David Trone

David John Trone (born September 21, 1955) is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district.

Trone graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Furman University in 1977, and earned a Master of Business Administration in 1985 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Having seen the potential of the beer sales at his mother's store, Trone began his career by founding the beer-only retailer Beer World in Pennsylvania in 1984, during his second semester of graduate school.

Months before graduating from Wharton, in 1985, Trone expanded into the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.

Over time, he opened additional stores, called Beer and Pop Warehouse and, later, Beer World, which were owned by friends and family members because Pennsylvania state law prohibited individuals from owning more than one beer retail outlet.

Beginning in 1989 and over the next three years, Pennsylvania authorities arrested Trone three times following complaints from an association of smaller, individually owned stores.

One arrest was for negotiating volume discounts on behalf of multiple stores and illegally advertising beer prices, and one was for circumventing state transportation regulations.

The charges were dismissed.

Trone, with his brother Robert's help, opened two stores in Delaware in 1991, adding wine and spirits to the company's offerings.

Using knowledge acquired at Wharton, the brothers chose to replicate the family store's model across Pennsylvania.

The beverage company had slim margins, but was immediately profitable and allowed the brothers to focus on operations.

They familiarized themselves with regulators and industry leaders, and began changing laws that restrict wholesalers from offering retailers discounts in exchange for large volume purchases, among others, in their attempt to promote beverage consumption.

In 1992, a grand jury in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, indicted Trone, his wife, June, and his brother for owning multiple stores through Trone's consulting company, among other charges, all of which were later dropped and expunged.

In 1994, a state judge dismissed 19 of the 23 counts based on "prosecutorial overreaching", and the remaining counts were withdrawn after Trone paid a $40,000 fee to cover investigation costs.

During these legal proceedings, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) broke the law by providing records of his consulting firm to government officials, prompting Trone to sue the agency in federal court.

He won and was awarded $400,000.

A Trone campaign spokesperson told Time that Trone had not been personally involved in contributions made by Retail Services and Systems since stepping down as Total Wine's CEO in 2015, and pointed toward his combined $8.5 million in donations to the Democratic Party and pro-choice Democratic candidates.

Trone later told Jewish Insider that the contributions were necessary to "protect [the company] from attack".

During the 2022 general elections in Massachusetts and Colorado, the Trone brothers spent almost $3 million on media against Massachusetts Question 3, which would lower the number of alcohol beverage licenses retailers could have in the state, and an additional $2 million financing a campaign to support Colorado Proposition 124, which would have allowed Total Wine & More to open an unlimited number of Colorado stores by 2037.

Both ballot initiative were defeated by voters.

The district includes most of the western third of the state, but the bulk of its population is in the outer northern suburbs of Washington, D.C. Trone founded and co-owns Total Wine & More with his brother, and served as the company's president until December 2016.

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.

The business has since expanded into what is known today as Total Wine & More, the largest privately owned beer, wine, and spirits retailer in the U.S. In December 2016, Trone gave up his title of president to chief executive Kevin Peters.

He has continued to make money from Total Wine & More while in Congress, reporting more than $110 million in personal income during his tenure.

Under Trone's tenure, Total Wine lobbied against state laws that prevented the company from selling below cost, including in Connecticut and Massachusetts, where the company temporarily had its license suspended for refusing to comply with such laws.

According to lobbying records analyzed by The Baltimore Sun, Trone spent over $1.4 million lobbying state governments to overturn or weaken what the company said were "anti-consumer laws passed after Prohibition".

The company saw success with these efforts in various states, including Minnesota, Texas, and the Carolinas.

Trone also 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.

During the 2016 legislative session in Maryland, Trone supported an unsuccessful bill that would have allowed Total Wine & More to double the amount of stores it has in the state.

During the 2024 legislative session, Trone and his brother supported a bill that would allow Total Wine & More to increase the number of stores it has in the state from two to eight.

In 2018, Trone was the Democratic nominee for the 6th district and won the general election to succeed John Delaney.

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.

Trone is currently a candidate for the United States Senate in the 2024 election to succeed Ben Cardin.

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.

Thomas also owned a soda and beer store.

When Trone's parents separated, his father kept the farm and his mother took over the store.

Thomas and his farm went into bankruptcy, but Trone kept working at his mother's store.

Total Wine & More brought these efforts before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019, who ruled for Total Wine & More in Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assn. v. Thomas, overturning the state's residency requirement for obtaining a license to operate a liquor store and thereby allowing the company to expand into Tennessee.

In July 2023, The American Prospect reported that Total Wine & More sought to impede on a Federal Trade Commission investigation into alleged violations of the Robinson–Patman Act, which prohibits anti-competitive price discrimination, in alcohol markets.

During the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, Retail Services and Systems, a company through which Trone formerly made campaign contributions, made $85,500 in campaign contributions toward Republican candidates.