HYATTSVILLE—The shrieks of joy began when the campaign volunteers recognized the familiar silhouette of a man entering their meeting hall bearing doughnuts and cookies.

“I am thrilled to be here,” Barack Obama said. “As some of you have noticed, I’ve been traveling all around the country. I’m getting a little too old for this.”

Obama, the former two-term Democratic president, has been a key surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee.

On Thursday, the campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks decided to give some of their volunteers — tired at the end of a long campaign — a treat that was better than the Halloween variety.

The campaign invited Obama to a volunteer phone banking session at a local union hall in Prince George’s County, managing to keep his visit a surprise to all but campaign insiders.

The former president, wearing dark slacks and a casual, black, button-down shirt, bounded into the cafeteria-sized room to extol Alsobrooks and give the few dozen volunteers encouragement.

He pointed to the Halloween-themed cookies he had brought. “We’ve got witches’ hats, bats. We’ve got sort of a skeleton-looking guy.”

“No matter how good the president is — and I was pretty good — the only way to make government accountable … is to have a team,” he said.

Alsobrooks stood to his left smiling. Her parents, James and Patricia Alsobrooks, sat nearby.

Doretea Burton, an Alsobrooks volunteer from Bowie who has known the candidate for years, said she had “no clue” Obama was coming. “We knew it would be phone banking. We were guessing maybe it was a commercial (being shot) in the open space out there.”

Obama walked around the room asking volunteers their names, giving hugs and posing for selfies.

“Thank you, everybody. Don’t get tired on me now,” he said as he was leaving.

Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive, is running against Republican former two-term Gov. Larry Hogan for the seat held by Democratic U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, who is retiring.

Harris, a friend and mentor of Alsobrooks, has appeared with her during the campaign and in a TV ad that also features Obama.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, opted to remain in Washington after his presidency ended in 2017.

That makes the Maryland Senate race local for him because Prince George’s County borders Washington.

Obama was the nation’s first Black president. If elected, Alsobrooks would be Maryland’s first Black U.S. senator.

“I think it’s very important to have diverse voices in the United States Senate, and clearly in the Maryland delegation we need to do a lot better,” said Maryland Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, an Alsobrooks backer who appeared with Obama.

“As a country we need to do a lot better.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com, 410-979-2052 and on X as @sunjeffbarker.