Money can buy a lot, but it can’t buy everything.
After all, Congressman David Trone put $62 million of his own money into his Maryland Senate campaign, yet it wasn’t enough to overcome Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and most of Maryland’s Democratic Political Establishment.
With about 73% of precincts in, Alsobrooks won the Democratic primary with 243,637 votes (54.0%) over Trone’s 188,891 votes (41.9%).
Alsobrooks ran strongest in her home county, Prince George’s, as well as neighboring Charles County. She also managed to carry Baltimore, its suburbs, and even Montgomery County, which contains some of Trone’s 6th Congressional District.
How well did the polls predict this race? Well, from November through April, Trone maintained a lead in all the polls of this contest. In the final weeks, however, both May surveys had Alsobrooks moving ahead; although it appears they will understate her margin.
Over in the Republican primary, former Governor Larry Hogan won the GOP nomination with 147,563 votes (61.9%) while former State Delegate Robin Flicker compiled 71,726 votes (30.1%).
Flicker’s challenge from the right portends some challenges for Hogan, who can’t afford any defections on his right if he’s going to pull off an upset in this deep blue state.
West Virginia GOP Gubernatorial Primary
The most closely watched race outside of Maryland was probably the West Virginia GOP Gubernatorial Primary. WV Attorney General and 2018 Senate nominee Patrick Morrissey is running against State Delegate Moore Capito, who had the support of his mother, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, as well as sitting Governor Jim Justice.
With 99% of precincts in, Morrissey came out on top in the crowded Republican contest with 75,374 votes (33.5%). Capito finished second with 61,920 votes (27.5%) while Congresswoman Carol Miller’s son Chris took third with 45,791 votes (20.3%)
Presidential Primaries
Now let’s move on to the Presidential primaries that took place last night in Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia.
In Maryland, Biden stands at 86.3% while 10.4% are supporting Uncommitted with about two-thirds of precincts in. Conversely, Trump currently has 80.0% to Haley’s 20.0%
Meanwhile, Nebraska gave Biden 90.0% and Dean Phillips 10.0%, whereas Trump took 80.1% compared to Haley’s 18.0%.
Finally, in West Virginia, Trump ran much stronger, taking 88.4% of the vote while Biden had to settle for 70.5%.
Haley’s support is about a point and a half behind what she pulled in Pennsylvania on April 23rd, although it’s also two points better than her March 19th performance in neighboring Kansas. If that Maryland number holds, which it likely won’t, it would be her best performance since dropping out, surpassing the 19.5% she got in Washington State.
For the Democratic primaries, I’ve been comparing Joe Biden’s performances in various states to the totals put up by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in the 1996 and 2012 primaries, when they were incumbent Presidents.
In West Virginia, Pres. Clinton won 86.53% of the primary vote in 1996, while Pres. Obama got a particularly poor 59.35% of the vote there in 2012. Those totals for Maryland were 84.2% and 88.5% respectively. As for Nebraska, Clinton won 86.9% while Obama had a noncompetitive caucus.
Breaking News on Presidential Debates
Finally, a note on this morning’s surprising news: the scheduling of two new Presidential debates.
Previously, the Commission on Presidential Debates had set three Presidential debates and one Vice Presidential debate, the traditional structure that’s been in place since the 2000 cycle.
After the RNC withdrew from the CPD in April 2022, however, it appeared increasingly unlikely that these debates would ever actually be held.
Then, this morning, the Biden campaign released a memo proposing two debates: one in late June and another in early September. Furthermore, they stipulated that these debates take place in TV studios without an audience. While the first general election debates – the famous Kennedy/Nixon debates – had no audience, every one since has taken place in front of a crowd.
Donald Trump soon responded that he would accept Biden’s challenge, although he made clear he preferred an audience “for excitement purposes”.
Nevertheless, shortly afterward, CNN announced that the candidates had agreed to a June 27th debate in their Atlanta studio. A similar announcement was made for an ABC debate on September 10th. The networks have yet to reveal all the details, although it seems clear that these debates wouldn’t include any potential third-party candidates.
At the moment, these are verbal agreements between the campaigns and it’s entirely possible that these events will fall apart as fast as they came together. Nevertheless, a June 27th debate would be far and away the earliest Presidential debate ever, and a September 10th debate the furthest final meeting from Election Day.
The rationale from the Biden campaign was that, with early voting more popular than ever, the old schedule of September and October debates no longer made sense. Additionally, the Biden statement also proposed a single Vice Presidential Debate between VP Kamala Harris and the GOP VP nominee in late July, after Donald Trump makes his selection.
While the Biden campaign is no doubt celebrating the fact that they were able to get the Trump campaign to agree to their terms (at least for the moment), it does set up a risky situation for them. Should Biden perform poorly in the first debate, as every incumbent President except Bill Clinton has done, he’d have to wait over two months for another chance.
Nevertheless, the Biden campaign clearly seems to want to accelerate the general election timeline. While they’ve improved their position over the past several weeks, they’re still narrowly trailing in our Hill/DDHQ polling averages. Perhaps motivated by surveys suggesting that voters still don’t believe there will be a Biden-Trump rematch in November, the Biden team wants to move up this highly anticipated face-off.
Conversely, Donald Trump’s campaign is convinced he’ll win any debate confrontation with Biden and is therefore happy to have the incumbent agree to this pair of contests. Of course, Trump’s confidence is puzzling, given that polls found voters judged Biden the winner of their two 2020 debates, and given the close margin in that race, those debates may’ve made all the difference.
Regardless, we now appear to be just 44 days away from 2024’s first Presidential debate.