Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., voiced confidence Tuesday in Democrat Senate hopeful Angela Alsobrooks maintaining their party's hold on the open senate seat in Maryland — one of the GOP's major hopes for a net gain in the almost evenly divided (51 Democrats, 49 Republicans) Senate.
Peters' confidence came on the heels of the latest Emerson College poll, which showed Prince George's County Executive Alsobrooks leading the former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan 49% to 42% among likely voters in the Free State.
"The flaws that Larry Hogan has are on reproductive freedom," Peters told Newsmax at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, "He tries to be all over the map on that. He's trying to reinvent himself and voters see through that."
As he did in discussing Senate races in other states, Peters emphasized that "reproductive freedom will be a big issue in all of the states coming forward."
The senator added that Hogan "will have to vote for a Republican majority in the Senate. And folks in Maryland are particularly excited, and we're seeing the incredible excitement for Kamala Harris in Maryland."
People want Harris not only to win the election, Peters said, "but they want her to be successful as the president of the United States. [H]aving a majority in the Senate with the president is incredibly important to the success of the president. In fact, it's hard to function as president. If you don't have a Senate majority, you can't even get your appointments to your cabinet without a great deal of struggle. And so we just have to make sure that folks realize that [Hogan] is a Republican, and he will vote with a Republican majority in the Senate."
But Peters did concede "Angela is not as well-known in Maryland, so we have to get her to be better known. She's executive of a very large county, but she needs to be known by folks across the state. Once she gets known, once people understand the consequences if she doesn't win, we are confident not only will she win, but she's going to win by a good margin."
The latest Emerson figures showed a small but significant gain for Hogan from May, when Alsobrooks led the former two-term governor by 48% to 38%.
The same poll showed that 15% of Harris voters plan to split their tickets for Hogan.