After more than three years, Rep. Anthony G. Brown has paid back the $500,000 loan he borrowed from a labor union in the final weeks of his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2014.
Campaign finance reports show that Brown, who now represents Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, raised more than $314,000 in his state campaign account from contributions in 2017 and used that money to help make $320,000 in outstanding payments in the loan.
He now has $990 left in his state campaign account.
"Friends of Anthony Brown gubernatorial campaign has fulfilled its obligations to the Laborers Political League Education Fund and has repaid in full the balance of the loan,” said Brown spokesman Matthew Verghese.
Brown, a Democrat, has struggled to pay off the loan he received in the home stretch of his campaign against now-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican.
Brown paid it off in part by making personal loans to his state account, the finance report shows. His state campaign paperwork now shows he owes himself about $275,000.
The Baltimore Sun reported last year that Brown was paying back the union loan at the same time he was withdrawing money from his federal account to pay back personal loans he had made during his congressional run in 2016.
Brown, a Harvard-educated lawyer and Army veteran, lost the governor's race despite outspending Hogan 3 to 1 in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to1. It was only the second time in a half-century that Marylanders elected a Republican governor. Brown and the Democratic Party spent more than $18 million on the 2014 campaign.
His heavily Democratic congressional district stretches through Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties.