In February 2021, weeks after January 6, Larry Hogan, then the Republican governor of Maryland and a frequent critic of Donald Trump, told Katie Couric that the battle for the soul of the party was on the line. He said it’s ongoing and that Trump’s influence is really big. , will eventually decrease.
He realizes that declaration was a bit premature.
“I guess I’m not as smart as I think I am,” Hogan told me this morning.
Hogan knows that his side of the party, what he calls the “Republican wing of the Republican Party,” has lost that battle. He knows that many of his fellow Never Trumpers have lost re-election, decided to retire, or changed his attitude. And he’s running for the Senate anyway, preparing for a fierce battle in 2024 that will test whether anti-Trump Republicans have a way to go for federal office.
“It feels like I’m running toward a burning building,” Hogan said. But he added, “You can give up and walk away, or you can keep fighting to get it back to where you want it to be.”
Mr. Hogan, 67, is a valuable newcomer who is expected to seek victory in tomorrow’s Maryland Senate primary. His surprise entry into the race earlier this year made the state a legitimate battleground for the Senate. It’s quite the highlight in a Senate map that already favors Republicans.
Hogan, campaigning this morning at the Double T Diner in Annapolis, made a clear effort to distance himself from the National Party. He spoke warmly with the Democrats at the diner, who didn’t know he was stopping by, before heading to the back of the restaurant, which is decorated with black-and-yellow campaign signs that read “Country Over Party.” I headed to the area.
But even Hogan fans here worry that voters in this deep blue state will be reluctant to give Republicans another vote in the U.S. Senate.
“His biggest problem is not the other candidates,” said William Bouley, 71, a Republican and former Navy commander who was eating pancakes dipped in maple syrup at Mr. Hogan’s event. . “His biggest problem is Trump.”
A call from another former president
Hogan was a little-known real estate company executive when he won the 2014 gubernatorial election. Four years later, he won re-election with flying colors and set himself up as a kind of Trump foil, competing with the president over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Jiang said. .6 and what President Trump said about Baltimore.
Mr. Hogan left office in January 2023 with an impressive 77 percent approval rating, according to one tracker.
Since then, he has frequently teased the idea of ​​running for high office. He came up with the idea of ​​running for president. This year, he said, he was lobbied by third-party group No Labels to join the ticket, but he decided not to participate.
“It wasn’t a party,” Hogan said. “They didn’t have the infrastructure.”
And while speaking with No Labels in New York earlier this year, he said he received a call from former President George W. Bush, who has joined the Republican chorus, urging him to consider running for the Senate. Told.
Mr. Hogan said Mr. Bush told him, “I think you’re an important voice for the party and the country, but it’s the voice that’s missing.”
Around the same time, Hogan said a deal combining billions of dollars in new border security measures and aid to countries like Ukraine collapsed over Republican opposition, a development both frustrating and puzzling. Hogan said he felt that.
“I don’t understand some of the tension in the Republican Party right now, that we’re isolationist and we don’t want to stand up for our allies or stand up to our enemies,” he said, adding that the modern Republican Party is He added: The Republican Party was “a politics of personality rather than actual ideas.”
He thinks his party will eventually return to its “more traditional” Reaganesque roots.
“I don’t know exactly when that will happen,” he said.
Shocking for Democrats
Hogan said he will not vote for Trump this year and has no plans to campaign with him. His strategy to distance himself from Mr. Trump is a reflection of another figure who has made significant strides this year since before 2016: former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire who is currently running for governor. This is in contrast to the strategy of
Ayotte, who parted ways with Trump in 2016 and narrowly lost re-election the same year, endorsed Trump in March.
The Democratic primary is heating up with Hogan’s looming presence in the general election, and as his colleague Luke Broadwater puts it, Total Wine, with his vast personal wealth and bipartisan appeal. &More bigwig Rep. David Trone, and Angela Alsobrooks, a charismatic county executive who has garnered support from the state’s Democratic establishment.
Voters are wringing their hands over who they think is best suited to defeat Hogan. A Washington Post poll in late March found him with a double-digit lead in head-to-head matches against both Tron and Alsobrooks. But other recent polls show both Democrats have an advantage over Mr. Hogan.
Whoever wins the primary will have to contend with voters like Gisela Barry, 80, a Democrat who was elated when Hogan came to her table at a diner this morning.
“He’s going to be a calming voice” in the Senate, Barry said, vowing to “absolutely” vote for him, but in doing so, Trump will give more power to the Republican Party in his second term as president. Her faith seemed to be wavering at the thought of the possibility of giving.
More races to be seen on Tuesday
(Another) warning to Georgia Democrats
After President Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia in 2020, Democrats thought they might be able to pick up another battleground state, but their hopes were set in 2021 and 2022 by Sen. Jon Ossoff. was buoyed by the victory of Sen. Raphael Warnock.However, the latest article in the New York Times vote That’s depressing news for the state’s Democrats.I asked my colleague maya kingWe asked Mr. , who covers politics from Atlanta, to tell us more about it.
Former President Donald Trump has a 10-point lead over President Biden among registered voters in a head-to-head race in the state, according to the latest poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College in the battleground state. found.
Even more worrying for Georgia Democrats than the top-line numbers may be that about 20 percent of black voters support Trump. If that happens in November, it would signal a surprising shift of a significant portion of the Democratic base to the Republican Party.
Some Democratic donors and political observers see Georgia as Biden’s most difficult battleground state. Unless Stacey Abrams, a two-time candidate for governor, launches a strong voter turnout machine with her campaign, or the energizing effects of Warnock and Ossoff appearing on the ballot. But, they argue, the president faces even tougher challenges. He won the state four years ago by about 12,000 votes.
Still, some point to the clear Democratic advantage on abortion and the significant number of conservatives who voted for Nikki Haley in Georgia as evidence that President Trump is weak. They hope a summer of campaigning and advertising blitz will bring black voters, white suburban women and young people to Democratic support by the fall.
— maya king
