Democrat Angela Alsobrooks won election to the U.S. Senate Tuesday the Associated Press reports, making history as the first Black woman to represent Maryland in the body.
She and Delaware Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, who also won her Senate bid Tuesday, will be the first two Black women to serve in the Senate at the same time, as well as the third and fourth Black women ever elected to the Senate.
“It’s remarkable to think that in two years, America will celebrate its 250th birthday, and in all those years, there have been more than 2000 people who have served in the United States Senate, and only three have looked like me,” Alsobrooks said Tuesday night at her election night party.
Several hundred supporters packed the ballroom at the Hotel at The University of Maryland in College Park to watch the results roll in. The mood was celebratory from the start of the night, and the cheers were deafening when Alsobrooks was declared the winner.
“She’ll be our fighter for freedom, for women’s right of choice, for our environment, for economic empowerment,” Sen. Ben Cardin, whose retirement is vacating the seat Alsobrooks will claim in January, said shortly after the results were announced. “I can now feel very comfortable that the next United States senator will continue the values that are important to all of us.”
Gov. Wes Moore said Alsobrooks’ win makes “her-story.”
“When I look at Angela, I don't just see a great leader,” Moore said. “I see my daughter, I see my wife, I see my sisters, I see my mom, I see all of those who came before us who I know right now, they are smiling from ear to ear, and they are watching us from up high, and they are looking at us, and they are saying, Maryland, we understood the assignment, and we got the job done.”
The race to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Ben Cardin was unusually competitive for Maryland, where Democrats handily won the last several Senate races. Alsobrooks’ Republican opponent, former Gov. Larry Hogan, remained popular throughout and even after his time as governor.
But his individual popularity couldn’t overcome negative views of the Republican Party. One poll from October showed that more than half of likely voters held favorable opinions of Hogan, but a majority also said they want Democrats to control the U.S. Senate.
Alsobrooks’ campaign hammered that idea home — reminding voters at every turn that no matter what policies Hogan says he supports, he would caucus with the Republicans in Washington.
But once the results of the race were clear, Alsobrooks called for unity.
“I know that we can be a country that yells less and listens more, that fears less and trusts more, where we see the humanity in each other before the hateful word,” Alsobrooks said Tuesday night, “and as divided as we may feel in America, I still believe there is no us against them – there is only us.”
