Angela Alsobrooks wins the Maryland Senate, defeating Republican Larry Hogan

Democrat Angela Alsobrooks has won Maryland’s Senate race, NBC News projects, defeating popular former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and becoming the first black woman elected to represent the state in the Senate.

The unusually competitive The race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin was always a must-win for Democrats trying to hold on to their Senate majority. It also means that for the first time in history, Maryland will have a black senator, governor and mayor in its largest city, Baltimore.

Alsobrooks’ victory, along with Democratic Sen.-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester’s of Delaware, also means the Senate will have two black women next year for the first time in history.

“We’re looking at a time that looks like a time we’ve never seen before,” Alsobrooks told NBC News on the campaign trail in August. “This election will help us decide what kind of future we want for our children and grandchildren, and what kind of state and country we want to build for them.”

Prince George’s County County Executive Alsobrooks handily won the Democratic primary this year despite being outspent 10-to-1 by Rep. David Throne. Campaign spending only increased from there with both Alsobrooks and Hogan spend tens of thousands of dollars to influence voters in a state that President Joe Biden won by more than 30 points in 2020.

“I think it’s wonderful to have her in the Senate. She is eminently qualified. She will do a great job for her state and for the people of the country,” former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., told NBC News in the fall .

Polls consistently showed Alsobrooks pulling ahead in the weeks before the election. Hogan could never quite replicate the support he received from Democrats as governor in his Senate campaign. During his two terms as governor and as a Senate candidate, Hogan tried to distance himself from former President Donald Trump, going so far as to reject an endorsement.

But sharing the Republican column with Trump on the ballot seemed a bridge too far for Democrats who had once been willing to vote for Hogan, said David Lublin, chairman of the government department at American University.

“I don’t think he will win precisely because of the reluctance of Democrats who might be willing to vote for him at the state level to give him a chance at the federal level,” Lublin said before the election. “Frankly, the sad thing about this case is that the Senate could use more moderate and more moderate Republicans.”

The race stood out to Lublin because, in a national political environment marked by one unprecedented event after another, he felt it maintained a relative degree of normalcy — or at least what was considered normal a decade ago. In Hogan, many Marylanders saw a Republican who represented an increasingly rarefied version of the party before Trump took office. And Alsobrooks has been “embraced by the Democratic establishment” as a liberal who “doesn’t come off as unrealistic,” according to Lublin.

“In a lot of ways it’s like an old-fashioned race because neither side is driving any extremes,” he said. “We’re not going to vote for the person we hate the least. They’re both good politicians.”

But national narratives have still managed to make their way into the race, according to Candace Turitto, director of the University of Maryland’s applied policy analysis program.

“Alsobrooks’ main attack on Hogan has still been to paint him as a member of this more extreme Republican Party that would ultimately be a voice that promotes a far-right agenda,” Turitto said in an email to NBC News before the election. “Hogan’s public record does not lead to that conclusion in my view, but that message is likely to be successful when voters consider the totality of their ballot.”

Alsobrooks’ election is also historic in showing the “increasing normalcy” of electing black politicians, Lublin said.

In Maryland alone, Wes Moore, the state’s first black governor, and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, both Democrats, gained national attention after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. Moore in particular is seen as a rising star in the national party.

“In Maryland, there is a tacit sense among many Democrats that just as it was time to elect our first black governor, it is time to elect our first black senator,” Lublin said.