Former presidential candidate and current U.S. senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) weighed in on Maryland’s attorney general race Friday, throwing her support behind Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.).

       The open contest is the most competitive for attorney general in years, pitting former allies against each other and dividing big names in Democratic politics into two camps. Deep-blue Maryland hasn’t elected a Republican attorney general since 1952.

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       Warren said in a statement she supports Brown in the July primary because she thinks Brown will not back down and will stand up for residents who need him. The Brown campaign noted he worked with Warren on renaming military bases that honor Confederate leaders and lowering cost of medical supplies during the pandemic.

       “I know Anthony is a fighter,” Warren said in a statement. She said she expected Brown to “advance the big, bold, structural change that Marylanders deserve.”

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       Brown faces former judge Katie Curran O’Malley, who is also the wife of former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley. Brown was O’Malley’s lieutenant governor for eight years.

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       Curran O’Malley picked up the endorsement of former U.S. senator Barbara A. Mikulski this week, which followed Brown’s collection of the coveted endorsement of the 76,000-member state teachers union, the Maryland State Education Association.

       The pair are locked in the state’s first competitive attorney general primary since a brutal contest in 2006, when one candidate successfully threw the another off the ballot in court.

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       Brown has also locked up support from some of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, including U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer and Reps. Kweisi Mfume and David Trone.