BALTIMORE — Maryland candidates and their allies combined to spend roughly $160 million over the last two years as they fought for a rarely open U.S. Senate seat — a record-breaker that is likely to become more of a historical anomaly rather than a new precedent.
The unheard-of spending in a Maryland election — manifesting in a bombardment of ads and direct outreach targeting voters — ended with Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks defeating former Gov. Larry Hogan, keeping the seat in Democrats’ hands even as the party lost control of the chamber.
Both candidates set Maryland records for their respective parties as Senate nominees, according to The Baltimore Sun’s review of campaign finance reports filed late last week.
Alsobrooks’ campaign committees spent about $30.5 million since the start of her campaign in May 2023 and Hogan’s committees totaled about $21 million since he launched in February.
But the unusually competitive nature of this year’s matchup between a popular former Republican governor and a well-backed Democrat also meant more involvement than ever from outside groups.
Just under 40 independent groups funneled a total of $48 million into ads, most of which slammed the candidate they opposed, and other expenses related to the Maryland race. That wasn’t just astronomically high for a Senate race in the state — it was $9 million more than outside spending in all other years, for all kinds of federal elections, in the state combined for the last five decades, according to The Sun’s review of historical Federal Election Commission data.
Add into the mix U.S. Rep. David Trone’s personally funded $64 million Democratic primary bid against Alsobrooks, along with a few other lesser-known candidates, and the total spending reached about $160 million for the cycle.
“This was kind of a perfect storm of a year,” said Sophia Silbergeld, a fundraiser for prominent Maryland Democrats who worked for Trone during the primary.
Silbergeld said a mix of factors contributed to the heightened money race — including voters paying more attention in a presidential election year, a “formidable” candidate like Hogan, and an “incredible” strategy by Alsobrooks to connect with voters and donors over issues like abortion and which party would control the Senate.
Matt Foster, a political science professor at American University, put it another way: “This is probably something that is just kind of a blip.”
Who are the outside groups that got involved?
Maryland wasn’t always guaranteed to see the kind of spike in outside spending that other areas of the country saw this year — the kind that saw a record of more than $4.5 billion nationally in the 2024 campaign cycle, according to the money-in-politics watchdog group Open Secrets.
Democrats have safely won every Senate race in Maryland since 1980 and the latest election, to replace longtime U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, seemed to be headed in the same direction for months.
But Hogan’s last-minute decision immediately attracted significant interest from national Republicans and others beyond Maryland’s borders.
A super PAC that launched soon after Hogan’s campaign began was seeded with $10 million from Kenneth Griffin, a hedge fund leader and major GOP donor. It ultimately spent $27 million on ads targeting Alsobrooks and another $3 million on expenses like polling and consulting services, making it the biggest outside player this year and the highest-spending outside organization in a federal race in the state ever, according to The Sun’s review.
The ads flooded the airwaves between late September and Nov. 5, Election Day, and featured messages that were often intensely negative.
At least one 30-second spot called Alsobrooks a “tax cheat” and a “slumlord,” referring to revelations that she improperly received tax credits for two rental properties she owned. The Democrat began paying back the money after news of the error broke late in the campaign.
Forcefully denying any intentional wrongdoing, Alsobrooks said the ads were “patently untrue” during an interview with The Sun’s editorial board in October. She said the ads were “yet another reason that we have to look at all the money that comes into these races,” and she applauded outgoing U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes’ efforts to get “big money interest” out of elections. Legislation from Sarbanes to increase transparency around individuals who fund some campaign groups, known as “dark money,” have repeatedly come up short in Congress.
Other than Maryland’s Future, a handful of groups spent another $2.2 million to benefit Hogan. About half of that was from a PAC run by John Bolton, President-elect Donald Trump’s former national security advisor who became a Trump opponent.
National Democrats, meanwhile, came to Alsobrooks’ aid — with $10.1 million worth of ads purchased by WinSenate, a PAC associated with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that aimed at keeping Democrats’ control of the chamber. Women Vote, which is associated with the national group EMILYs List that aims to elect women who support abortion rights, spent another $5.4 million, according to FEC data.
Those groups and others focused their anti-Hogan messaging on abortion. Both WinSenate and Women Vote, for instance, ran a 30-second ad that highlighted Hogan’s record on the issue and his repeated statements about being “personally opposed to abortion.”
Other ads, including those run by Alsobrooks’ campaign, tried to motivate voters by claiming control of the narrowly divided Senate could come down to Maryland. That thought did not come to fruition, as Alsobrooks won and her party lost enough seats in other states to put them in the minority in 2025.
Hogan railed against that messaging in the final weeks of his campaign, and a post-election memo from his top strategist blamed “national factors and a false narrative driven by media coverage” for his 12 percentage-point loss.
National Nurses United, the country’s largest union of registered nurses, also spent $1.1 million on billboards, television ads and phone banking efforts for Alsobrooks.
BlackPAC, an organization aimed at mobilizing Black voters, pitched in another $800,000 for Alsobrooks, who will be the state’s first Black senator and one of four Black women ever elected to the U.S. Senate. And Unity First PAC, a new effort associated with Gov. Wes Moore, spent about $415,000 on media to support her.
Fundraising ‘behemoths’
The candidates also raised significant portions of their funds from donors outside Maryland.
An analysis by The Sun of their donations through mid-October found about 47% of contributions for Alsobrooks and 62% for Hogan came from other states.
Alsobrooks ultimately raised about $32.7 million from individuals and other political action committees, according to The Sun’s review of reports for her two main fundraising committees covering the beginning of her campaign through Nov. 25. Hogan used three committees to raise about $22.8 million.
Observers of the race say Alsobrooks had impressive fundraising prowess, while Hogan, with a history of successful fundraisers, likely represented Republicans’ best shot at the seat for many more years to come.
“She was a seasoned candidate,” Silbergeld said, noting Alsobrooks’ successful elections as Prince George’s County state’s attorney and county executive before her first statewide bid this year. “She slowly and methodically built a really solid and diverse base of donors.”
Foster said Alsobrooks’ ability to raise money allowed her to compete against “behemoths” like Hogan and Trone, the three-term congressman from Montgomery County who is the wealthy cofounder of Total Wine & More.
Trone spent $64 million, almost all of which was his own money, on his way to a 10 percentage-point loss in the May primary — making him one of the largest self-funding candidates ever in the U.S.
Robin Ficker, a former lawyer and perennial candidate for elected office in Maryland, also self-funded a $4.4 million campaign in the Republican primary. Hogan also personally loaned his campaign $500,000 five days before his Nov. 5 loss.
“It goes to show you that money doesn’t always equate to victory,” Foster said.
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