Maryland Rep. Anthony Brown announced Monday that he would run statewide to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring state Attorney General Brian Frosh, rather than seek a fourth term in Congress. Brown’s decision opens up his 4th Congressional District, which is dominated by Prince George’s County in the D.C. suburbs.
Joe Biden won Brown's constituency 79-19, and there's little question it will remain heavily blue turf after the Democratic-controlled legislature completes redistricting. Democrats should also have no trouble holding the A.G.’s post in a state that backed Joe Biden 65-32, especially because Republicans haven’t won it since 1918.
It’s rare, though not unheard of, for a House member to give up their seat to run for state attorney general (Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison successfully made the switch in 2018), but Brown has been interested in this post for a long time. The congressman himself told reporters Friday, "Some people may not remember, but 15 years ago when I came back from Iraq, I was actually running for attorney general, and then I joined Martin O'Malley as his lieutenant governor." The O'Malley-Brown ticket went on to win the 2006 gubernatorial race, and Brown was initially the clear favorite when he ran to succeed O'Malley in 2014.
However, while Brown decisively won the primary against Attorney General Doug Gansler (who is running for governor again this cycle), he faced an unexpectedly tough general election campaign against Republican Larry Hogan in this blue state. Fellow Democrats criticized their nominee for allowing Hogan to define the last eight years of Democratic governance as a failure, and they also argued that Brown’s role managing the state’s bumpy Obamacare rollout harmed him. Brown’s intra-party critics further Brown for focusing on social issues at a time when the economy was the defining issue.
Hogan and his allies, meanwhile, argued that the state was overtaxed, and they trained much of their ire on what they dubbed the "rain tax." This policy, which supporters gave the unexciting title “stormwater remediation fee,” referred to a tax Democrats imposed on owners of impervious surfaces like driveways and parking lots, which don't absorb rainwater and instead generate runoff that becomes polluted, harming drinking water and the Chesapeake Bay. It was still a surprise, though, when Hogan won 52-47, a victory that made him only the second Maryland Republican elected governor in the previous 50 years.
Brown quickly got a shot at redemption, however, when Rep. Donna Edwards gave up the 4th District to unsuccessfully run for the Senate in 2016. Brown faced a primary against former Prince George's County State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, who was the top fundraiser in this race and whose wife was Gansler’s 2014 running mate, and Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who had the backing of EMILY’s List.
While plenty of vocal Democrats remained angry at Brown over what had happened the previous cycle, early polls (including an Ivey survey) gave Brown the edge, a good indication that primary voters still liked him. Brown also took out a $400,000 loan late in the contest that allowed him to outspend his opponents in the homestretch. (Weirdly, Brown wrote the check even though he still hadn't paid off the $500,000 loan he owed to the Laborers Political Education Fund from his last race.) Ultimately, Brown beat Ivey 42-34, and he had no trouble in the fall or in either of his next two campaigns.