Outsiders boost spending in Maryland’s U.S. senate race to record levels

Larry Hogan's underdog U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland was in a bind.

Short on cash and with little time left in the race, he couldn't afford pricey television ads, despite national Republicans telling him if he could get his message out, he could narrow the gap against a well-financed Democrat.

But this wasn't the Larry Hogan of 2024, a former two-term Republican governor with statewide name recognition and a record of robust fundraising. It was his father — Lawrence J. Hogan Sr., a Republican who, 42 years ago, was looking to make the jump from Prince George's County executive to U.S. senator against the incumbent Democrat Paul Sarbanes.

"I hate to say it," Hogan Sr. told The Baltimore Sun about two weeks before his loss, "but if you aren't on television you disappear."

Marylanders paying attention to this fall's matchup between the junior Hogan and the current Prince George's County executive, Democrat Angela Alsobrooks, are finding no shortage of the candidates in television and websites, billboards and yard signs, newspapers and events.

Hogan and Alsobrooks combined to directly spend nearly $20 million from July through September, with their allies spending millions more to benefit them and hefty war chests still flush with cash, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission this week .

The collective fundraising and spending — and resulting bombardment of ads on voters — is a record in Maryland. And it represents a sharp spike in a state that hasn't had a competitive general election for Senate in decades, according to a Baltimore Sun review of 44 years of campaign finance data.

Alsobrooks and Hogan , for instance, have collectively raised and spent more in their campaigns — $36.2 million and $31.3 million, respectively — than the U.S. senator they're looking to succeed, Democrat Ben Cardin, and all of his Republican opponents combined since he first ran for that position in 2006.

Alsobrooks spent almost as much in the most recent three-month period, nearly $14 million, as Cardin spent in all three of his Senate campaigns combined, about $19.3 million over a period of more than 13 years, according to The Sun's review.

The numbers are even larger when considering beyond each candidate's main political action committees. Other PACs their campaigns run, used to pull in additional donations and split the proceeds with various candidates and efforts in their parties, have pulled in floods of donations from across the country.

Among individuals whose identities were disclosed in public reports, about 47% of donations for Alsobrooks and 62% of donations for Hogan were from outside Maryland, according to The Sun's review of several of their fundraising committees.

Those don't include outside groups spending on their behalf , such as Maryland's Future , which has raised more than $27 million from wealthy Republican donors to support Hogan.

"Both sides are pulling out all the stops," said Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a Washington, D.C.,-based group that advocates for transparency around campaign finance.

Beckel and other observers say the reason for the influx is clear: Hogan's record as a popular former governor and rare Republican critic of former President Donald Trump has made the race highly competitive. The latest statewide polling showed Alsobrooks leading Hogan but not by an insurmountable margin.

"Republicans really see this as a pickup opportunity and are pouring money into the race to boost a candidate who is well known and has a higher favorability rating than candidates in a lot of other states," Beckel said. "And on the flip side, Democrats are really defending a seat that traditionally they have been able to hold."

Matt Foster, a political science professor at American University paying close attention to the race, put it this way: Hogan "is a unicorn, absolutely."

"He is literally the one candidate, the one Republican in this world where he could take the stance he's taking, the stance with Trump, and people on the Republican side are backing him," Foster said. "He is the one hope that they have in Maryland."

Hogan has raised and spent more than any Republican candidate for Senate in Maryland, the ranks of which include conservative political commentator Dan Bongino against Cardin in 2012, and Del. Kathy Szeliga against Democrat Chris Van Hollen in 2016.

The only Republican who was able to get close to Hogan's fundraising success, at least according to their primary PACs, was then-Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in 2006. Steele raised $8.4 million and spent $8.2 million on his way to losing to Cardin by 10 percentage points, the narrowest such win for a Maryland Democrat in recent history. When Hogan Sr. ran in 1982, he raised and spent about $590,000 before his 27-percentage-point loss. The last Republican to actually win a seat was right before that, with U.S. Sen. Charles Mathias Jr. winning reelection in 1980.

The difference this year is both Hogan's track record and the national implications of his election or loss, observers say. Though Democrats are on track to lose the narrowly divided 51-49 Senate majority because of results in other states, a Hogan win would almost guarantee Republican control — a fact that has shown to resonate with Maryland's heavily Democratic electorate and that Alsobrooks and her allies have repeatedly stressed.

"You can't talk about this race without the national perspective," Foster said. "The stakes of it, nationally, matter so much."

Those stakes are clear from the out-of-state contributions listed in the candidates' fundraising reports.

Though Hogan's campaign said this week the majority of the donations to its main PAC, Hogan for Maryland, were from inside the state, that's not the case when factoring in two others — Better Path Forward, a PAC Hogan started to help federal candidates when he was governor; and Hogan Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee working with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Maryland Republican State Central Committee.

Not all of the contributions to those PACs ultimately go to Hogan; some are transferred to other organizations. But, after $8.3 million in donations to them from Maryland, the most amount of money coming from individuals identified and living in other states were from Florida ($2.8 million), New York ($1.5 million), Virginia ($1.2 million) and Texas ($1.2 million).

Hogan has occasionally traveled out of state for fundraisers with other prominent Republicans, including a June trip to Atlanta for a reception with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. His campaign expenses listed $37,544 in flight costs, according to The Sun's review.

Alsobrooks' main PAC, Alsobrooks for Senate, and a joint fundraising committee called Alsobrooks Victory Fund have pulled in $13.2 million from Maryland; $2.6 million from Washington, D.C.; $2 million from California and about $1.4 million from New York, according to The Sun's review of her donors.

Inside Maryland, large chunks of each candidates' donations have come from wealthier enclaves such as Bethesda — $1.8 million for Alsobrooks and $679,000 for Hogan — Chevy Chase, Potomac and Annapolis.

The Democrat's donations show $169,000 from 551 contributions from Maryland donors on Sept. 15, the same day she held a fundraiser with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Bethesda (all or many of the donations on that day are likely not exclusively from the fundraiser).

Some of the most impactful donations, however, aren't going to the candidates directly.

Seeded with $10 million earlier this year from hedge fund leader Kenneth Griffin, the pro-Hogan Maryland's Future super PAC had raised more than $27 million and kicked off an aggressive ad campaign attacking Alsobrooks by the end of September.

Democratic independently backing Alsobrooks include EMILYs List, a group aimed at electing women favoring abortion rights, and Unity First PAC, a new venture associated with Democratic Gov. Wes Moore . Launched this summer with fundraising help from Moore, Unity First waded into the race last month with a $100,000 ad buy opposing Hogan, according to its latest filings.

Beckel said outside spending is, as it has often since a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision about money in politics, playing an outsize role in battlegrounds with national importance.

For example, another super PAC initially funded by Griffin that's focused on the competitive U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania has ballooned far beyond Maryland's version, to more than $48 million in donations and spending through September, according to its campaign finance report.

Outside spending across the country is likely to exceed $5 billion by Election Day, a new record for a campaign cycle, according to the transparency website OpenSecrets .

That should be a concern for voters, Beckel said. In some cases, outside spending eclipses candidates' own ability to reach voters, letting other interests drive the conversation and exert a level of influence if their candidate is elected, he said.

"These donors all have policy agendas that they hope the candidates will follow through on in Washington," Beckel said. "That is 100% part of the reason the money is just so astronomical this year."