Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin announced at the beginning of the month that he will not seek reelection after his current term in the U.S. Senate ends, leaving his seat representing Maryland up for grabs in 2024.
Since Cardin announced his retirement, a slew of politicians and activists from around Maryland have stated that they will enter the race to represent the state at the federal level.
Here's our list of the top candidates running for Senate in Maryland in 2024. You can find the full list of candidates at the Maryland Board of Elections website here.
Larry Hogan
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Hours before the filing deadline on Feb. 9, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced he was running for U.S. Senate.
"I am running for the United States Senate – not to serve one party – but to stand up to both parties, fight for Maryland, and fix our nation's broken politics," Hogan said in a statement posted to social media announcing his run. "It’s what I did as Maryland’s governor, and it’s exactly how I'll serve Maryland in the Senate. Let’s get back to work."
Hogan won his first term as governor in 2014 in an upset, using public campaign financing against a better-funded candidate, the Associated Press reports. Running on fiscal concerns as a moderate Republican businessman, Hogan tapped into frustration from a variety of tax and fee increases over the eight previous years to defeat then-Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.
Hogan had never held elected office before and in his first year as governor, he focused on pocketbook issues such as lowering tolls. But he was also presented with challenges, including unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015. Hogan sent the National Guard to prevent further rioting.
In June of 2015, he was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma but continued working while receiving treatment. He has been in remission since November of that year.
In 2018, he became only the second Republican governor in the history of the state to win reelection, defeating former NAACP President Ben Jealous.
Hogan is also well-known for his distates for former President Donald Trump, in contrast to many Republican governors in office during Trump's time in office and after. He denounced the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 as “one of the darkest days in American history,” and said Trump should have resigned or been removed from office, the AP reported.
“The people that try to whitewash Jan. 6 as if nothing happened are delusional. It was an assault on democracy,” Hogan told the AP.
Despite his strong criticism of Trump, Hogan announced last March that he would not be running against the former President for the GOP's White House nomination.
Angela Alsobrooks
Angela Alsobrooks, the chief executive of Maryland's Prince George's County and a Black Democrat, announced her candidacy on May 9.
When Alsobrooks won the 2018 election for the chief executive position, she became the first woman to hold that office, according to the AP.
She previously served two terms as the state's attorney for Prince George's County, where she grew up. She was the youngest and first woman to hold the position, and the first Black woman to hold any county executive office in Maryland.
While in office, she has focused on creating jobs, investing in education and expanding access to health care, mental health and addiction treatment, the AP reports.
“There aren’t enough people in the US Senate who live like, think like and look like the people they’re supposed to represent,” Alsobrooks wrote on Twitter when she announced her run for Senate. “My Great-Grandma told me, ‘if you don’t like something, go farther and do better.’ I’m proud to say I’m running for the Senate. Let’s go farther together.”
None of the members of Maryland's current congressional delegation are women, and no current U.S. Senators are Black women.
Back in June, Alsobrooks spoke with News4's Tracee Wilkins about her decision to run.
"What is important to me is not [the firsts]," she said. "It is that I believe I am best qualified, and proud to go before the voters and say 'I am best qualified based on my experience.'"
Alsobrooks quickly became one of the top contenders to fill Cardin's seat.
You can find Angela Alsobrooks' campaign website here.
David Trone
Maryland Rep. David Trone, the wealthy founder of Total Wine & More liquor stores who spent more than $12 million of his own money on his House race last year, announced his bid for Senate on May 4.
Trone won a third term to Maryland's 6th Congressional District in November in a rematch with Republican Neil Parrott, whom he also beat in 2018. The western Maryland district was redrawn with fewer Democrats after a successful court challenge by the GOP to the state's congressional map.
In the House, Trone has focused on issues including opioid addiction, mental health, medical research and criminal justice reform, according to the AP.
The congressman said he would continue advocating for those issues in the Senate, and added that using his own fortune to pay for the Senate race means he doesn't take money from political action committees, corporations or lobbyists.
“And the whole key in that is you make your own decisions,” Trone said. “You can do what's right for the people of Maryland and not be influenced by anybody.”
You can find David Trone's campaign website here.
Will Jawando
In October, Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando announced that he was bowing out of the race.
Jawando first announced his candidacy for Cardin's senate seat on May 2 -- just one day after Cardin announce he would not be running again.
"I've been working for the past five years representing over 1.1 million Marylanders -- of the 6 million in the state -- fighting to make sure rents are stabilized during the pandemic, passing the first-ever criminal justice reform in the county's history, which was used as a model at the state level," Jawando said in an interview with News4's Sean Yancy.
"And I think what we need in the Senate right now is someone who has a bold vision and a track record of success. I think I have that track record."
In a statement issued in October, according to Maryland Matters, Jawando said the decision to drop out of the election came after "after a lot of thought and prayer and late nights with my wife Michele .... Not because we believe any less in the cause that started it. But after thinking long and hard about this race in particular, I frankly no longer see a path for myself to victory."
