Angela Alsobrooks

Angela Alsobrooks is used to being first. In 2011 she became the first woman state’s attorney in Prince George’s county, Maryland. Seven years later, she became the first Black woman county executive in Maryland. In 2024 she was elected that state’s first Black U.S. senator.

Early life

Alsobrooks was born and raised in a largely Black middle-class neighborhood of Prince George’s county, Maryland, where her father, James Alsobrooks, sold insurance and delivered The Washington Post and her mother, Patricia Alsobrooks, worked as a receptionist. Alsobrooks’s mother and her family moved to Maryland in 1956 after what the family describes as a brutal racial attack in which Patricia Alsobrooks’s grandfather was shot and killed by a white police officer in South Carolina. The officer was not charged in the death of J.C. James. While Alsobrooks wasn’t born until 15 years after her great-grandfather’s murder, the death influenced much of her life.

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Angela Alsobrooks attended Banneker High School in Washington, D.C., where she won her first election—as student body president. She went on to graduate from Duke University in 1993 and got a law degree from the University of Maryland in 1996. Alsobrooks acknowledged in a 2020 interview in the wake of the murder of George Floyd that the death of her great-grandfather inspired her to pursue a career in law. “I’m not under any illusion that I can change all of it alone. But I’m one of the lucky ones. Got to be educated, go to law school, and try to use that education to change all of this.”

Professional and political career

After working as a law clerk, Alsobrooks became the first prosecutor in Prince George’s county tasked with handling domestic violence cases. In 2003 Alsobrooks left the state’s attorney’s office to work in a number of administrative roles in Prince George’s county, including serving as the head of the county’s revenue authority from 2004 to 2010. During this time, she became active in Democratic politics, serving as a delegate for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic National Convention and again in 2016.

After having worked in government in both prosecutorial and administrative roles, in 2009 Alsobrooks sought her first elective office, running for Prince George’s county state’s attorney. She was prompted, in part, after reading a profile in Essence magazine of the Black woman serving as district attorney in San Francisco: Kamala Harris.

Alsobrooks read Harris’s book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer (2009) and was struck by reforms Harris outlined. Alsobrooks adopted some of the strategies as part of her campaign platform. Ultimately, the two women connected, and Alsobrooks went out to San Francisco to learn about some of the programs. In 2010 Alsobrooks easily won her election, becoming the county’s first woman state’s attorney.

During her tenure, she prosecuted high-profile cases, implemented some programs similar to those she had learned about from Harris, and saw violent crime fall by 50 percent. She ran unopposed for reelection in 2014, garnering 99.6 percent of the vote. By 2017 she had her eyes set on a new role: running the county where she had spent her entire life. “There’s no corner in this county I feel like I don’t understand,” Alsobrooks told The Washington Post in 2018.

Alsobrooks easily won election, becoming the first woman to run the state’s second-most populous county. During her tenure, the county secured some important development projects, including being named home for the new headquarters for the FBI. But she also faced challenges concerning her handling of crime in the county. In the wake of the Floyd murder, she diverted funds for the creation of a police training facility to the construction of a mental health center, but, as crime spiked in the county, she also authorized an increase in police spending and created a task force on youth violence. She was considered a leading candidate to run for governor in 2022 but instead sought reelection and supported Wes Moore, who would go on to become Maryland’s first Black governor. But by 2023 she was ready for a bigger stage, and she announced that she would run in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat to replace Ben Cardin, who was retiring.

Bruising Senate campaign

Alsobrooks, despite her enormous popularity in her home county, faced tough competition to win the Democratic primary, most notably from Montgomery county businessman and millionaire David Trone, who spent more than $60 million of his own money on a campaign that featured near-constant television ads. Alsobrooks won the endorsement of The Washington Post and the support of most prominent Maryland Democrats, including Moore and Rep. Jamie Raskin. In the end, Alsobrooks scored a victory over Trone by more than 10 percentage points.

Maryland is typically a reliably Democratic state—its last Republican U.S. senator left office in 1987—and often the winner of the primary can assume victory in the general election. But Alsobrooks faced an unusually formidable competitor in popular former two-term Republican governor Larry Hogan. The race took on added importance, given that the battle for control of the Senate was a key issue in the national election. Alsobrooks took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in August, delivering a keynote address that highlighted not just the importance of her relationship with Harris but also the importance of keeping the Maryland Senate seat in Democratic control. Harris appeared in campaign adds for Alsobrooks, who has called Harris her “quintessential big sister.”

The campaign has been marked by sharp barbs on both sides. Alsobrooks ran ads showing Hogan, seen by many as a moderate, supporting Donald Trump’s choice of Supreme Court justices and questioning his commitment to women’s rights to make decisions about reproductive care. Hogan attacked Alsobrooks for not paying taxes after CNN found that she had taken tax exemptions in Prince George’s county and Washington, D.C., that she wasn’t eligible for; Alsobrooks responded that she would pay any back taxes owed.

Alsobrooks will join Lisa Blunt Rochester, who was elected to the Senate in Delaware, making it the first time two Black women serve together in the U.S. Senate. The other Black women to serve in the Senate have been Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, who became the first Black woman senator in 1993; Vice President Harris, who represented California in the Senate starting in 2017 before becoming vice president in 2021; and Laphonza Butler of California, who was appointed to the Senate in 2023.

Alsobrooks understands the historic nature of her election. In addition to being the state’s first Black senator, she could also be the only woman representing Maryland in the U.S. Congress. But she recounts advice given to her by Harris, who told her, “It’s not as important to be the first at something as it is to perform the job with such excellence that you shall not be the last.”