Beneath a purple disco ball in a packed South Baltimore bar, Angela Alsobrooks launched into a stump speech with a quick nod to her past and — like most of her campaign for U.S. Senate — an almost singular focus on her future.

It all started, she told supporters at Captain Larry’s in Riverside earlier this month, with public safety, when she ran for the Office of Prince George’s County State’s Attorneyafter realizing her 4-year-old daughter “was living in a place that wasn’t quite safe enough for her.”

Fifteen years later, that message “still resonates with so many,” the Democrat and lawyer said before shifting quickly to her campaign’s prominent themes of abortion rights and the prospect that her opponent, Republican Larry Hogan, would flip control of the narrowly divided Senate to his party if he were to win.

Results of a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Thursday show Alsobrooks leading Hogan by 11 points among likely voters, with 51% saying they’ll choose her, compared to Hogan’s 40%. But the margin, while wide, does not rule out a win for Hogan, one of the state’s most popular governors ever.

That circumstance, along with recent concerns raised over Alsobrooks having inappropriately, if inadvertently, claimed property tax credits she didn’t have a right to claim on two homes, suggest the race will not simply be a matter of voting along party lines in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1. The candidates will have to run on their records.

Alsobrooks’ record is largely based on her six years as Prince George’s County executive and eight as its state’s attorney.

Accomplishments — such as overseeing an overall decrease in crime and securing the new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt — have come alongside controversies, including defending police in a discrimination lawsuit before ultimately settling, and fielding blowback from the county’s Latino communities for a lack of diversity in her top appointed positions.

“I feel comfortable enough as a friend to tell [her] what I think is working and not working. The question is, ‘How is it received?’ ” said Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, a Prince George’s County Democrat who has clashed with Alsobrooks and endorsed her opponent in the Democratic primary. “And she received it well … I have to respect that.”

Peña-Melnyk was one of the local leaders who criticized Alsobrooks in 2021 for what they saw as a lack of Latino representation within county leadership under her watch. Alsobrooks was responsive, she said, launching an Office of Multicultural Affairs, making Spanish translations of county documents more accessible and being more present in Latino communities.

That openness to feedback was evident again, Peña-Melnyk said, when she sat down to talk with Alsobrooks after Peña-Melnyk backed U.S. Rep. David Trone for the nomination and Alsobrooks beat him handily.

“It’s not really a choice,” Peña-Melnyk said of the options now between Alsobrooks and Hogan, echoing a common refrain among Alsobrooks’ previous detractors. “Between both of them, there’s no contest there. She is highly qualified, is the best candidate, has a record of working with the legislature … We’ll get along with her.”

Crime and criminal justice

Both Alsobrooks and Hogan often point to crime in Prince George’s County when talking about her record, though the years and numbers they highlight couldn’t be more different.

Violent crime, Alsobrooks often says, dropped by half when she was state’s attorney from 2011 to 2018 — which matches state data showing violent crime declining from 6,202 incidents in 2010 to 2,801 in 2018. Crime since then has skyrocketed, Hogan claims, citing FBI data that shows violent crime decreasing until early 2021 and then nearly doubling since then, ending up slightly above where it was when she became county executive.

There’s no question overall crime in the county, however, has trended downward to historic levels, said Charles Adams, a professor of criminology at Bowie State University.

Alsobrooks campaign spokesman Connor Lounsbury pointed to Alsobrooks’ creation of a “strategic investigations unit” focusing on repeat violent offenders, as well as a combination of trust she earned from within her state’s attorney’s office, the police and the public as reasons for the decline in crime rates.

Adams said her approach was collaborative and engaging, and he remembered bringing his students to her community forums when she was state’s attorney. In some ways, though, her record also can be viewed differently before and after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, he said.

As state’s attorney, she prosecuted criminals “very aggressively” and worked closely with the police, he said. And early in her tenure as county executive, she defended a discrimination lawsuit against the county’s police department in which the county spent nearly $18 million on legal fees and settled for $5.8 million, according to The Washington Post. (Vocal critics of her decision, including a now-county council member, Krystal Oriadha, did not return requests for comment for this story.)

But the George Floyd reform movement “shifted the dynamic a little bit,” Adams said. With protests raging, Alsobrooks launched a police reform work group and accepted nearly all of its recommendations.

State Sen. Alonzo Washington, a Democrat who co-chaired the workgroup, said Alsobrooks “was courageous enough to take on this issue in that tough time after George Floyd,” and that she was dedicated to reforming the department. The results have created a “different environment” including more community engagement by police, he said.

Hogan has used some of the reforms to criticize her in the campaign, such as $20 million that she redirected from a police facility project to behavioral health services, and changes involving school security, like resource officers.

While the Republican says Alsobrooks removed resource officers from schools, the recommendations she approved called for incremental steps to better train the officers, remove their arrest powers and eventually phase them out completely. County-provided sworn officers in schools have not been removed since the recommendations were adopted, Lounsbury said. Other civilian security personnel numbers, meanwhile, have increased rather than decreased, though some no longer have arrest powers, he said.

“She’s actually equipped them with the tools they need,” Washington said.

Adams said research shows armed police officers in schools do not reduce the risk of violence, and studies are mixed on whether they affect the chances of a school shooting.

“What it does is increase the criminalization of students. It introduces students to the criminal justice system,” Adams said. “The balance is between public safety and what’s best for the children.”

Another move meant to influence juvenile crime came when Alsobrooks enforced local or countywide curfews for teenagers. In Prince George’s, Alsobrooks implemented them countywide in 2022 after escalating rates of violence, and earlier this year in National Harbor after a fight there involving hundreds of teenagers.

Del. Luke Clippinger, a Baltimore Democrat and assistant state’s attorney in Anne Arundel County, said Alsobrooks has been effective in both her elected roles at balancing prosecutions and providing opportunities for people to succeed without entering or reentering the criminal justice system.

Schools and education funding

Alsobrooks has sometimes been at odds with other elected and community leaders over education initiatives or funding.

A quick and vocal proponent of a public-private partnership that led to six new schools in less than three years — and eight more currently in the works in a second phase — her push for the creative and expedited project was praised, even if the school board had most of the authority to make it happen.

“We knew we didn’t have to worry about her because she was supportive,” said Dan Broder, a Hyattsville education activist whose local middle school had black mold growing on exposed pipes, rodents in the cafeteria and was overcrowded before its rebuild.

The speedy fix “to alleviate immediate public health crises in some of these buildings” was necessary and on budget, he said. Still, he said he would have preferred a method that didn’t mean the privatization of schools and that wouldn’t cost the county more in the long run. Alsobrooks’ campaign said the county will will save millions in what would have otherwise been rising construction and maintenance costs. Others are concerned about the long-term interest payments.

“It’s not really cheaper. It’s just we’re not putting in up-front money,” said Tonya Wingfield, a realtor from Fort Washington who is worried about the mortgage-style partnership and cost. “The big concerns from citizens is just like any mortgage: What happens if there’s a default? The kids show up at the doors and the doors are locked.”

Citizens for Accountability in Governance, a cohort of vocal critics of both the school system and county government that Wingfield helps lead, has frequently found fault with Alsobrooks’ administration for what they say is a failure to maximize the county’s potential.

The group this year railed against legislation initiated by Alsobrooks and passed by the entire Maryland General Assembly that changed some of the revenue streams to the county’s public schools. The laws ultimately removed a requirement that all county-generated proceeds from telecommunications and energy taxes be directed to the local school system directly. Alsobrooks said the change would give the county more flexibility to fund other areas of its budget, and her campaign says Prince George’s school ultimately received $90 million more in funding this year.

Some, however, believe the changes will lead to cuts, and the frustration was palpable during a February meeting of the Prince George’s County House delegation, all of whom are Democrats.

Several claimed the county’s quick push for the bills was “disrespectful.” Del. Mary Lehman said the county was continuing a trend of not looking for new revenue, particularly from developers who had been “coddled … for the better part of 50 years.”

Del. Tiffany Alston, in a virtual meeting with the Citizens for Accountability in Governance group after the laws passed, said she was “very disappointed” in Alsobrooks. She claimed the bills would have meant a cut to public school appropriations if not for another move that protected the school system, and she accused the county executive’s team of lobbying against Alston’s proposed amendment to one of the bills.

“She sent her henchmen to go out and do that dirty work,” said Alston, who ultimately endorsed Trone in the primary election, as did other members of the delegation. Alston did not return requests for an interview with The Sun.

Economic development

Progressive Maryland, a liberal coalition of unions and other organizations, also has clashed with Alsobrooks in the past.

The group called on her to return campaign contributions from developers during the 2018 primary for county executive, when it backed her opponent. And in 2020, it put the onus on her to improve conditions in the Prince George’s County Detention Center as COVID spread.

But after years of also battling Hogan, Progressive Maryland is now launching an aggressive campaign for Alsobrooks, pledging about $500,000 for a door-knocking and phone-banking operation with roughly 800 volunteers statewide, said executive director Larry Stafford.

Though his group has criticized her relationship with developers, Stafford said in an interview that Alsobrooks has had major accomplishments in economic development: Securing the new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt and funding for the Blue Line Corridor around the Capitol Heights metro station.

“We don’t envy her having to balance making sure the county grows and making sure it’s growing in an equitable way and a balanced way,” said Stafford.

“We know that she has a tough job in leading Prince George’s County, which has all the potential in the world,” he said.