'Are we on fire?': Behind Kamala Harris’ down-ballot impact
The heat was suffocating when 70 Democratic politicians and activists gathered on a Frederick parking lot the other day for a rally organized by a national Democratic youth group. But the Democrats saw a hopeful metaphor.
“Are we on fire?” April McLain Delaney, the Democratic nominee in the 6th Congressional District, asked the crowd.
Even with the withering early afternoon sun, the energy was palpable — and most of the Democrats there attributed it to the recent change at the top of the ticket, with Vice President Kamala Harris poised to replace President Biden as the party’s White House nominee. Several people said they expect that momentum to accrue to Delaney in the open-seat 6th District race, and especially to Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) in her battle against former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
“We have to make sure that the energy we all felt after President Biden, with all his accomplishments, stepped down and turned things over to Vice President Harris, that that energy trickles down to these two amazing women,” said Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater (D).
After fretting for the previous month that the presidential election was slipping away, Democrats from coast to coast have sensed a shift, and a surge in enthusiasm, in the race in the two weeks since Biden announced he wouldn’t seek reelection and Harris quickly became the heir apparent. And most Democratic strategists believe at least some of that same boost is materializing in down-ballot races across the country.
But how is that phenomenon materializing in Maryland’s two most competitive general elections — the Senate race and the 6th District race between Delaney and former Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Washington)? Is it real and is it, for Democrats, sustainable?
Opinions differ.
“Every election is driven to some extent by what’s happening at the top,” said Patrick Gonzales, an Annapolis-based independent pollster and political consultant. But Gonzales said the developments at the top of the ticket play in different ways in the two big Maryland races.
The basic contours and narratives of these two competitive races haven’t changed all that much in the past few weeks. And yet, the Alsobrooks camp clearly believes that their candidate, a Black woman and former prosecutor, benefits from the presence of Harris, a Black woman and former prosecutor — who, incidentally, is a friend and mentor to Alsobrooks — at the top of the ticket. Turnout among Black women, stalwart supporters of Democrats generally, should be supercharged with Harris as the presidential nominee against former President Donald Trump.
“I hope you all feel the euphoria that we’ve all felt for the past week,” Alsobrooks told the crowd at the Frederick rally, which was organized by the Tour to Save Democracy, a Democratic youth group that has been stumping in swing congressional districts over the past three weeks.
All along, one of the main arguments for Alsobrooks as she presses her campaign against Hogan, a popular two-term governor who is considered a moderate by modern Republican standards, is that Democrats need to maintain control of the U.S. Senate.
“The question we are asking in this election is not whether we like Larry Hogan, or whether we think he was a good governor,” Alsobrooks said. “The question we are asking in this election is who gets the 51st vote” in the Senate.
Harris’ presence in the race, Alsobrooks said after the youth rally, reinforces that message.
“Nobody understands more than Vice President Harris the importance of keeping the majority in the Senate,” she said.
Asked whether they see a change in dynamic in the Senate race since Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the Hogan campaign did not answer directly. Blake Kernen, a Hogan spokesperson, said, “In politics today, we expect candidates to prioritize their allegiance to party leaders over the interests of their constituents. Marylanders know that’s not Governor Hogan. Governor Hogan has a proven record of independent leadership, challenging hyper-partisanship, advancing Maryland’s priorities and restoring decency and common sense to our nation’s politics. That is what these chaotic times call for, and that’ll be his focus regardless of who’s at the top of the ticket.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Grand Boule at the Indiana Convention Center on July 24, 2024 in Indianapolis. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.
But Paul Ellington, a Republican strategist and former executive director of the Maryland GOP, said Alsobrooks can’t help but benefit from the Harris presence as the White House nominee.
“This will be like ’08, when the base the county executive is going to need in November is going to be super excited,” he said.
Hogan continues to highlight his political independence. Last week, he debuted a 90-second digital ad that spotlighted the career of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a political maverick, and tried to cast himself in McCain’s image. Hogan was also the rare Republican last week to blast Trump after he questioned Harris’ racial identity during an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, though he did not mention the ex-president by name.
“It’s unacceptable and abhorrent to attack Vice President Harris or anyone’s racial identity,” Hogan wrote on X. “The American people deserve better.”
During his successful campaigns for governor in 2014 and 2018, when he defeated Black Democrats, Hogan picked up significant chunks of Black voters and Democratic voters — taking about 30% of each voting bloc in 2018, when he won reelection by more than a dozen points. Several strategists and political analysts believe that he will need to come close to duplicating those numbers to have any chance against Alsobrooks — which will be difficult in a presidential election year, and with an abortion rights initiative on the statewide ballot.
Three leading nonpartisan political handicappers — The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and the University of Virginia Center for Politics — all rate the Maryland Senate race as “Likely Democrat” at the moment.
Maryland Democrats, including the Alsobrooks campaign, continue to hammer Hogan on being the choice of national Republicans, and the stakes involved in this election. Alsobrooks, following the youth rally last week, called it “an example” of the burgeoning Democratic enthusiasm as the election grows closer.
Gonzales, the pollster — who plans to be in the field with a statewide survey later this month, after the Democratic National Convention — said both Hogan and Alsobrooks are well-established political figures whose political fortunes may not automatically be linked to national trends.
“My sense is by the time the election rolls around, both Angela Alsobrooks, who is getting known to the voters of Maryland, and Gov. Larry Hogan are two candidates who are going to stand on their own,” Gonzales said. “They both possess distinct political qualities that are going to create an election where the two of them are going to rise and fall on their own.”
‘Western Maryland will show up’ for Trump, Parrott
In the 6th District, the dynamic is a little different. Running in the only swing congressional district in the state, Delaney may benefit from overall Democratic optimism and enthusiasm, but she still has to modulate and moderate her message while staying away from some of the perceived leftwing policies of Harris.
The 6th District, which takes in a piece of Montgomery County and then runs through Frederick, Washington, Allegany and Garrett counties, also has huge swaths of territory where Trump will be a huge asset to Parrott. Delaney said as much, even as she acknowledged witnessing “so much excitement [among Democrats] right now.”
“With Hogan at the top of the ticket, with Trump — and some people would march anywhere with Trump — we have our work cut out for us,” Delaney said. She added that Parrott, as the three-time Republican nominee in the district, is better known to voters at this point than she is, even though her husband, former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D), held the seat from 2013 to 2019.
Ellington, the GOP strategist, said the national political trends “will have some bleedover” in the 6th District, and that Trump at the top of the ticket benefits Parrott.
“The energy level among the Trump base is high, and Western Maryland will show up for them,” he said.
Parrott did not respond to a request for comment last week.
At the national level, both parties are watching the race carefully and believe it is close – but it has yet to rise to a top priority contest for either side. Two of the three national handicappers currently rate the race as “Likely Democratic,” while Inside Elections recently put it in the “Safe Democratic” category, in part because it judged Delaney to be a stronger Democratic nominee than some of the candidates she defeated in the May 14 primary.
Gonzales said the 6th District’s voter registration is roughly 42% Democratic, 40% Republican, and 18% independent voters. That means Parrott and Delaney have to motivate their political bases while also appealing to swing voters.
While Parrott benefits from the fact that he’s the GOP nominee for the third straight election and enjoys some measure of name recognition as a result, Delaney benefits from the robust spending of the district’s outgoing congressman, David Trone (D), which he used in part to paint Parrott as out of the political mainstream.
Delaney made some of the same arguments last week.
“In my race, whether it’s Hogan or Parrott, they’re both extremists — and we have to work to get that message out,” she said.
But in competitive House races across the country, the National Republican Congressional Committee is trying to paint the Democrats as extremists — and Harris becomes a handy conduit.
Last week, after the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had reached plea deals with some of the architects of the 9/11 terrorist strikes, the NRCC issued 30 separate news releases attacking vulnerable House Democrats and congressional nominees in competitive districts. Delaney did not merit her own targeted attack from the NRCC, but the campaign committee labeled the news as “the Harris terrorist plea deal.”
“Kamala Harris’ terrorist plea deal is yet another example of Democrats’ failure to protect the American people,” said NRCC spokesperson Savannah Viar said of the plea deals, which have since been withdrawn by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Similarly, the Maryland Republican Party, in a social media post last week, wrote, “This election is not going to be a fight against a typical Democrat, this is a fight to prevent the most extreme far-left President in the history of the United States.”
Is that rhetoric going to carry the day in Maryland with Democrats so much more motivated to turn out than they were just a few weeks ago?
Drew Spiegel, an organizer with the Tour to Save Democracy, the Democratic youth group that hosted the rally in Frederick last week, has been visiting competitive congressional districts in California, Arizona, Texas, Nebraska, Michigan and Pennsylvania for the past few weeks, and the tour was on its way to Syracuse, N.Y., after leaving Maryland.
“You’re definitely seeing more enthusiasm in gatherings and on social media,” he said. “Now it’s starting to translate to the polls.”
Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and X.
Truth Social screen grab