Ex-Gov. Larry Hogan's GOP campaign has changed Tuesday's Democratic Senate primary between Angela Alsobrooks and David Trone in Maryland.
www.nbcnews.com
Democratic Rep. David Trone has spent more than $60 million of his own personal fortune on the primary as he takes on Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who is vying to become the state's first Black senator and one of the few Black women to ever serve in the upper chamber.
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Alsobrooks, a Prince George's County native, leads Maryland's second-largest county, previously having served as its domestic violence prosecutor and later its first Black woman state's attorney.
"I feel every person should be able to look in the Senate and see themselves," Alsobrooks told NBC News. "I'm not in this race because I'm Black and a woman, but I am proud to be a Black woman. But I am also proud that I have the kind of experience that will help bring home the results for Maryland."
Trone has attempted to appeal to the state's Black voters, who are an important voting bloc in the Democratic primary.
But Trone has also stumbled on the subject of race, grabbing headlines earlier this year for using a racial slur during a congressional hearing, which he said was an inadvertent slip when addressing Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, who is Black.
"While attempting to use the word 'bugaboo' in a hearing, I used a phrase that is offensive," he said at the time. "That word has a long, dark, terrible history. It should never be used any time, anywhere, in any conversation. I recognize that as a white man, I have privilege."
Asked about his campaign's outreach to Black voters, Trone told NBC News that he supports diversity and has financially supported "diverse candidates," and he referenced his childhood on a 200-acre chicken and hog farm in Pennsylvania along the Maryland border, which his family lost to bankruptcy after his parents divorced, noting that he didn't come from wealth and saying he could relate to voters.
"But at the end of the day, what we hear from so many diverse voters is we need someone who actually speaks for us, somebody who has our values," Trone said. "I went to public school, [Alsobrooks] went to private school."
"Someone who lived the life they did," Trone continued. "I didn't even have indoor plumbing. We had an outhouse. And I grew up in a family that was destroyed by alcoholism, destroyed. So we grew up in a tough circumstance, and things weren't easy. But at the end of the day, we became successful and said, OK now I got to give back."
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