A wealthy former Maryland congressman who endorsed April McClain Delaney now says she’s “not doing the job,” but the real story is about what happens when a billionaire can’t accept that voters moved on without him.
The $62 Million Man Wants His Seat Back
There’s a particular kind of delusion that afflicts very wealthy people who enter politics – and former U.S. Rep. David J. Trone (same initials as Donald J. Trump – weird) appears to be suffering from an acute case.
It goes something like this:
“I am successful.
I built something.
Therefore, my judgment is superior, my instincts are correct, and when I lose, it must be someone else’s fault or a mistake that voters will eventually correct once they come to their senses.”
This delusion is expensive.
In former U.S. Rep. David J. Trone’s (D-Md.) case, it has cost him $62.9 million [and counting].
But what’s fascinating about Mr. Trone’s decision to challenge Rep. April McClain Delaney for the 2026 Democratic nomination in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District isn’t the money.
It’s the psychology.
It’s the particular strain of arrogance required for a man to endorse a woman for a job, watch her win that job in a competitive election, and then, less than a year later, announce that April McCLain Delaney is “not doing the job” and that he needs to take it back.
Let’s sit with that for a moment.
“Not Doing the Job”
When Mr. Trone announced his campaign in December, he told The Washington Post that McClain Delaney was “not doing the job” and “not fighting Trump.”
This is a remarkable statement.
It requires us to believe that Mr. Trone, a man who has held no public office since January 2025 – who spent the past year licking his wounds from a humiliating U.S Senate loss, who has cast zero votes and attended zero hearings – is somehow better positioned to judge congressional performance than the woman actually doing the work.
What exactly has Rep. April McClain Delaney failed to do?
McClain Delaney’s 2025 Congressional Record
In her first year alone, Mr. McClain Delaney introduced 16 bills in the House — legislation addressing rural recovery, food security, emergency alert systems, and financial regulations affecting nonprofits.
These aren’t vanity bills designed to generate press releases; they’re targeted measures aimed at the specific needs of Western Maryland and Montgomery County:
- The Food Bank Emergency Support Act – to bolster food banks serving struggling families.
- The Rural Recovery Act of 2025 – to assist communities that Washington too often forgets, and
- The Emergency Alert Grant Fairness Act – to improve public safety infrastructure.
Mrs. McClain Delaney’s congressional office reports that she helped secure nearly $700 million in federal funding for Maryland’s 6th District in her first year — federal taxpayer dollars (our money) for local infrastructure, community projects, and essential services.
That’s not rhetoric; that’s a concrete investment in the district that Mr. Trone abandoned for something shinier.
More on McClain Delaney’s first-year record:
- On constituent service – the unglamorous, essential work of actually representing people – Mrs. McClain Delaney’s congressional office responded to 16,717 constituent letters and held 14 significant community events in her first year.
- The 6th District congressional team has built a casework operation focused on veterans’ benefits, immigration issues, and food security.
- And she’s showing up for the people – the 6th District residents – who need help navigating a federal bureaucracy that doesn’t always make it easy.
Mrs. McClain Delaney serves on the House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology – assignments that give her direct influence over farm policy, rural broadband expansion, and research funding.
For a congressional district that stretches from the outer D.C. suburbs to the Appalachian communities of Garrett County, these committee seats matter; they’re where the work gets done.
She’s pushing back against Donald Trump (every day) – from Congress, from the same congressional seat that Mr. Trone abandoned in 2024.
- She’s called for impeachment proceedings over his military strikes in Venezuela.
- She’s publicly opposed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities proposed in the 6th Congressional District – in Hagerstown, Md.
This is the woman whom David Trone says isn’t “doing the job.“
What has David Trone Been Doing in 2025?
David Trone has been paying for expensive polls and writing cozy New York Times op-eds with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has positioned Florida as the laboratory for the ‘MAGA’ agenda and is widely considered one of the most anti-science governors in modern history by the scientific community.
When Mr. Trone says April McClain Delaney isn’t “fighting Trump,” what he really means is: she’s not fighting Trump the way I [Trone] would fight Trump, and I’m not there to do it, and that makes me feel irrelevant.
That’s not a policy critique; that’s an identity crisis.
Sixteen bills.
Seven hundred million dollars.
Sixteen thousand constituent letters.
Fourteen community events.
Two major committee assignments.
One year in office.
That’s the record of a congresswoman who is objectively “doing the job.”
The Gendered Undercurrent in the McClain Delaney-Trone Race
Let’s be direct about something that Maryland political observers are discussing privately – but few are willing to say publicly:
There is something deeply uncomfortable about watching a wealthy, older man dismiss the accomplishments of a woman who earned her seat through the same democratic process he once navigated.
April McClain Delaney didn’t inherit the 6th Congressional District seat.
She wasn’t appointed.
She ran in a crowded 16-candidate primary, earned the nomination, and then won a genuinely competitive general election in a district that went for former Vice President Kamala D. Harris by only six points.
April McClain Delaney did the work. She knocked on the doors. She made her case to voters, and the voters who voted said yes.
David Trone knows this; he did the same thing when he won the seat in 2018. He understands what it takes to win, and he understands that it takes a lot of money.
And yet, Mr. Trone’s campaign announcement carried the unmistakable tone of a man who believes the seat belongs to him – that McClain Delaney is merely keeping it warm, a placeholder who should graciously “step aside” now that he’s ready to return.
McClain Delaney Responds to Trone’s Entry into 2026 6th District Primary.
April McClain Delaney’s response to Mr. Trone was pointed: “He has the arrogance of a Trump.”
She’s not wrong.
There’s a specific flavor of entitlement on display here – the belief that money and name recognition entitle you to deference, that a woman who won her own race should yield to a man who lost his.
Mrs. McClain Delaney also noted that representing the 6th District “is not a consolation prize.”
That framing is devastating because it’s accurate.
Mr. Trone wanted the Senate seat.
He spent more money than any self-funded Senate primary candidate in American history trying to get it.
He lost.
And now he’s back, treating his old House seat like a participation trophy – something to occupy his time until… what?
Another Senate run?
A presidential run?
I think he once considered running for Montgomery County executive.
What’s he going to ditch in a couple of years now when boredom will inevitably set in for him?
The Women In My Life – It’s Personal
I have two grandmothers.
My grandmother, Maureen, died in Boonsboro at the age of 92 from advanced Alzheimer’s on July 16, 2025. I am very much still experiencing the grief over her loss.
My other grandmother, Joyce, resides in a memory care community in Washington County.
Both of these women lived through their peak years in the 1960s, an era when the world told them explicitly and repeatedly that their ambitions came second.
My grandmothers, at one time or another, were told that their talents were supplementary, and that their role was to support the men around them and wait patiently for whatever scraps of opportunity might come their way.
They didn’t accept it quietly.
But they lived it.
My Mother
My mother knows this story too – but from a different angle.
She had me when she was 19 years old. I was born at the old Washington County Hospital, which no longer exists.
Mom didn’t have the luxury of leaving the workforce. There was no choice to make, no opt-out available.
But my mom left college at the time (and later returned and earned her degree!) instead to raise me, to work, to start a business.
She worked because she had to; she relied on family to make it possible – my grandmothers, my grandfathers, the people who showed up so she could show up.
Family came through.
That’s how my mother, a lifelong Washington County girl, survived.
It’s how I survived.
My Wife
My wife’s story (she’s a Baltimore girl) is a little different (I asked for permission to share her story; she agreed).
She left the workforce for ten years to raise our children and be the world’s best mother that she is – a sacrifice she made for our family.
And when she was ready to return – with more intelligence, more wisdom, unmistakable professional credentials, with the same drive she’d always had – she felt what so many women feel.
She was told, in subtle and direct ways, by many men who look like David Trone, that she didn’t matter anymore.
That her accomplishments were somehow less than those of men who had never stepped away.
That the years she spent raising human beings counted for nothing on a resume.
That she was starting over while men who’d done half as much were miles ahead.
It’s not an abstraction. It’s not a talking point. It’s what happens to women in this country every single day.
It’s… damaging; it makes women feel like they do not matter.
My Grandmothers – Maureen and Joyce
My Western Maryland-born-and-raised grandmothers – Maureen and Joyce – fought for decades so women like April McClain Delaney and Beverly Byron could run for Congress and win on their own merits.
(Incidentally, my late grandmother, Maureen, just adored the late Beverly Byron. Because Rep. Byron, who died just last February, showed up; she stood up for women.)
And now David Trone, a man who endorsed McClain Delaney, who supported her campaign, who chose to vacate this seat to pursue his own ambitions, has decided that she’s just been keeping it warm for him.
That she should “step aside.”
That the seat he abandoned is rightfully his whenever he decides he wants it back.
The nerve is unnerving.
The Boredom Theory on Trone’s 2026 Congressional Bid
Here’s a question worth asking: Why is David Trone actually running for Congress this time around?
His stated reason – that Democrats need a “FiGhTeR” against Trump – that doesn’t survive scrutiny.
McClain Delaney is fighting.
She has a voting record.
She’s doing the job.
The real reason David Trone is running for Congress in the 6th District, I suspect, is simpler and sadder:
David Trone is bored.
David Trone is 70 years old.
He and his brother built Total Wine & More into an empire.
Now he needs to occupy his time with something meaningful.
Mr. Trone served three terms in Congress.
He had a driving, day-to-day serious purpose, a title, a staff, a schedule filled with meetings and votes, and the particular rush that comes from being a person who matters in rooms where decisions get made.
Then he gambled it all on a U.S. Senate race in 2024, lost to a woman who ran a far smarter campaign with a fraction of his resources, and he found himself on the outside looking in.
That’s a hard transition for anyone.
This reality is harsh for a man who built his identity on winning – who grew a single liquor store into 289 superstores across 30 states, and proved that business success translates to political victory.
Except it didn’t translate for Mr. Trone the way he envisioned.
Now Mr. Trone stews in Potomac.
He watches his neighbor, Mrs. McClain Delaney, do the job he abandoned and insists he could do it better.
That he should be doing it.
That Maryland voters made a mistake – not when they rejected him for the open U.S. Maryland Senate seat, but when they accepted his absence from Congress.
David Trone’s 2026 congressional campaign doesn’t appear to be rooted in authentic conviction or a passion for service.
His campaign feels born of restlessness.
David J. Trone has money, time, and a bruised ego.
Running for Congress in 2026 solves all three problems, apparently: It gives David Trone something to do; it gives him somewhere to spend his fortune, and it gives him a chance to prove that his devastating loss to Angela Alsobrooks was a fluke rather than a verdict.
David Trone’s Bridge-Burning Problem
What David Trone may not fully appreciate is how much damage his 2024 U.S. Senate campaign did to his political relationships.
The gaffes in the final week – including his alleged accidental use of a racial slur during a congressional hearing – didn’t just cost him votes.
His gaffes cost him goodwill; they made people who had supported him quietly question his judgment. His endorsers mused whether they had chosen the wrong person for the job.
(Keep in mind that I defended David Trone throughout his 2024 U.S. Senate bid.)
When Mr. Trone lost to now-Senator Alsobrooks, the Maryland Democratic establishment didn’t rally around him with promises of future support.
No, the Maryland Democratic Establishment did what they did… they moved on.
They endorsed Mrs. McClain Delaney’s candidacy and lined up behind the woman who was actually on the ballot, actually doing the work, actually showing up.
As of January 2026, it seems David Trone expects those same people to abandon McClain Delaney and return to him.
But on what basis, precisely?
Because David Trone is rich?
April McClain has her own means.
Because he held the 6th District previously?
Here’s what it likely is: David Trone decided, in his infinite wisdom, that the woman whom he endorsed a year prior now isn’t good enough.
But I wonder who’s not quite good enough?
EMILYs List has already made clear they’re not playing along – and their statement was brutal towards Trone.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore made it clear that he’s backing April McClain Delaney in 2026.
Look down the long list of elected Maryland officials in statewide office backing McClain Delaney over David Trone.
Not a single member of Maryland’s current congressional delegation – 7/8 are Democrats – has anything positive to say about Mr. Trone’s entrance into the 6th District Democratic primary.
Trone is running, essentially, alone – armed with nothing but his checkbook, his expensive, all-consuming television ads, his marketing collateral that will clog your mailboxes, and a conviction that he deserves something voters have repeatedly declined to give him.
The Fundamental Question for David Trone in 2026
At the heart of David Trone’s campaign is an assumption that may trouble Maryland Democratic voters: the assumption that April McClain Delaney is somehow fundamentally deficient.
Not that she’s made specific wrong votes.
Not that she’s failed on particular policy priorities.
Not that she’s neglected the district or ignored constituents.
Just that she’s… not enough: not a real fighter; not really doing the job.
She’s just not… David Trone.
This is the logic of entitlement, not accountability.
It asks Maryland voters to believe that a woman who won her own election, secured historic endorsements, and spent her first year in Congress actively legislating and opposing Donald Trump is nevertheless inadequate.
It suggests that the solution is to replace her with a man who lost his last Maryland race by double digits after spending more money on a U.S. primary race than any other candidate in history.
If Mr. Trone has specific policy disagreements with Rep. McClain Delaney, he should name them.
If he believes she’s cast the wrong votes, he should identify them.
If he thinks Mrs. McClain Delaney failed the district in concrete, measurable ways, David Trone should document them.
But “not doing the job” isn’t a critique of our current congressional representative.
It’s a vibe.
It’s the dismissive wave of a wealthy man who thinks he knows better, evidence be damned.
It’s the same wave my grandmothers saw.
The same wave my mother navigated while working and raising a child at 19, when she was barely an adult.
And it’s the same wave my wife encountered when she tried to return to the career she’d put on hold for our family, only to be told her decade of absence made her less than.
I’m tired of that wave. Our daughter is tired of that way.
Maybe Maryland, collectively, is tired of it, too?
What 6th District Voters Should Ask
When David Trone shows up at your door or on your television screen over the next six months, ask him this:
You, Mr. Trone, endorsed April McClain Delaney.
You supported her.
You wanted April McClain Delaney to win this seat.
What changed?
If Mr. Trone’s answer is “she’s not fighting hard enough,” ask for specifics.
Ask which fights Mr. Trone is explicitly referring to?
If you get a chance to connect with him, ask him what, exactly, he would have done differently from the sidelines where he’s been sitting.
And then ask yourself: Is this a man with a vision for the district, or a man who can’t accept that the district moved on without him?
The answer, I suspect, will be obvious.
The Bottom Line
April McClain Delaney earned her congressional seat.
She did the work.
She is doing the work, right now, while David Trone commissions polls and pays for his own variety hour of grievances on DMV network television.
At least the television stations and the printing companies will be happy that David Trone is back in the game!
Trone’s campaign isn’t about policy.
It isn’t about fighting Trump.
And it’s not about the people of Maryland’s 6th District.
No – David Trone is a wealthy man who lost a lot of money on a huge loss, who apparently cannot accept the election results, and has decided that the woman he endorsed to replace him isn’t worthy of the job he abandoned.
(Sounds familiar.)
That’s not an authentic congressional candidacy.
That’s a tantrum with a $60 million budget (and more, this time?).
My grandmother, Joyce, who still resides in Washington County, deserves better representation than a bored billionaire looking for something to do.
We already have outstanding representation in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District.
Her name is April McClain Delaney.
Note: This opinion piece bases all factual claims on public reporting, FEC filings, and statements directly made by the individuals quoted.
