Despite spending $62 million of his fortune on a losing Senate bid last year, businessman and former congressman David Trone decided he’s unwilling to retire from politics.
Trone, 70, announced a comeback campaign on Thursday to reclaim his old House of Representatives seat, launching a Democratic primary to oust first-term Rep. April McClain Delaney (D-Maryland).
“I’ve decided to get back in the arena,” Trone said over coffee at the farmhouse-style kitchen table in his Potomac mansion this week. “We need someone that can really be a fighter.”
He described a general restlessness, being “madder than a hornet” over President Donald Trump’s policies and frustration with his successor’s votes in Congress. “She’s not doing the job. She’s not fighting Trump,” he said.
Trone will again use his own money to finance the race, wealth derived from his national liquor company, Total Wine & More, which is valued in the billions. His budget, he said, is “whatever it takes to win.”
Trone is among a cadre of former members seeking a 2026 comeback at a time a record number of incumbents are fleeing Washington, facing personal threats and fatigue over what they describe as dysfunction. But Trone can’t wait to go back. “It’s a difficult, thankless job in many respects. But you can really get stuff done and move the needle and change people’s lives,” he said.
Trone’s primary challenge pits two formerly allied families from one of Maryland’s wealthiest Zip codes in a fight over the state’s most competitive congressional district. Democrats have won that district by the smallest margins since taking the seat after redistricting made it more favorable in 2012.
“David Trone thinks I should ‘step aside’ so he can have his old office back after he abandoned the district to run and lose for Senate. He has the arrogance of a Trump,” McClain Delaney said in statement.
“But not so fast,” she said. “On behalf of my district, I stand up to bullies.”
McClain Delaney won the Western Maryland district — with Trone’s backing — in 2024, when he chose to run for an open Senate seat now held by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland).
It was the second time a Delaney held that seat. Trone won that district six years earlier after banker, businessman and former congressman John Delaney, McClain Delaney’s husband, relinquished office to run for president. Several members of Trone’s staff now work for McClain Delaney.
In late October, around the same time Trone first started making moves to run for office, McClain Delaney stuffed supportive quotes from every Maryland Democrat in Congress and Gov. Wes Moore (D) into a news release announcing her reelection bid.
“It’s a sequel no one wanted,” McClain Delaney adviser Ned Miller said of Trone’s comeback. Trone said that doesn’t matter, and he cares about voters.
“You know, I’m not looking for new friends. I’m okay with my old friends,” Trone said. “I do this because someone’s got to do it, and I’ve got the wherewithal to do it. And I still have a lot of energy.”
Asked why he could not be happy being rich and retired, hanging out with his three grandchildren, Trone said, “sitting somewhere on a beach is not something I have an interest in.”
“It’s just I’ve always loved to work. I’ve said that a thousand times,” he continued. “And I love problems. I’ve said that 10,000 times. … I like that about business: that it’s challenging. And the political system is perhaps even more challenging. And now there’s so many problems.”
Trone said he would have remained on the sidelines if former vice president Kamala Harris won the presidency, but Trump policies dismantling global aid, attacking abortion access, levying tariffs and ruthlessly seeking to deport immigrants, among other issues, convinced him that he should be back in Congress rather than, as he put it, watching democracy erode.
He also rattled off a list of McClain Delaney’s votes that he argues allied her more with MAGA and Republicans than Maryland Democrats, who all voted differently than she did. Among the most prominent: her support for the Laken Riley Act, which lets the government detain undocumented immigrants accused but not convicted of crimes.
“It was a really horrendous bill and, you know, not one other person in the Maryland delegation was with MAGA and with Trump but the incumbent. I can’t understand that. It doesn’t make any sense,” Trone said.
Trone said he hasn’t asked McClain Delaney why she voted for that bill or the others he listed, which will become the centerpiece of his argument against her reelection.
“No, that’s not my job,” Trone said. “She was very much interested in me to help her out when she ran, and I was happy to do so because we couldn’t have a Republican win that seat, could not let that happen. But since then, she’s been evidently very happy on her own and never heard a word.”
McClain Delaney disputed Trone’s characterization that she’s ineffective or voting against her district’s interests just because Trone wants to do the job himself.
“Representing the 6th District is an honor and privilege; it is not a consolation prize,” she said. “ I will continue to work tirelessly for our district and all of Maryland as we fight the assaults to our democracy and work to improve our economic futures.”
The Delaneys have also self-funded at least part of their congressional races, but Trone smashed national records with his 2024 primary campaign for the Senate seat left open by Ben Cardin, who retired after a half-century in Maryland politics.
Trone said he spent his first year out of office focused primarily on his family, but also pursing the issues he cares about through philanthropy done by his business and foundation, which together give out roughly $20 million a year, he said.
He said he donated $2 million to the American Civil Liberties Union to help finance legal actions against Project 2025 initiatives, in addition to supporting the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which works on prison reform. He traveled to Berlin with a delegation from several state prison systems and Vera Institute of Justice to tour how Germans run prisons far less violent than American ones. He said he advised mental health and addiction organizations on how to secure new funding after the federal government cut their grants. And, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), he co-chaired an organization seeking congressional term limits. (He promised in the interview to not serve more than 12 years total if reelected.)
He went on vacations to Italy and France, “and who would guess, I visited some vineyards.”
But Trone said that he thinks Democrats need tougher and more relentless messaging against Trump, and the best place for him to launch that would be in Congress. He argued that directing federal resources to the problems he wants to solve is more effective than doing it on his own.
“Congress was an unbelievable way to leverage my philanthropy,” he said.
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