1. David John Trone was born on September 21,1955 and is an American politician and alcoholic beverage magnate who served as the US representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district from 2019 to 2025.
92 Facts About David Trone
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In 2016, Trone spent more than $13 million of his own money on his unsuccessful Democratic primary campaign to succeed Chris Van Hollen in Maryland's 8th congressional district, setting a record for the most expensive self-funded House campaign.
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In 2018, David Trone was the Democratic nominee for the 6th district and won the general election to succeed John Delaney.
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David Trone has made mental health issues and fighting addiction a top priority during his tenure in Congress, where he co-chairs the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force.
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David Trone announced his candidacy in the United States Senate in the 2024 election to succeed Ben Cardin.
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David Trone spent over $60 million of his own money to support his campaign.
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David Trone was born in Maryland and raised on a 200-acre farm in East Berlin, Pennsylvania, where his father Thomas ran a chicken and hog operation.
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When David Trone's parents separated, his father kept the farm and his mother took over the store.
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Thomas and his farm went into bankruptcy, but David Trone kept working at his mother's store.
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Months before graduating from Wharton, in 1985, David Trone expanded into the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
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David Trone saw success with these efforts in various states, including Minnesota, Texas, and the Carolinas.
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David Trone gave more than $240,000 in campaign contributions to various politicians, most of which went toward Republican candidates including Texas governor Greg Abbott and lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, and North Carolina governor Pat McCrory.
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David Trone later told Jewish Insider that the contributions were necessary to "protect [the company] from attack".
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In 1994, a state judge dismissed 19 of the 23 counts based on "prosecutorial overreaching", and the remaining counts were withdrawn after David Trone paid a $40,000 fee to cover investigation costs.
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The lawyer who had represented David Trone served as a national board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, which began a long-term relationship between David Trone and the ACLU.
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David Trone donated $1.5 million to create the Hillel Endowment Fund to support Furman's Hillel, the Jewish Student Association.
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In 2024, David Trone said that his $10 million donation to Furman's mental health facilities was made to support his transgender niece, who was transitioning while attending the university.
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David Trone has been active in Democratic politics and hosted fundraisers for the party.
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David Trone contributed to Republican politicians; according to OpenSecrets, he donated more than $150,000 to Republicans in multiple US states between 2000 and 2015.
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The Washington Post reported that David Trone contributed more than $90,000 to Democratic state officials during the same period, and said the donations made to Republicans were to support "legislation or regulatory changes favorable to his company".
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David Trone said the donations "represented the cost of doing business, especially in states with Republican-controlled state houses and governor's mansions".
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In January 2016, David Trone entered the Democratic primary campaign to succeed Chris Van Hollen in Maryland's 8th congressional district; this was the real contest in the heavily Democratic district.
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David Trone ran on reducing unemployment and gun violence, criminal justice reform, environmental protection, and education and foreign policy.
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David Trone pledged to support early education, work with the National Institutes of Health to reduce health care costs, improve infrastructure, and forgive more student loans for government employees.
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David Trone spent more than $13 million on his unsuccessful campaign, which became the most expensive self-funded House campaign ever.
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David Trone told Washington Jewish Week in early 2018 that lessons learned from his previous run included entering the race earlier and raising money.
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David Trone toured Maryland in late 2017, and filed his candidacy in January 2018.
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David Trone's filing was accompanied by a press release expressing his support for education, environmental protections, health care, Social Security, and women's rights.
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David Trone made combating the opioid epidemic a central focus of his platform, releasing an action plan and hosting a series of town hall meetings to address the crisis.
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On January 23,2020, David Trone announced his intention to run for reelection to Congress.
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David Trone was rated the 15th most bipartisan member of Congress by the Common Ground Committee and The Lugar Center rated David Trone as the 23rd most bipartisan member of the US House.
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In January 2023, David Trone had surgery and was absent for the 12th round of voting for speaker of the House; he returned while still wearing hospital clothes and voted in the 13th round.
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On May 4,2023, David Trone announced his candidacy for the US Senate in the 2024 election to succeed Ben Cardin.
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David Trone had loaned his campaign $62.5 million and outspent his closest competitor, Angela Alsobrooks, by 10-to-1.
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David Trone's campaign utilized his self-funding ability to run a heavy advertising blitz to build up momentum behind his campaign and increase his name recognition and approval ratings in polling, which overwhelmed the Alsobrooks campaign and its resources, and made the election the most expensive statewide race in Maryland history.
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David Trone's campaign has set a record as the most expensive self-funded Senate primary campaign and the second most expensive self-funded Senate campaign overall, behind only Rick Scott's $63 million self-funded US Senate campaign in 2018.
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David Trone received over 100 endorsements, largely from many of his House colleagues and from elected officials within his district.
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David Trone has donated to the campaigns of several of his endorsers, including $350,000 toward Anthony Brown's 2022 attorney general campaign, around $300,000 to 31 of the 67 US representatives backing his campaign, and smaller donations to local politicians.
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However, David Trone's candidacy suffered from various political gaffes he had made along the campaign trail in the final weeks of the election, including his accidental use of a racial slur during a congressional hearing.
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David Trone conceded defeat that night and endorsed Alsobrooks in the general election.
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David Trone pledged to only serve two terms in the Senate if elected.
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David Trone continued to stay involved in Maryland politics, throwing his financial support behind state's attorney Aisha Braveboy in the 2025 Prince George's County executive special election to fill the remainder of Angela Alsobrooks's term as county executive.
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At the opening of the clinic, located in an "abortion desert," David Trone stated that "abortion rights are human rights" in a speech celebrating its opening.
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David Trone co-sponsored the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a police reform bill aimed at preventing brutality and racial discrimination in policing, in 2020.
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In 2023, David Trone founded the Second Chance Task Force in an effort to promote policies that improve reentry outcomes and reduce employment barriers for returning citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color.
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In October 2023, David Trone signed onto a letter written by Senator Elizabeth Warren calling on the Biden administration to crack down on the use of cryptocurrency in terrorist financing.
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David Trone supports making vocational schools more affordable, but opposes tuition freezes, calling them "nothing more than a marketing tool".
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In May 2020, David Trone signed a letter to DeVos criticizing her decision not to extend emergency federal aid grants provided by the CARES Act to undocumented students.
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David Trone called on the Maryland State Board of Elections to make their electronic voting machines more accessible for disabled voters in March 2016, saying that the machines were not programmed to show all candidates on a single screen.
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David Trone later defended Maryland's congressional map during an appeal of the ruling to the US Supreme Court, submitting an amicus brief to the court in February 2019.
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David Trone expressed support for imposing a term limit of two six-year terms on US senators, three two-year terms on US Representatives, and 18-year terms for federal judges and US Supreme Court justices.
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David Trone expressed support for banning congressmembers from trading stocks and from becoming lobbyists after their tenure, and for expanding the Supreme Court by allowing each president to appoint two members to the Supreme Court.
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In March 2016, David Trone said he supported the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and blamed Republican lobbyists for preventing it from passing.
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David Trone is the co-chair of the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, a government commission created to develop solutions to the opioid epidemic.
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In February 2022, David Trone blamed China for causing 64,000 fentanyl deaths in the United States in 2021 "because they are pretty much the lone supplier of [fentanyl] precursor chemicals and pre-precursor chemicals, which they are shipping to Mexico".
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David Trone called on the country to increase enforcement of its anti-money laundering laws and to prevent manufacturers from exporting precursor chemicals to Mexico through cooperation with US agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
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David Trone encouraged the United States to increase its education, treatment, and prevention programs, calling it "the only chance we've got".
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In January 2023, David Trone sent a letter to US secretary of state Antony Blinken calling on him to refuse negotiations with China on other topics until the country promised to do more to curb the fentanyl crisis.
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David Trone spoke in support of the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran in 2022.
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David Trone called on the European Union to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization in 2023.
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David Trone disagreed with President Donald Trump's decision to relocate the United States Embassy in Israel in Jerusalem.
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David Trone is a "minyan" donor to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which requires a minimum annual gift of $100,000 and is the highest membership level in the group.
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In March 2018, David Trone said he would vote for the Taylor Force Act, which would stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it stops payments to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists.
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David Trone said he supported the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which would make it a federal crime for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the West Bank if protesting actions by the Israeli government.
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In 2019, David Trone voted for a resolution condemning the BDS movement.
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David Trone said he did not support conditioning US foreign aid on Israeli actions in October 2020, including annexing the West Bank.
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David Trone co-founded the Abraham Accords Caucus in January 2022, a caucus aimed at supporting normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states.
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David Trone co-signed a letter to United Nations ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in December 2022 calling for the United Nations commission of inquiry into alleged Israeli human rights violations to be shut down.
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David Trone initially opposed calls for a ceasefire, stating that "[t]here should be no ceasefire until Hamas is completely eradicated, and all hostages are safely returned", but later expressed support for a permanent ceasefire alongside the release of all hostages held by Hamas and criticized Israel's military campaign in Gaza during a campaign event in January 2024.
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In December 2023, David Trone was one of 95 Democrats to vote for a resolution denouncing anti-Zionism as antisemitism.
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David Trone declined to say whether he would support a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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David Trone introduced a resolution holding Saudi Arabia accountable for the death of Jamal Khashoggi and other human rights violations in 2021.
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In March 2023, David Trone co-signed a letter to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman demanding the release of political prisoners jailed for tweeting.
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In October 2019, David Trone voted to condemn President Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria, calling the decision "morally bankrupt".
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In Congress, David Trone launched the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force and has made mental health treatment a priority during his term.
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In January 2018, David Trone released a $100 billion, 10-year plan aimed at confronting the opioid epidemic.
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In July 2019, David Trone voted for the Raise the Wage Act, a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025.
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David Trone later voted for a resolution condemning the comments.
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David Trone supported both the first and second impeachment of Trump.
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David Trone was at the United States Capitol to participate in the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when it was attacked by Trump supporters.
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David Trone faulted Republican leadership for the attack and called for a security review.
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David Trone later supported a bill to establish a special commission to investigate the attack.
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In March 2021, David Trone co-sponsored a resolution to expel US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress.
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In October 2018, David Trone said he supported repealing the carried interest loophole.
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David Trone has served on the Bullis School's board of trustees since 2006.
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In 2012, Kids Enjoy Exercise Now Greater DC gave David Trone the Distinguished Service Award for his contributions to the organization, which provides recreational programs for children with developmental and physical disabilities.
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In 2015, David Trone was invited by the American University's Kennedy Political Union and the Kogod School of Business to speak to students and faculty about entrepreneurship and business leadership.
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David Trone was awarded the Anti-Defamation League's annual achievement award in 2016.
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In 2016, David Trone joined the boards of American University and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.
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In 2017, Trone received Furman University's Carl F Kohrt Distinguished Alumni Award, which is presented "to an alumnus in recognition of significant professional or personal accomplishments and in gratitude for continued loyalty".
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David Trone served on Furman University's board of trustees from 2010 to 2016.
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In January 2023, David Trone underwent scheduled surgery on his right shoulder and voted from the House floor that afternoon.