Democratic Rep. David Trone has given more than $57 million of his own money to his campaign for the Senate in Maryland ahead of next week’s primary — a staggering sum that already ranks among the biggest self-funding campaigns in U.S. history. But he’s not alone: Self-funding congressional candidates gave more to their campaigns in 2023, $131 million, than in any other odd year going back to at least 2003, according to an NBC News review of campaign finance records.
Led by nearly $37 million from Trone last year alone, it’s part of a recent explosion of spending by wealthy candidates that has fundamentally shifted the way campaigns are won and lost — and perhaps made it harder than ever for the non-rich to make it to Washington, since candidates are not bound by donation limits and can give unlimited sums to their own campaigns.
He ran into the first of several issues when he recently used a racial slur at a hearing featuring President Biden’s black budget chief.
Speaking during a House budget committee hearing, David Trone said: “So this Republican jigaboo that it’s the tax rate that’s stopping business investment, it’s just completely faulty by people who have never run a business. They’ve never been there. They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.”
Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to whom Trone was speaking on Thursday, is Black. She declined to comment to the Post.
In Maryland, Trone leads Democratic polling regarding the party race to contest the US Senate seat now filled by the retiring Ben Cardin.
Trone’s closest competitor, Angela Alsobrooks, a state politician, is Black. She also declined to comment.
He later apologized.
NBC has the spending story here
