Democrat Angela Alsobrooks wins a US Senate seat in Maryland

Angela Alsobrooks defeated Republican candidate Larry Hogan, who had been a popular governor.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Angela Alsobrooks won a U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday to become the first Black candidate to be elected senator in Maryland, as the Democrat prevailed in a blue state against popular Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan.

The race has been widely watched with control of the Senate potentially at stake.

Alsobrooks campaigned heavily on abortion rights in a year that Maryland voters approved a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. She said she heard on the campaign trail how much abortion rights matter to voters.

“I hear it not just from women, but I’ve heard from a number of men who say that they want the freedom for their daughters and their granddaughters and that they’re very concerned about the direction we’re heading for people to make reproductive choices,” Alsobrooks said in a September interview with The Associated Press.

In his campaign, Hogan said he would support abortion rights, but Alsobrooks argued he could not be trusted to do so. She cited his veto of legislation to expand access to abortion in Maryland while he was governor and then withheld money for abortion training after the legislature overrode his veto.

Alsobrooks deftly used television ads to emphasize that the race could determine Senate control, putting Maryland in the unusual position of a potential swing state in a year of high political stakes.

Hogan, who has been one of former President Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican critics, campaigned on providing an independent voice in Washington. But Alsobrooks challenged that constantly in her ads, which included video clips of the former governor saying he opposed abortion and praising the Supreme Court justices who enabled Roe v. Wade to be struck down in 2022.

Alsobrooks overcame criticism from Hogan after it was reported by CNN in September that she improperly claimed property tax credits for two homes, something her campaign said she was unaware of and has started to repay with interest.

While a Republican has not won a Senate race in Maryland in more than 40 years, Hogan was the most formidable candidate fielded by the GOP in the state in years. The two-term former governor had won over enough Democratic voters to win two statewide races in 2014 and 2018 in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1.

Still, Hogan had a difficult needle to thread. This election was the first time Hogan ran on the same ballot as Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Maryland. Hogan’s criticism of Trump, while helping to win some Democrats whose support he had to have to win statewide, turned off some Republican voters.

Alsobrooks also campaigned on gun control. Vice President Kamala Harris, a friend of Alsobrooks, made a campaign stop in Maryland for her, where they both spoke about the significance of taking action against gun violence.

“We should be working to remove ghost guns from our streets,” Alsobrooks told AP in September. “We should be working to make sure that we have really sensible gun legislation that gets guns out of the hands of the wrong people and further protects our children.”

Since 2018, Alsobrooks, 53, has served as the county executive of Prince George’s County, Maryland’s second most populous jurisdiction in the suburbs of the nation’s capital. Before that, she served as the county’s top prosecutor.

“We created more businesses,” she said in the AP interview about her local government experience. “I’ll be doing that for the whole state and transferring the skills that I have developed not just as executive, but as chief law enforcement officer as the prosecutor in Prince George’s County.”