SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
maryland
'Billionaire Bully' for Big Business Defeated in Record-Setting Maryland Primary Race
Prince George's County executive Angela Alsobrooks wins Democratic nomination for open U.S. Senate seat over retail wine magnate David Trone, who self-funded his campaign with over $60 million.
May 15, 2024
Despite spending over $61 million of his own money in the Democratic Primary, wealthy business owner and state Rep. David Trone came up short in Maryland's Democratic primary race for an open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, bested by Angela Alsobrooks, executive of Prince George's County.
Due to the self-funding of Trone, co-owner of the Total Wine & More retail chain, the primary became the most expensive in state history. Despite polls showing Trone as the clear favorite leading up to Tuesday's vote, Alsobrooks won by a full 12 points. According to the Baltimore Sun, with 100% of precincts reporting, the final tally was 54% to 41.9%.
"For anyone who has ever felt counted out, overlooked, and underestimated, I hope you know that the impossible is still possible," Alsobrooks, who had the support of most major players in the Maryland Democratic Party apparatus, told supporters during a victory speech on Tuesday night.
She vowed to defeat the Republican nominee for the seat, former two-term governor Larry Hogan, and said the Democratic Party was "united in our focus to keep the Senate blue."
Political observers took note of the unexpected margin of victory as well as the dynamic of Trone's outsized spending.
"So…. Not a single poll had Alsobrooks winning by anywhere close to double digits, elections absolutely can break late, and campaigns matter," said Colin Seeberger, senior communications director for the Center for American Progress. "Feels like there are some lessons to be learned here for, I don't know, future elections."
Fight Corporate Monopolies, a progressive advocacy group opposed to concentrations of corporate power, opposed Trone based on his fealty to monopoly interests during the primary and called him "just another billionaire bully who thinks he can buy himself a Senate seat."
The group ran one ad comparing Trone to former president Donald Trump and documenting his attacks on rival small businesses and workers:
“I will f*#%ing end you. I will execute you!” - David Trone to a delivery worker.
That’s a billionaire bully for you. pic.twitter.com/cjyuJ3GAVq
— Fight Corporate Monopolies (@fightmonopolies) May 13, 2024
Following Tuesday's defeat, Faiz Shakir with Fight Corporate Monopolies, said: "I believe [our] ad against Trone—both in timing and in message—played a key role in changing the trajectory of the Senate race."
John Nichols, veteran political reporter for The Nation, said: "Maryland Democratic voters rejected mega-rich corporate monopolist David Trone in their Senate primary and instead chose highly qualified Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks to take on Republican Larry Hogan. Good move."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Baltimore Drive-By: The Bridge, the City, and Infrastructural Racism
As we remember those who lost their lives in the bridge disaster, let's not forget the people who are killed by structural violence every day in Baltimore.
Mar 31, 2024
Baltimore's mayor was the target of racist social media attacks after he spoke to reporters about the collapse of the Key Bridge. That's disgusting, but it's hardly surprising. Racism is carved into the city's very infrastructure. It has reshaped its neighborhoods, highways, and mass transit.
The destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was tragic. But the bridge's primary purpose wasn't to serve Baltimore; it was to get around it. It certainly wasn't built for Baltimore's low-income residents, many of whom don't even have cars. What good is a bridge to people who don't own an automobile?
The numbers are startling on that score. Nationally, only 8.3 percent of American households don't have a car. But in Baltimore's Sandtown neighborhood, that figure is 58.4 percent. It's 48.9 percent in Southwest Baltimore and 47.9 percent in Upton/Druid Heights.
These neighborhoods are under siege. In Upton/Druid Heights, for example, 58 percent of children live in poverty. That's nearly six times higher than the overall state of Maryland.
People are dying in Baltimore — not from the drive-by shootings you see in the news from time to time, which have a relatively low body count. The large-scale dying comes from the city's structural drive-by, reflected in the bridges, tunnels, and highways that let interstate travelers bypass Baltimore as if it wasn't even there.
That's not to say infrastructure isn't a good investment. The structural drive-by is seen in the investments that don't happen.
Although the Key Bridge carried local traffic, its essential function was to move passengers and cargo along the interstate highway system. But another infrastructure project, which never got the green light, would have helped Baltimore's lower-income neighborhoods more.
The Red Line, a proposed addition to the city's rail system, would have linked lower-income, majority Black neighborhoods to jobs in other parts of the city –– in Camden Yards, the Inner Harbor, and the universities, medical centers, and corporations on the east side of town. But the Red Line was never built. After a string of delays, Republican Governor Larry Hogan — now, puzzlingly, the leading candidate for senator in this predominantly Democratic state — killed the project for good.
Journalist Alon Levy put it succinctly in his article on the decision, headlined "How You Can Tell Larry Hogan's Decision to Kill the Red Line Was Racially Discriminatory." Here's how: Hogan killed Baltimore's Red Line but promoted the Purple Line in richer, whiter Montgomery County. That led to a Title VI civil rights lawsuit and a federal investigation at the close of the Obama administration. But the investigation was killed after Trump took office, and the lawsuit lost momentum.
Transportation infrastructure has a long segregationist history, in Baltimore and across the country. The mid-twentieth century highway construction boom fueled white flight from urban centers. But white flight began even earlier in Baltimore, as journalist Alec MacGillis explains, with the construction of a pioneering streetcar system in the early twentieth century. That gave rise to white "streetcar suburbs" like Catonsville and Oakenshawe.
White flight made it easier to systematically neglect a city's remaining, Black neighborhoods. So did the real-estate practice of "blockbusting," which lowered the value of working-class white homes by preying on racist fears over integration. As University of Maryland Prof. W. Edward Orser documents, "blockbusting" in Baltimore allowed real estate companies to buy White homes at a loss and then sell them to Black families at inflated prices. Working-class Whites were robbed of an asset, Black families were robbed through overcharging, and segregation got worse.
Not that housing discrimination was anything new in Baltimore. It pioneered residential segregation in 1910, when the City Council passed a law designating city blocks as White or Black. (It was later struck down by the Supreme Court.)
People forget that Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon line and slavery was legal there until 1864. Advertisements for the "sale" of enslaved people were once common in the Baltimore Sun.
Today, as in the past, structural violence kills. Life expectancy in Upton/Druid Heights is 62.9 years, but it's 83.1 years in Roland Park, the city's richest neighborhood – where most households have more than one car. That's a twenty-year gap in life expectancy.
The Maryland Transportation Authority (MTA), which operated the Key Bridge, often neglects the needs of lower-income people. An electronic EZ-Pass is required to pay tolls, for example, and they are difficult to obtain without a bank account. (The Federal Reserve reports that 13 percent of Black households are unbanked.)
The MTA's floundering "traffic relief plan," crafted under Hogan, would have increased traffic in parts of the DC area and raised tolls for many drivers through a "public-private investment" that would have siphoned off highway revenue for private profit and imposed "dynamic pricing" –surge pricing that could change as often as every five minutes, driving tolls out of the reach of many area residents. It would also have given a private company control over more than 100 miles of the DC area's high-speed lanes.
Fortunately, Hogan's privatization scheme floundered after pushback from local officials and his Democratic successor. So has his other "public-private partnership," the Purple Line. But the intent was clear — and it was not to serve the Black, Brown, and White lower-income people of Maryland.
Transportation was even used against high school students during the 2015 protests over the police killing of Freddie Gray. As MacGillis writes,
"Just after Freddie Gray's memorial service had concluded, and headed for Mondawmin Mall, the transit hub for some 5,000 of them, they found several hundred police waiting ... They also found that the bus lines through the hub were suspended, as was service at the Mondawmin subway station ..."
"It was almost as if authorities were trying to engineer the confrontation that ensued between the growing mass of stranded youths and the outnumbered cops," MacGillis adds.
But these are merely the latest battles in a war that has lasted for four hundred years. The Susquehannock people were hunting in what is now Baltimore when Europeans declared the Province of Maryland in 1634. They soon became refugees in their own native land. The scattered bands that survived eventually merged into other tribes – which were also driven from the region.
Call it the first drive-by.
As we remember those who lost their lives in the bridge disaster, let's not forget the people who are killed by structural violence every day in Baltimore.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Lawmakers: Defend SNAP, Don’t Restrict it
Our government is morally obligated to protect the most vulnerable among us and prioritize access to essential resources like food assistance.
Mar 13, 2024
Raising my three grandchildren as a multigenerational caregiver, I expect the unexpected. Each day brings its own challenges, but nothing prepared me for the rollercoaster of navigating repeated attacks on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
As a custodial grandmother in Washington, D.C., I rely on programs like SNAP to ensure my family not only survives but thrives. Yet, the constant threat of proposed cuts to essential food assistance services casts a shadow of fear and instability over our lives.
After months of stopgap funding, federal lawmakers finally reached a deal to prevent a government shutdown and ensure funding until September 30, 2024. However, this agreement offers no assurance that those who need SNAP the most won’t face eligibility and access hurdles. While the federal government determines SNAP funding, it's the states that control eligibility and oversee distribution to recipients. Now, in Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia, far-right Republicans are gunning to undermine their states’ ability to assist those who need it most: children and older adults.
I refuse to accept a future where politicians leave my grandchildren hungry because they lack the backbone to stand up for their constituents in their home districts and their neighbors—like me—in The District.
Although SNAP in D.C. remains unscathed, our Maryland neighbors may not be as fortunate. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) has proposed legislation restricting which foods can be purchased with SNAP benefits in Maryland. Attacks like Harris’ disproportionately impact Maryland families who contribute to the DMV’s economy, culture, and community, constraining their choices simply because they reside in Maryland just a few miles north or east of my D.C. address.
Imagine the dire effects eligibility restrictions would pose if introduced in D.C., where 1 in 5 residents rely on SNAP to have food on the table. Without this vital assistance, I face difficult choices between purchasing essential medications that Medicaid won’t cover for my three grandchildren with disabilities and providing nourishment for our family. SNAP is pivotal in providing important nutrition for D.C. families, including mine. For us, SNAP is not merely a government program; it is a lifeline that ensures our basic necessities are met, allowing us to focus on providing love and care for our children. SNAP saves lives. Between 2014 and 2018, 9,000 children, on average, were lifted above the poverty line annually. I hope our lawmakers are acutely aware of the ethical implications of prioritizing politics over the well-being of vulnerable families.
To slash benefits for the 145,800 Washington, D.C. residents relying on SNAP, when the cost of living here is 53% higher than the national average and growing, is downright cruel. Despite being the U.S. capital’s workforce, we are victims of taxation without representation. We keep the city running day in and day out, yet without state power, politicians are content ignoring our struggles and treating us as if we’re invisible.
Organizations like SPACEs in Action and Community Change Action fight every day so voices like mine are heard. However, grassroots efforts alone cannot save the systematic support provided by federal programs like SNAP. It is incumbent upon lawmakers to prioritize the needs of D.C. families whenever there are budget negotiations and prevent further harm to vulnerable communities.
Our government is morally obligated to protect the most vulnerable among us and prioritize access to essential resources like food assistance. I refuse to accept a future where politicians leave my grandchildren hungry because they lack the backbone to stand up for their constituents in their home districts and their neighbors—like me—in The District. Pass the budget and stop the shutdown. Our families, communities, and nation’s livelihood depend on it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular