The Utmost In Hypocrisy — David Trone’s Senate Campaign.
When our mail came on Saturday, my husband’s response when he handed me David Trone’s latest oversized glossy mailing that probably cost his campaign $100,000 or more for production and postage was, “This is just laughable, quite the irony.”
His reaction came from the fact that we had been talking about some of the highlights in the Senate debate Friday night. It is no secret that we support Angela Alsobrooks and agree that his attempt to buy this election is wrong and won’t work. The mailing crystalized everything.
The mailing’s theme in bold letters is “powerful special interests trying to buy our democracy.”
Here he is right. He, by virtue of his wallet funded by his own wine and liquor business, is a powerful special interest and he literally is trying to buy a seat in the Senate which is an assault on our democracy.
It has especially galled me because while I was a (low) paid campaign worker more than 30 years ago, for the last three decades I have worked tirelessly on campaigns solely in a personal capacity without pay. As a Democratic National Committee member and officer, as Maryland State Party Chair, as a candidate for office myself, and as a volunteer for countless candidates for office I have always pushed for grassroots fundraising to be the core of any political campaign. I have helped candidates by urging my friends and family to participate in elections and have supported candidates who I respect for their values. I have never sought paid positions with any successful candidates, and I do what I do because I believe in our Democracy.
All of this led me to support two particular candidates in this year’s elections Angela Alsobrooks for Senate and Harry Dunn for Congress. How the elections are being distorted by a big money self-funder and a Mega MAGA funded Super Pac have and the very likely intertwining of those two led me to take a deeper dive into what’s really going on behind the curtain.
To start off — there are several aspects to David Trone’s attempt to buy elections and ballot issues that actually have been in the works for years as he has publicly looked at next steps in Maryland since before his first term in the House.
Over the last 8 years, David Trone has spent about a hundred million dollars to support his own campaigns for office. That’s one thing that people could say is his right and prerogative. But that is not the full picture of his political spending. As he and his brother have built their business, he and his companies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to further their wine and alcohol empire. These dollars have gone to state legislators, Governors and Ballot Questions across our country in many states, putting in place people many of whom are and have been anti-choice, anti-democracy Republicans. These companies are and have been the source of his wealth even as a Member of Congress and are self-evidently the source of the funds for this campaign.
A Time Magazine reporter profiled the hypocrisy of these donations last fall. Most of the contributions exposed in the article were to local candidates in certain states and the dollars were from both him personally and his companies. I say companies not company because there is a network of companies all linked to Total Wine and More that he owns and founded with his brother.
He claims that he isn’t involved in the company decisions, yet he is listed on the company’s own website as the Founding Owner and prominently pictured. He consistently talks about the company as “we” and it appears that he even has a designated parking space outside the front door of the headquarters. That address — the Corporate Headquarters of his business — is listed as his mailing address on his FEC filings.
How do I know all this? I googled him, follow him on social media and reviewed his Senate campaign finance reports. It doesn’t take much to see this.
So what are the consequences of these contributions?
Last month I was appalled when I saw on X that he personally had supported Arizona’s former Republican Governor Doug Ducey who had appointed four of the Supreme Court Judges who issued the draconian abortion decision in Arizona.
I already had heard about from published reports of his donations to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton that with his wife total almost $50,000. It is all right there on https://www.opensecrets.org/. Abbott and Paxton have been possibly the worst promoters of bad anti-choice, anti-immigrant, anti-trans policies of any state in the Nation.
A recent contribution that I found stunning was that in 2022 David Trone, his brother and company spent about $11million promoting a ballot question in Colorado that failed. What was Initiative 96 for? Coloradans For Consumer Choice And Retail Fairness was to enable them to open more stores in the state. It failed overwhelmingly because it was seen to be an anti-small business measure.
I still am processing that one of the most striking contribution that was reported in the Washington Post. In 2014, eight of Trone’s businesses gave $30,000 to then-Governor Larry Hogan in an effort to help him retire Hogan’s campaign debt. “What we don’t need is a Larry Hogan donor trying to take on Larry Hogan in the fall,” Alsobrooks said in this weekend’s televised debate. I agree.
So, we should be prepared to believe him when he said he would attempt to spend “whatever it takes” in the Senate Primary. Spending on politics comes easy to him. If he continues to spend at the pace he seems to be on between now and May 14th, his personal contributions to this campaign alone could easily total $50 million dollars.
But, I never expected that I would also be upset about his donations to Democrats. When he started highlighting Congressional endorsements from Members outside Maryland I was curious, and I found that he had supported dozens of them and the democratic Congressional campaign committee with millions of dollars. No wonder the Democratic House Leadership has endorsed him in a competitive primary. Of course they did. In Friday night’s debate when defending his largess he called out two of his “diversity contributions” to two talented Black female Members of Congress. It was cringeworthy to hear him. In contrast not a single Member of the Maryland delegation who is running for reelection endorsed him. They all have endorsed Angela Alsobrooks whom they want to serve with on behalf of all Marylanders.
It is always the case that when you look for one thing, you often find something unexpected. What I found in his latest FEC reports are pages after pages of contributions to Maryland elected officials most pointedly on January 8 — two days before a fundraising prohibition for members of the Maryland Legislation was to go into effect. These “disbursements” were made to the campaigns of dozens of people who had just or in the weeks to follow endorse him. It was sickening to see. Members of the Maryland Legislature and Prince George’s County officials — people I had always respected before had accepted campaign contributions from a candidate adjacent to their public endorsement of him.
To be clear — this doesn’t usually happen in Maryland. In Maryland it works the other way around. Candidates ask their colleagues to support them to help them fund their campaigns. I did just that in 2018. Endorsers put their money where their mouth is — not the opposite. Watching his commercials I have found it beyond appalling knowing that almost all of the elected supporters in his commercials have received checks from the candidate for their campaign accounts.
Troubling too is that other donations since this campaign began also correlated with legislation that Total Wine pushed this year to expand the number of stores that would be allowed to operate in Maryland. The measure failed before a vote was taken. One can only shake one’s head.
Remember — this is the person who has been railing nonstop about special interest contributions and describes himself as “independent.” Just because he has endless resources to spend money to influence politicians across the country, doesn’t mean that other elected officials are “corrupt” because they accept contributions from a broad range of sources. And the fact that he has the ability to self-fund his own campaigns does not negate the fact that he himself is a walking special interest.
Friday night in response to Alsobrooks’ comments about his contributions he responded after the debate to a reporter that he needs to protect his businesses and workers in states across the country, and some elected officials “claim those checks need to be written to them. They want those checks.” I guess this means that instead of paying his non-union workers more his company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to influence politicians. As Angela Alsobrooks clearly said the other night — he should not be able to tout the good things his company has done while at the same time running from its contributions to expand his business.
Ironically it is the same business that allows him to be, as he says, “independent.”
What might be viewed sadly as the most egregious example of excess dollars to promote himself and his companies’ interests in Maryland has been the flow of his dollars to or on behalf of Anthony Brown. In 2022 David and June Trone contributed close to $400,000 Vote Vets which then turned that money around for a tv ad campaign to support Anthony Brown for Attorney General. But these aren’t the only dollars that tie the Trones have given to MD’s Attorney General. Since 2014 Records at the Maryland State Board of Elections show that Trone and his family members gave Brown’s state campaign committee at least $48,300 between 2017 and 2022. Articles about Trone’s interest in Maryland Alcohol laws and crossover with Anthony Brown date back to 2014. Trone’s company gave so much money over the years to Brown’s campaigns that the companies agreed to pay $60,000 to settle allegations of exceeding limits on campaign contributions.
One would think knowing that this is all in the public record, Anthony Brown would have been careful and not taken a major public role in Trone’s campaign. Nope. Brown is in two commercials that have played repeatedly for the last few weeks. In it he refers to the Trone family foundation’s multimillion dollar contribution to the ACLU a nonprofit that under normal circumstances one would hope would be careful about its 501c3 standing and not allow itself to be flaunted in a political ad. Maryland’s Attorney General has shown remarkable disregard to how this appearance in an ad for someone who has played such a magnified position in his election to the position could be viewed. As a longtime friend and supporter, the totality of this error of judgement of Maryland’s chief legal officer, has been hard to watch.
The influence of mega and MAGA donor money in politics also plays a role in Maryland this year.
From early days of the Senate campaign AIPAC — The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has had an oversized financial interest in Trone’s campaign. After the first report including $108,000 in contributions he received from individuals, Trone received $73,950 funneled to the campaign by AIPAC. Eyebrows were raised. At the time I sarcastically joked that his annual $100,000 contribution to AIPAC wasn’t a great investment because it only yielded such little return. I haven’t tried to determine the dollar amount since, I am sure it is substantially higher. Trone has a long relationship with AIPAC which explains why the substantial contributions from AIPAC affiliated individuals is not surprising even to a multi-millionaire self-funding his campaign at a fast clip.
But on April 2nd when AIPAC Affiliated United Democracy Project (UDP) began spending money on tv and advertising for field staff in Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District on behalf of State Senator Sarah Elfreth, two days after they would have had to report their expenditure, my antenna really went up.
UDP was created specifically as Super PAC affiliated with AIPAC and had been typically engaged in races where the candidates have diametrically different views on Israel. Many of UDP’s biggest funders include some of the leading donors to Donald Trump and to other extremists. These are one issue voters who have supported scores of GOP election denying Congressmen. That this Super PAC is spending money in this race seems suspect.
When first called on it, they claimed that “it is not about Harry Dunn,” the other leading candidate in every public poll. Harry Dunn and the candidate they are boosting have virtually the same positions on policy. The Super PAC implies that it is about a minor candidate who has little chance in what is universally seen as a three person race in a field of 22.
UDP FEC Reports show that it raised over $47 million between January 1 — February 29, 2024 from 777 contributors. If you do the math (and I did) that means the average donation to the PAC is over $60,000. Very little if any of that money is from Maryland, close to none from the 3rd Congressional district and Super PACs do not have spending limits.
I have had an initial theory about it since it was first reported, and it pains me. Then when the UDP also endorsed Baltimore County Executive John “Johnny O” Olszewski, Jr. in the adjacent district I got a sick feeling, and it wasn’t about my highly qualified friend Johnny O who doesn’t need UDP’s help. He is expected to win his primary race by an overwhelming margin and has both the support and resources to dominate in that Congressional District without this endorsement.
Early this year when in Southern California I observed a similar situation in a Congressional race. The UDP PAC has spent more than $4.6 million to pummel David Min already this year. He is a California State Senator who survived his primary after an onslaught of personal attack ads that had nothing to do with Israel policy, Very little was spent to boost the profile of the endorsed candidate who lost by more than 6 points in the non-partisan primary. The spending was a series of brutal attack ads that were directed at Min’s character. Now that I look back, I think the negative ads were specifically planned to lower turnout in Katie Porter’s home Congressional District. That lower turnout was advantageous for Porter’s opponent Adam Schiff — an AIPAC endorsed candidate. He won his Senate Primary after receiving millions in AIPAC-affiliated contributions. Min will now face a Republican in a marginal district.
The California race might give us a roadmap for the spending of nearly $2 million so far on behalf of Sarah Elfreth who has benefitted with a massive media buy much greater than one she would have been able to afford, The ads are positive ads providing her with much-needed name recognition and visibility. I think it is a bank shot by UDP/AIPAC based on their profiling of Maryland voters. I believe that they — through their analysis — predict that the endorsements will bump up the vote for their real candidate in Maryland who is one of their $100,000 annual donors David Trone. Keep in mind, Trone has paid $555,000 to his pollster during the course of this campaign.
But while UDP wanted to deflate voting turnout in California, I believe they want the opposite in Maryland in the 3rdCongressional District which on the surface could benefit Trone and at the same time help elect someone who was having difficulty getting traction once Harry Dunn’s surprise entrance in the race. That’s why they haven’t attacked anyone in this race which is totally contrary to their usual approach. It would be wildly dangerous for UDP to run a single attack ad against Harry Dunn a decorated national hero for his efforts on and since January 6th in a Democratic primary. And, if they spend to discredit their supposed target, it will only give him visibility. It would be really stupid. The interests to elevate Elfreth and in the process potentially elevate Trone are aligned.
To me it looks like a flashing red light, and my answer is that we can’t be a party that lets a SuperPAC which 86% of the time spends against candidates of color be determinative in races against people of color in our State. Especially as it is being funded by mega and MAGA donors.
The similarity of the individual contributors to both Trone and Elfreth seem to suggest that a large proportion of her 2024 contributions are from AIPAC/UDP affiliated donors from out of state. In contrast Harry Dunn has over 5,000 Maryland donors whose average contribution is about $23. His Maryland-based grassroots contributions are 10 times Elfreth’s and at the same time UDP on her behalf is outspending Dunn and the other candidates in the race.
Meanwhile Trone regularly claims in large audiences that he can win against Hogan while emitting dog whistles about his “persona” and “profile” pointing to rural Maryland regions and suggesting Alsobrooks “can’t go there.” It is despicable.
All you have to do is Google his name to see these chinks in his armor and connect the dots in the way that I have. Imagine what the NRSCC is going to do. The dark money “independent PAC” created for Larry Hogan must be chomping at the bit. This election is too important to risk giving control of the Senate to the MAGA Republicans with someone who cannot separate himself from his own business and regularly engages in transparent “transactional” contributions.
I believe in fair elections and democracy and know that Maryland voters will reject the outrageous spending in these races. We need a candidate that hasn’t donated to Larry Hogan but can beat him by building an organic campaign of inclusion and commitment to the values that Marylanders stand for.
I think he’ll be shocked when Maryland voters choose not to be purchased like a bottle of wine.
