When Cousin Angie becomes Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks

I was waiting in a fancy chair in a dark, exquisitely decorated room in Baltimore’s historic Clifton Mansion, taking a last-minute glance at the questions I had prepared for a VIP. I had been going back and forth with press people for months for an interview and credentialing and now it was finally happening.

I knew I probably only had 10 minutes or so to talk, a limited time I’d usually protest. I once accepted a 5-minute phone chat with Ringo Starr, which is OK because he’s a Beatle and that makes sense. And while the person about to walk into the room was a big deal, too, the difference is that Ringo doesn’t have me over for his New Year’s potluck every year.

“There she is!” said Prince George’s County Executive and Maryland’s Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate Angela Alsobrooks, also known as my cousin Angie. If she wins, she would be the fourth Black female senator, and the first Black senator from Maryland. It blows my mind that these milestones haven’t been achieved yet, but even more so that it could potentially be done by my relative.

It is not usual for me to hug interview subjects, but I’ve never before had to write about someone I’ve known all my life — who taught me how to do the Electric Slide in my little pink bedroom in Northwood, and whose daughter was one of the flower girls in my wedding.

Writing this column about Angie — sorry, County Executive Alsobrooks — is new and weird to me. I was living in Florida when she first ran for the top job in Prince George’s County (though my son, mother and I surprised her by coming to her announcement). In 2022, I declined to attend her second inauguration because I was already here at The Banner and wanted to avoid an ethical conflict.

I also avoided writing about her during the Senate primary. Once she won that, though, and the chance of becoming a U.S. senator was now a real possibility, I knew I needed to chronicle the unique experience of having to go through layers of representatives and staff to interview someone I would once text, “Girl, when we talking?”

This column is not about swaying your vote. That’s not my business. It’s about how surreal it is to watch your cousin become a national star, speaking at the Democratic National Convention and getting so many huge endorsements. I literally got a text asking for donations for her from Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill! (As a journalist, I don’t donate to her or any candidate, no matter how good hugs are.)

So when we sat down Thursday, I started by asking “How’s Angie?” — meaning how was she feeling as a human, not a candidate. “I am doing well, because I am doing the things we were raised to do,” she said. That includes prayer, exercise “and I just try to keep first things first. If I didn’t believe in what I was doing, I would have collapsed by now.”

For clarification, Angie and I are second cousins on our maternal side. Our mothers, Tina Streeter Smith and Patricia Alsobrooks, are first cousins who were raised like sisters in Prince George’s and, for a while, South Carolina. My twin sister Lynne and I are just two months younger than Angie, who, along with her older sister Kim, were the cool cousins.

“No, we were not,” the Senate candidate said last week. It sure felt that way. (My sister and I wore bifocals.) I admit Angie’s dance tutelage was less than successful, because I’m not a great dancer. And while Lynne and I adored Kim and Angie, them being in Prince George’s and we in Baltimore meant we only got to see them a few times a year for holidays and the occasional sleepover growing up.

About 20 years ago, though, the four of us pledged to be closer as adults. We’ve tried, including a weekend in Palm Beach when I lived there, and a hilarious karaoke night outside Annapolis. Angie was my sister’s hype woman during her rendition of Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like A Bird.”

We renewed that pledge when my son and I moved back to Maryland in 2020 — even in a pandemic, we kept up a weekly family Zoom. But then somebody decided to run for office. Angie was already bad at responding to messages before her Senate run, and it hasn’t gotten any better.

“I have a bad reputation with texting in our family,” she said, admitting she has 3,000 unanswered texts. “I got to get my reputation together.” That’s alright. We know you’ve been busy.

Even though the Alsobrookses and the Streeters didn’t live down the street from each other, “we were raised the same way,” she said, with an emphasis on faith, family and education. We have always showed up for each other, in good and in bad times.

She was at my 2010 wedding in Florida, and five years later, she was the first relative to call me in the terrible, hazy hours after my husband died. I was on my way to pick out his casket, and she said simply, “Cousin, this sucks.” She didn’t try to tell me Scott was with the Lord or there was some higher reason he had suddenly passed or any of that crap. She just acknowledged how terrible it was.

I try to create professional distance, but sometimes that’s hard when every five minutes there’s a commercial targeting your cousin. I’m from Baltimore. We don’t take it lightly when folks talk trash about family!

“It’s been hard, especially when it’s something that’s not true,” Angie said, noting her parents “sometimes turn off the TV” to avoid the negative ads. She’s also grateful her daughter, Alexandra, in her sophomore year in college, “isn’t here to see it.”

But alongside the difficulty also comes moments of excitement.

My son and I watched Angie debate former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan a few weeks ago, and when moderator Chuck Todd asked whether she was a Ben Cardin Democrat or a Chris Van Hollen Democrat, she confidently answered, “Neither. I’m Angela Alsobrooks.” My reaction? Screaming, “It’s handled! Gladiators!” because it seemed like we were watching her Olivia Pope moment. (For the record, she has always looked like Kerry Washington from “Scandal” to me.)

We have no idea what’s going to happen on Election Day, but I asked Angie what she’s going to do, win or lose, on Wednesday, Nov. 6. “I think a day without a schedule — I don’t even know what I might do,” she said. “Get up and drink coffee at the table?”

No matter what, though, “we’re going to see each other at the holidays, and we are going to get together more,” she promised. And I know we’re going to try. I’ll be happy if she just texts me back.