The head-to-head televised event marked their first and likely only debate before next month’s election.
Alsobrooks, the executive of Prince George’s County, Maryland, sought to rebrand Hogan as a closet extremist who would empower more polarizing Republican figures with Senate control and said a true political maverick would have run as an independent.
“If he wanted to be an independent, he should have run as one,” Alsobrooks said. “He opted to accept Mitch McConnell’s request to come in.
“No matter what former Gov. Hogan says today, he would empower a caucus of people who will take our country backwards,” Alsobrooks added, citing Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Hogan, a former two-term centrist GOP governor of Maryland, repeatedly accused Alsobrooks of lying about his policy stances and presented himself as the only candidate willing to buck one’s party.
Alsobrooks’s policy stances largely align with those of Vice President Kamala Harris, a longtime personal friend, and she emphasized her endorsement of the national party’s agenda. She cited an intraparty feud to get the FBI’s headquarters relocated from Washington, D.C., to Maryland as an example of her bucking other Democrats.
“I don’t think we need more partisan politicians who are going to be rubberstamps for their party,” Hogan said. “What we need are people that are willing to stand up and work with both parties or to criticize both parties when they are wrong.”
He added, “I’m not a ‘MAGA’ Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell person, as my opponent would like you to believe.”
Hogan later made the case to reporters that independents in modern-day partisan politics lack viability at the polls.
“I’m trying to fix the broken politics, and my party’s got some serious problems, and I’ve been a leading voice against it,” he said. “I could be a key voice in the middle to try to get more people.”
The debate was prerecorded Thursday afternoon and will be broadcast later that evening to accommodate Alsobrooks’s attendance at an event for the National Council of Negro Women. Among the moderators was NBC News’s Chuck Todd, marking a rare occurrence of a national journalist refereeing a debate for a state election.
Here are some of the biggest policy takeaways from the one-on-one encounter.
Alsobrooks backs packing Supreme Court and nixing filibuster
Alsobrooks sided with many of her would-be Democratic Senate colleagues with the belief that the Supreme Court should be expanded from nine justices to tip the scale from its current conservative bend. She also backed term limits.
“I think that they are out of line with the will of the American people,” Alsobrooks said.
As most Senate Democrats have advocated, she said the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold has “thwarted” progressive agendas and should be lowered to a simple majority.
Hogan accused both parties of politicizing the Supreme Court, vowed only to support the confirmation of judicial nominees with bipartisan backing, and promised to protect the filibuster because it forces compromise.
Hogan endorsed an assault weapons ban but opposed federal recreational marijuana
Hogan touted himself as a “long supporter of common sense gun legislation,” including red flag laws, universal background checks, and bans on bump stocks and so-called assault-style weapons, positions that put him at odds with many GOP lawmakers.
He supported medical marijuana but remained against legalizing it for recreational use at the federal level, despite Maryland voters doing so for the state.
“We haven’t seen the full impact of that yet, and I think some in law enforcement are concerned about the fact that we have a lot of deaths for drunk driving,” Hogan said. “I think we’ve got to make some more advances before we take a step like that.”
Alsobrooks supported the federal legalization of marijuana and accused Hogan of having “kowtowed to the gun lobby” as governor by vetoing stricter gun control measures on mandatory purchase waiting periods and ghost guns.
Hogan downplays Alsobrooks’s tax records scandal
Alsobrooks was recently slapped with a nearly $48,000 bill by the District of Columbia for improperly taking tax exemptions over the past two decades on properties she owned in Washington. That figure included the waiving of a 10% penalty and 25% of the accrued interest being forgiven.
Alsobrooks told reporters after the debate that attorneys came to the agreed-upon amount.
Alsobrooks, prompted by moderators, said she paid back the unpaid taxes totaling $18,000 but was still “working to pay off the interest.”
Hogan said he was “not sure it should matter,” later suggesting that voters should not ding his opponent for what she has described as an honest mistake. One of the properties was formerly owned by her grandmother.
“We ought to focus on other things,” Hogan later told reporters. “I think she has some explaining to do. I don’t know about the mortgage documents and what kind of investigation is going on. But I’m not trying to — I haven’t talked about that at all.”
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Still, national Republicans have tried to capitalize on the controversy on the airwaves with campaign ads propping up Hogan.
“[Hogan] has these ‘MAGA’ Republican billionaires who have come into our state, who are also working to defeat Democrats all across the state,” Alsobrooks said. “They found a false issue, an issue to mislead the voters, and it was good to hear him say it.”
