This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Millions spent on US Senate campaigns in Md. A look behind the numbers
