Maryland
Fundraising in Md. Senate election reaches astonishing heights – Maryland Matters
The 2024 campaign for U.S. Senate in Maryland is breaking all kinds of financial records, according to new campaign finance reports filed on Monday.
For the past few campaign finance reporting periods. Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) has boasted of setting quarterly fundraising records for federal candidates in Maryland. She made the same assertion just last week, based on her most recent take of more than $2.1 million for the first three months of the year. That brought her overall fundraising since joining the Senate race in May to more than $7.1 million.
But Alsobrooks’ quarterly records for fundraising appear to have been surpassed by former Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who joined the Senate race on the Feb. 9 filing deadline. Hogan, who was recruited into the race by national GOP leaders, said he raised over $3.1 million between mid-February and March 31, spread out over three separate campaign entities.
“I am blown away by the strong response we have received since launching our campaign less than two months ago,” Hogan wrote in an email to supporters. “Together, we’ve shown the partisan politicians in Washington AND my high-spending opponents just how fed up we are with politics today.”
Then there’s U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-6th), who continues to spend unheard-of sums of his own money on his bid for the Democratic nomination. Trone dropped another $18.5 million of his own cash into the race between Jan. 1 and March 31, bringing his overall investment in this election cycle to over $41.7 million.
Trone, Alsobrooks and Hogan are the leading candidates in the race to replace departing U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D). Mail-in voting in the primaries has begun this week. Early voting is in early May. Primary day is May 14.
Since launching his political career with an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2016, Trone has sought to make a virtue of his ability to self-fund his races, arguing that he’s not beholden to special interest groups and big-moneyed corporations that are fueling his opponents’ campaigns.
Trone has, however, been generous with dozens of his congressional colleagues, with Democratic officeholders in Maryland, and with various party committees. His latest campaign finance report shows contributions to at least three dozen Maryland Democrats or campaign committees over the past three months.
In all, Trone reported taking in $18,717,164.84 between Jan. 1 and March 31 — $18.5 million from his own pocket. That brought his overall take for the cycle to $42,417,875.25, with $41,771,000 in self-funding. Trone spent $18,173,104.92 over the past three months, and $44,698,540.44 overall.
Trone’s campaign finance report, filed with the Federal Election Commission, does show a few noteworthy contributions from people other than himself: William C. Murphy Jr., the Baltimore civil rights lawyer and former judge, donated $450 over the past three months. Wayne Rogers, a businessman and former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, who is currently leading the push to build a Maglev train in the Northeast corridor, donated $6,600. Gary Mangum, retired CEO of Bell Nursery USA and a key member of Hogan’s financial advisory team, gave Trone $4,200 (he also donated to Hogan).
Trone’s campaign has been on TV since last May and has also flooded Democrats’ mailboxes with targeted literature. His campaign has been a bonanza for an array of political consultants, as he’s paid some of the best in the business for a variety of services.
How did Trone spend his money between Jan. 1 and March 31? Here are some examples:
- Gambit Strategies, a digital advertising firm, was paid $3,349,893.06
- LiftOff Campaigns, a communications and digital firm, was paid $173,282.77
- Siegel Strategies, a New York-based firm, was paid $230,000 for advertising production costs
- Canal Partners Media was paid $6,762,192.87 for TV advertising buys
- Hickman Analytics, a polling and strategy firm, was paid $527,441
- Schall Strategies, a general consulting firm connected to former Maryland Democratic strategist Justin Schall, was paid $65,346.04
- Liquid Soul Media, a firm that makes and places ads largely geared toward Black audiences, was paid $287,696.10
- Adrian Harpool Associates, the political consulting firm of the Baltimore-based strategist Adrian Harpool, was paid $114,250
- AMS Communications, a direct mail firm, was paid $685,600
- Adeo Advocacy, the Baltimore-based fundraising and strategy firm, was paid $30,508.78
Alsobrooks, meanwhile, reported taking in $2,122,493.69 between Jan. 1 and March 31, and spent $2,053,115.92 during the same period. Overall, the campaign has raised $7,162,819.33 and spent $3,965,393.84.
Alsobrooks’ take this quarter included a $830,000 transfer from the Alsobrooks Victory Fund, a separate fundraising entity that operates under different rules than the standard campaign committee, and appears to have just begun raising money early this year. The victory fund reported collecting $926,815.
Some noteworthy donors to Alsobrooks’ campaign committee this quarter included $1,000 from a Love Supreme Political Action Committee, which is affiliated with U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the youngest member of Congress, who endorsed Alsobrooks earlier this month; $4,000 from U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.); $5,000 from M-PAC, which is controlled by U.S. Senate Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-Wash.); $2,000 from U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.); and $4,300 from J Street PAC, the liberal pro-Israel group that pushes for a two-state solution.
Alsobrooks’ biggest payments went to Break Something, a digital, online and text messaging firm, which was paid $163,672.08; Magnus Pearson Media, a political advertising firm that was paid $72,770.19; $36,000 to Hart Research, the campaign’s polling firm; and $32,999.72 to Rice Consulting, the Maryland-based fundraising firm.
As of March 31, Alsobrooks had $3,197,425.49 in her main campaign account, while there was another $64,495.89 in her victory fund. Trone finished the reporting period with $998,909.96 on hand, but that figure is largely irrelevant, given his apparent unlimited capacity to dig into his own pockets for his campaign fund.
Late last week, the Alsobrooks campaign released a poll suggesting that she is closing the gap with Trone, whose own polls released several weeks ago showed him with a considerable lead.
The poll of 600 likely Democratic primary voters, taken April 8-10 by Hart Research, showed Trone with 43% and Alsobrooks at 40%, within the poll’s 4-point margin of error. Media polls taken last month showed Trone with 7- and 9-point leads, respectively.
GOP senators race to donate to Hogan
Hogan, who shook up the Senate race with his late entry, used three different campaign entities to build his war chest.
His campaign committee reported raising $1,905,363.73 and spending $391,173.09, finishing March with $1,514,190.64 in the bank. Hogan’s PAC, Better Path Forward, raised $225,953.86. And another entity, the Hogan Victory Fund, collected $2,149,262.
When you factor in the $220,795.41 the PAC transferred to the campaign fund and the $906,396.44 that the victory fund transferred to the campaign committee, Hogan raised $3,153,387.74 overall since joining the Senate race in February.
The PAC had $316,170.10 in the bank at the end of March. The victory fund reported $576,161.80 in its war chest.
Hogan’s campaign committee pulled in $217,500 from political action committees, and what quickly emerges from an analysis of those PAC donations is that Republican senators are eager to have the former governor join them on Capitol Hill.
Hogan’s campaign finance report showed $10,000 donations from PACs controlled by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), and Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska).
The Hogan campaign reported $5,000 contributions from the PACs of Sens. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.). Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley’s PAC gave $2,500, while North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer’s PAC donated $1,700.
The PAC controlled by John Bolton, former President Trump’s onetime national security adviser, who has since questioned Trump’s fitness for office, contributed $10,000 to Hogan’s campaign.
Hogan’s early campaign expenditures suggest the former governor is getting the old band back together. His campaign finance report showed $83,099.97 in payments for staffing expenses to Purple Surfboard LLC, a political consulting firm run by Hogan’s longtime campaign treasurer Thomas Kelso, plus a $5,790.38 reimbursement to the firm. He also paid $51,000 for ads and digital services to his longtime media firm, Strategic Partners and Media, where his former communications director Doug Mayer now works.
Hogan paid $10,000 for consulting services to Chris Cavey, who served as his appointments secretary when he was governor, and $5,000 for consulting to Chris Shank, a former state senator who held a variety of roles in the Hogan administration. The Hogan campaign also paid his real estate company $6,000 in rent.
Maryland Matters will publish a look at fundraising in the state’s U.S. House races later Tuesday, and more detailed analysis of the Senate fundraising in the days ahead.
Disclosure: The David and June Trone Family Foundation was a financial supporter of Maryland Matters in 2017 and 2018.
BALTIMORE (WBFF) — As Baltimore leaders celebrated a new law limiting city cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday, they also shared new accounts alleging federal agents have gone too far.
At a news conference the same day the mayor signed legislation restricting the city’s cooperation with ICE, City Councilman Zeke Cohen described what he said was a troubling incident outside his children’s school.
“ICE was behaving in ways that were unsafe, that caused stress, and trauma, and harm to our communities, so as a result we asked for increase school police presence,” Cohen said.
He added, “I think it’s incredibly ironic we need our own local school police to protect our kids and our families from the federal government.”
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From the floor of the council chambers last month, Councilwoman Odette Ramos described what she said was fear in the community and accused ICE of targeting people based on race.
“Let us call it what it is it’s racism and white supremacy,” Ramos said.
She added, “They wait in parking lots for anyone who is brown. They do not care if you’re a citizen or not, so I’m waiting for my turn obviously.”
Critics have questioned the stories from politicians.
Dr. Richard Vatz, a retired professor of rhetoric, called the city’s approach “utterly irresponsible leadership,” saying, “They ought to think, ‘Who am I helping, who am I hurting?’”
When FOX45 News pressed council members last month on whether they’d witnessed ICE breaking the law in Baltimore, Ramos said, “I have not personally, however, I know that we are now seeing an escalation.”
After Cohen’s account about what happened outside his children’s school, an email was sent to the council president seeking clarification, including: “Did you see the ICE activity yourself and, if so, what was taking place?”
Clarification had not yet been provided.
Sgt. Betsy Branford-Smith, with the National Police Association, said stories of fear put officers at risk too.
“These agents have now been additionally endangered. It’s already dangerous enough,” Smith said.
An online learning management system is back online after a cyberattack created chaos for local school districts and colleges in Maryland.
Canvas, an online portal used by students and teachers, and parent company Infrastructure were attacked by hacking group ShinyHunters. The group is tied to several other notable attacks, including the Live Nation hack.
In a statement to CBS News on Friday, Instructure said the company took Canvas offline after learning that hackers had “made changes to the pages that appeared when some students and teachers were logged in.”
The hackers exploited an issue linked to its Free-For-Teacher accounts, the company said.
“As a result, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily shut down our Free-For-Teacher accounts,” the company said. “This gives us the confidence to restore access to Canvas, which is now fully back online and available for use. We regret the inconvenience and concern this may have caused.”
Canvas was also removed from a dark web leak site created by the ransomware group to publish stolen data.
Several school districts in Maryland avoided using Canvas altogether on Friday, including Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Harford County Public Schools, and Howard County Public School System. Baltimore City Public Schools uses the site, but said it had minimal impacts and does not believe the district’s data was stolen.
Baltimore County Public Schools does not use Canvas, and it was not impacted.
Local colleges and universities halted to a standstill in the middle of finals because of the breach. The University of Maryland urged faculty and students not to access the site on Friday morning. By midday, Canvas was fully restored.
Student reaction
Students at Johns Hopkins University say the website was down for about four hours Thursday night. This breach occurred during the middle of finals at the university, and students say that without the site, they didn’t have access to study materials.
“I don’t think I can manage without Canvas,” Aseel Adam, a first-year student at Hopkins, said. “I had a final today, so I was like, ‘Oh no’. I had to email my teacher about the slides final practice. It was bad.”
Students called it a major inconvenience and said they had a late-night studying after Canvas came back online.
“5 pm hits, Canvas is shut down,” Alveena Nasir, a first-year student at Hopkins, said. “I am screwed. I have a final tomorrow. I have no access to any my files. I have no downloads…For that to shut down, I feel like the whole school shuts down.”
Canvas is used by students to review materials, submit assignments, and view their grades. Teachers are also able to communicate with students on the platform.
Students say they also don’t know what data may have been leaked and if it’s their personal information.
“They can get a lot of my information, fake it for someone else, or some bad, heinous crime. It did kind of worry me,” Adam explained.
Preventing future attacks
The Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute has been testing websites and platforms like Canvas, trying to find vulnerabilities to help prevent these types of attacks. Now, AI is making it easier than ever to take down this kind of system.
“In the old days, usually [it would] take an expert maybe a month to really come up with those complicated attacks. Recently, with the help of AI, [it takes] sometimes maybe one or two days, they can really come up with those complicated attacks,” Yinzhi Cao, technical director of the institute and associate professor of computer science, tells WJZ.
Cao says everyone needs to be more cyber-aware. To protect yourself, don’t give out deeply personal information to online platforms, use two-factor authentication, and even watch out for phishing emails.
Now, students are questioning the school’s reliance on Canvas and how they can be more prepared if there’s an attack in the future.
“The idea that we depend so much on Canvas for a lot of things is also an issue. I think there should be a balance,” Adam said.
“For having a website so fundamental to our education and not being able to protect it, I think there should be some considerations on improving it,” Nasir concluded.
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As paleontologist Stephen Godfrey walked into the Calvert Marine Museum one morning in April, staff members congratulated him. In a way, he brought an extinct species back to life.
Two days earlier, in the final hours of Maryland’s legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill that made megalodon — the largest shark that ever lived — the state shark.
Godfrey, the marine museum’s curator of paleontology, helped come up with the idea and testified at the State House in support of it. Now, Maryland is the first to have a state shark, he said.
“As long as people have been here in Maryland, they have been noticing and collecting megalodon teeth,” he said.
Fossils of the prehistoric shark can be found throughout the Chesapeake Bay region.
“It was a prime place for early paleontologists in American history to come to collect fossils, to document the succession of life,” said Godfrey, who grew up in Quebec, Canada. He has been interested in natural history since he was young and turned his childhood bedroom into a museum.
“Hey, why don’t we try to make it the state shark?” Godfrey recalled asking.
Students join in effort to honor the mighty megalodon
He checked whether any other state had beat them to the idea. He found that North Carolina designated the megalodon tooth as its state fossil — but not its state shark.
“It was like, ‘Wow, this is like a golden opportunity,’ ” he said. “I’m surprised that nobody has thought of this.”
So he reached out to Marianne Harms, a former member of the marine museum’s board who had helped get it recognized as the state’s paleontology center. She connected him with Sen. Jack Bailey, R-Calvert and St. Mary’s.
“We just started working on it last summer when I took Stephen in to meet Sen. Bailey, and it is a difficult process to have something named as a state entity,” Harms said.
Bailey introduced the bill in the Senate, and Del. Todd Morgan, R-Calvert and St. Mary’s, introduced it in the House.
Godfrey testified in support of the bill twice, bringing along his daughter, Zoey, who is in third grade.
Calvert County officials and members of the public also wrote letters of support. Representatives of the Natural History Society of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation sent in written testimony favoring the bill.
Fourth-grade teacher Anna Shay also shared letters and pictures from her students.
“The megalodon shark is strong and brave so people will think we are also strong and brave,” one student wrote.
Megalodon encounters resistence in Maryland legislature
It faced some pushback from AMndy Ellis, a Green Party candidate for governor, who wanted to designate megalodon as the state historic shark to leave room for a living one to have that designation.
At one point, the bill stalled in the General Assembly. But on the last day of the session, it was tacked on as an amendment to a bill recognizing a state natural sciences museum and Oct. 1 as a day to honor victims and survivors of domestic violence. It passed through both chambers and is on its way to the governor’s desk.
“I can’t believe this actually happened,” said Godfrey, adding that he thought the bill had died.
“To me, it’s like, just one of the super fun things that I’ve been a part of.”
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