PG County Executive aims to expand work statewide as Maryland's next U.S. senator
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks has crisscrossed the state in her discussion of issues that she has heard from Marylanders during her campaign so far for United States Senate.
She started with health care access on the Eastern Shore, moved to housing affordability in Western Maryland and educational funding in Frederick before providing a point of summation: “Economic opportunity is threaded throughout the state.”
Like a governor, a U.S. senator needs to “account for the diversity of opinion and experiences here in Maryland,” said Carin Robinson, associate professor of political science at Hood College in Frederick. Robinson said that Gov. Wes Moore’s endorsement of Alsobrooks could be a help in the party’s May 14 primary. Current member of Congress, U.S. Rep. David Trone, D-6th, and business executive Juan Dominguez are also in the six-candidate field.
Speaking during an interview from the same Democratic campaign headquarters in Largo that aided her reelection to county executive last November and boosted the history-making elections of Moore, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, Alsobrooks commented on something that has provided her some comfort in her first statewide contest.
“What’s been reassuring to me,” said Alsobrooks, a lawyer, twice-elected to lead Maryland’s second most populous county, “is, as I travel the state, I’m finding that our families care about many of the same issues.”
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‘There were so few women’
The seat she hopes to occupy to address those topics would be not totally unfamiliar. Alsobrooks walked the halls of Congress before, when she was just starting out in her professional life as an intern for the Congressional Black Caucus in 1992.
Alsobrooks accompanied then-recently elected Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., to her committee meetings, and recalls learning a lesson from the first (and only) woman to ever represent the district on Capitol Hill.
“She explained to me that there was a time,” said Alsobrooks, during the Nov. 9 interview, “that there were so few women that they didn’t even have quite the need for as many (women’s restrooms).”
In 1992, there were 32 women total in Congress, comprising 6% of the legislative body, including four in the Senate. Today, 150 of the 535 voting members of Congress are women, comprising 28%, including 25 in the Senate. (Then and now, Norton, as the congressional delegate for D.C., is not included in those totals, or permitted to vote on bills on the House floor.)
Alsobrooks rides the bus during 2016 California U.S. Senate campaign
The twice-elected former Prince George’s County State’s Attorney also has had Capitol Hill counsel in more recent years. A 2021 Washington Post piece showcased the relationship between Alsobrooks and current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021, who was also California’s Attorney General and a district attorney prior to that.
In 2009, during Alsobrooks’ initial campaign for county state’s attorney, she read Harris’ book, “Smart on Crime.” A rapport developed when Harris, then a district attorney in California, found out about the Maryland attorney citing her work. Alsobrooks borrowed the idea of Harris’ “Back on Track” program as a way to reduce recidivism of low-level felony drug dealers through education and job training.
Later, in 2016, Alsobrooks even rode Harris’ U.S. Senate campaign bus with her while Harris, the Senate candidate, grilled a future one in Alsobrooks, still a state’s attorney at that point.
“Tell me about your ‘Back on Track’ program,” Alsobrooks recalled Harris saying on the bus a week before the California primary, in the Post piece. Harris won that contest, becoming the second Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. Alsobrooks told the Post the relationship continued as the two went over every phase of her first campaign for county executive in a Capitol Hill restaurant.
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Representation in the government she leads
While the 2021 article involving Harris highlighted the inclusion of Black women in Alsobrooks’ cabinet (22 of 39 positions were held by Black women), an article the next year by the same publication pointed out that Latinos filled no roles in the 39-person cabinet.
A little over 20% of the county is Latino, according to U.S. Census data.
In the Nov. 9 interview, Alsobrooks pointed to her hire of a Latino liaison upon her election as county executive, the creation in her first term of an Office of Multicultural Affairs, and an increase in the percentage of Latinos in the county government workforce during her tenure.
“It’s important that every lived experience is represented because the policies are more complete when that is the case,” said Alsobrooks, the first female executive of the majority Black jurisdiction where she grew up. “I’ve lived like the people I represent.”
The latter line may represent a subtle critique of Trone, a millionaire who lives in the wealthy D.C.-suburb of Potomac. He overcame similar critiques during his campaign for Congress last year to win reelection.
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‘That’s what I’ve worked on as county executive’
A through line of Alsobrooks' career in elected office has been a spectrum of criminal justice issues. As state’s attorney, the county saw a 50% reduction in violent crime over a seven-year stretch that coincided with much of her tenure in that office.
As county executive, she opened a Returning Citizens Affairs Division within her administration — unique among the state’s county governments — to help facilitate the re-entry of scores of formerly incarcerated individuals back into the community. In the interview, she also cited a medical center that opened this year in the county after her administration gleaned that people with addictions and mental illness were being incarcerated in large numbers.
More: Investigation: Where do inmates in Maryland prisons go as they finish their time?
Listing off the issues she’s heard from Marylanders during the campaign in the interview, Alsobrooks did not specifically cite criminal justice. She did indicate hearing about “economic opportunity,” “education,” “housing affordability,” and “health care access.” She wants to take work on similar topics to the Senate.
In response to an email inquiry asking what Senate committees she would be interested in serving on, if elected, a campaign spokesperson said Alsobrooks is interested in the Senate’s Finance Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
“In Prince George’s, that’s what I’ve worked on as county executive,” said Alsobrooks, during the interview, referencing four of the topics she has heard about from Marylanders while campaigning.
Less than half of current U.S. senators served in the U.S. House
But the big question posited by her political rivals — past and present — is whether that experience is sufficient for a position in the U.S. Senate. Maryland’s last senator who did not serve in the U.S. House Representatives, Democrat Joseph Tydings, completed his term in 1971.
Across the country, most current U.S. senators (66) had some elected legislative experience prior to serving in the Senate. Less than half (44) of current U.S. senators, though, served in the House of Representatives. Alsobrooks checks neither of those boxes.
Despite the lack of legislative experience, the man she described as a “mentor,” law professor Larry Gibson of the University of Maryland School of Law, called her “fully qualified without holding that specific position.”
“She knows how to deal with legislation even though she has not been a legislator,” said Gibson, citing her interactions with the state legislature as county executive.
Gibson, Maryland chairman of the Clinton-Gore presidential team in 1992, met Alsobrooks in the context of her work on that campaign in Prince George’s County. The young Duke University alumna then graduated from the law school where Gibson teaches.
He noted a “steadiness” that she’s exhibited through the years.
“None of this is going to her head,” said Gibson, a professor turned friend of former Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, D-7th, and campaign manager for the former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke. “When she’s at an event sort of dancing with the people there, she’s not faking. She just feels like dancing, and she’ll dance.
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‘The call of the day is to bring people together’
On the day of the interview, Alsobrooks may have had cause to dance.
The night before, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and an array of the state’s federal elected officials, announced that the state had been selected as the new site for the FBI headquarters.
She had endorsed Moore early in the previous year’s primary when her predecessor, Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker III, still remained a candidate. And this year, two-and-a-half weeks after Moore returned the favor with an endorsement of her, the pair prepared for a news conference in Prince George’s County’s Greenbelt to celebrate the location’s selection as the future FBI home.
“I want to do that kind of work for the whole state,” said Alsobrooks, emphasizing her part in helping to bring the FBI building, what she called “true economic opportunity,” to the county she’s called home, during the Nov. 9 interview.
The question of how the federal law enforcement agency with the estimated 7,500 new jobs will integrate into the community is yet to be settled. Whether in her current job or the job for which she is campaigning, Alsobrooks will play a role in that process.
Looking nationally from the county from whence she came, the executive aiming for the U.S. Senate, who would become the state’s first Black senator, if elected, said: “The call of the day is to bring people together.”
“To always keep at the center,” she said, “what the people need.”
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: PG County Executive Angela Alsobrooks aims for U.S. Senate seat
