There were about 50 people gathered in Congressman David Trone’s Baltimore campaign office on the last Sunday in April. Most of them were women, there to knock on doors and make phone calls for what the campaign called a “Women’s Day of Action.”
“I think the most important thing that I can bring to this race also is independence. If you don't take money from Exxon, you can fight for the environment, can't ya?” Trone said in a pep talk before the volunteers began their work. “So when you hit the doors, feel free to say, Mr. Trone, he's using his own resources."
Trone is the co-founder and co-owner of the national liquor store chain Total Wine and More. He first ran for Congress in 2016 and was first elected in 2018. Into each campaign, Trone has poured millions of his own money. For this year’s race to fill Maryland’s open U.S. Senate seat, the 68-year-old Trone has so far spent more than $50 million of his personal money.
If he wins the Democratic primary on May 14, he is likely to face former Gov. Larry Hogan, the expected Republican nominee, in November.
Trone’s ability to self-fund his campaigns is one of the main reasons Romera Ferguson said she came to the event that Sunday — the first time she has ever volunteered for a political campaign.
“I like how he is not beholden to any of the PACs,” she said. “He pays for his own campaign.”
The northwest Baltimore resident said she likes Trone’s stances on healthcare issues and that he doesn’t ask people who apply for jobs at his business for criminal history information. But she decided to volunteer, rather than just support him on the ballot, because of something less tangible.
“I came to some of his rallies, and I heard him speak, and I heard the passion in his voice,” she said. “I hear the determination in his voice and his message, and I just want to sign on to that.”
Others in the room said he is the only candidate in the primary who could beat Hogan. In fact, that’s one of Trone’s main talking points.
“Not one poll has ever said my opponent can beat Larry Hogan, ‘cause she won't,” Trone said, referring to his chief primary opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, during a debate last month on WBFF. “I have the resources to beat Larry Hogan, and I have the persona to win across the state — to win in the Eastern Shore, to win in Southern Maryland, to win big in Western Maryland.”
Were she to win, Alsobrooks would be the third Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate and the first from Maryland.
Trone also likes to say that he’s more bipartisan than almost any other member of Congress and more effective at getting bills passed than his colleagues in the Maryland delegation.
“In the Congress, you have people — I call them show horses. They always want to be on CNN. Then you have workhorses. I'm the guy that likes to work. I like the policy, I enjoy the policy, and I enjoy getting people on our bills that we can then pass,” Trone told the volunteers at his campaign office.
State Sen. Kathy Klausmeier, who represents Eastern Baltimore County in Annapolis, said she is supporting Trone in part because of his practice of working with Republicans in Congress to get bills passed.
She also shares his views on a range of policy issues, from combating the opioid epidemic to lowering prescription drug prices. And she likes that he grew up on a farm because her husband was also a farmer.
“I just think he's a true, caring human being,” Klausmeier said. “It just means so much to me of how hard he worked to get to the point that he is.”
Though he grew up on that farm in Pennsylvania, he now lives in Potomac, the wealthy suburb just outside Washington, D.C. His current congressional district covers the western part of the state.
But he said if elected, his primary Senate office will be in Baltimore.
“We know Baltimore also needs a lot of help — a lot of help in education, a lot of help in crime, a lot of help in infrastructure, a lot of help in housing,” Trone told reporters that Sunday in April. “So we're trying to make Baltimore City the center of everything.”
