Republican Larry Hogan proved he can win statewide in deep-blue Maryland, but he has never faced a campaign like the one he is about to undertake.
The former governor has not had to run with Donald Trump atop the ballot or with control of the U.S. Senate on the line. Nor has Hogan had to run against a Democrat who has a chance to make history — a Black woman backed by a nationwide coalition eager to defeat him.
As he seeks to become Maryland’s next senator against the Democratic nominee, Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, Hogan also faces a far different electorate and political climate than when he won his first gubernatorial race a decade ago.
After eight years in Annapolis, he will be forced to defend his record against Democrats no longer willing to celebrate him as a symbol of bipartisan leadership. One target, they say, is his 2022 veto of legislation to expand abortion access in Maryland.
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“We can do it because he has got a bad record,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (D), who lost the 2014 gubernatorial race to Hogan. “We were afraid that if we criticized the governor, we would be viewed as overly partisan.”
They’re not afraid of that anymore, he said.
Democrats who have voted for Hogan in the past may be more reluctant now that his victory could help Republicans capture control of the Senate — a possibility of pointed concern for voters worried about issues such as abortion rights.
Hogan, at his victory party Tuesday night, sought to allay those fears, promising not to be “just another Republican on Capitol Hill” but to “stand up to the current president, the former president, to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.”
He also made a point of addressing concerns about his position on abortion, saying, “Let me set the record straight: To the women of Maryland, you have my word that I will continue to protect your right to make your own reproductive choices.”
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Democrats began pressing their anti-Hogan case soon after the primary ended. Alsobrooks, at her own celebration Tuesday, seized the opportunity to cast Hogan as an ally of the current GOP leadership, labeling him as the “BFF” (best friend forever) of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and saying, “Donald Trump’s Republican Party wants to flip this seat.”
“Let’s be extremely clear about who Larry Hogan is,” said Alsobrooks, before reminding her audience of his abortion access veto and that he canceled a $2.9 billion transit line that would have traversed Baltimore.
Hogan’s cross-party appeal buoyed his 2018 reelection campaign, with one voter survey showing he captured 31 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
He still has Democratic allies.
Bobby Zirkin, a former Maryland state lawmaker who co-chairs Democrats for Hogan, said Wednesday that he is supporting the Republican despite pressure from friends who are “yelling at me” for not backing Alsobrooks.
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“I’ll give you one word: Israel,” said Zirkin by way of explanation, referring to Hogan’s promise to be Maryland’s “pro-Israel champion” in the Senate. “It has made this decision for me very easy.”
Zirkin, a moderate who represented Baltimore County, also praised the former governor for helping to ban fracking and expand the list of crimes that can be expunged from records. “The most progressive things I ever did, Larry Hogan was involved in,” Zirkin said.
For all his posturing as an independent voice, Hogan still needs to assemble a coalition that includes both Republicans who are turned off by his criticism of Trump and those in the GOP who are repelled by the former president’s hold over their party.
“The Republican brand is terrible, and the presidential nominee does not help,” said Michael Steele, Maryland’s former lieutenant governor and former chair of the Republican National Committee who himself has been critical of Trump. “That’s unfortunately baggage Hogan will have to carry largely because Democrats will try to put that baggage on his election cart.”
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Still, said Steele, Hogan’s personal appeal in Maryland — his favorability rating was 77 percent in a poll as his second term in Annapolis ended last year — has long been his most potent political weapon. “Larry is going to be well-prepared to say, ‘I’m not here for the party, I’m here for the people of Maryland,’” Steele said. “He can handle it because it’s clear he’s not someone who is supportive of Trump.”
The campaign to succeed Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat who has been a fixture in Maryland state politics since his election to the House of Delegates in 1966, is sure to be among the nation’s most high-profile in a year when command of the Senate, as well as the White House, is at stake.
As her party’s nominee, and potentially the first Black person to win a Senate seat in Maryland, Alsobrooks is likely to attract Democratic donors from across the country and excite Black voters, especially in Prince George’s County, where she has served as county executive since 2018.
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Yet Alsobrooks is not nearly as well known as Hogan and has never run statewide. She also has presided over a county with rising crime and budget challenges — problems that the former governor can target as he makes his case to voters.
Ben Jealous, the Democrat whom Hogan trounced in the 2018 gubernatorial race, said the national Democratic Party has “repeatedly signaled that they’re not really interested in investing in fistfights” with the former governor. “Democrats are going to have to develop a new muscle for fighting Larry Hogan,” Jealous said. “He is a formidable opponent … and well-packaged candidate.”
Unlike during the 2018 race, Maryland Democrats now plan to unleash their full roster of star players to campaign against Hogan, a cast that includes Gov. Wes Moore, former House majority leader Steny H. Hoyer and Rep. Jamie Raskin. “If Larry Hogan were running as a Democrat or an independent, that would be great,” Raskin said. “The question is whether or not you were going to empower Republicans to control the public agenda.”
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Democrats have controlled Maryland’s two Senate seats since 1987, the year when Barbara A. Mikulski, then a Baltimore-based neighborhood activist, succeeded Sen. Charles Mathias Jr., a centrist Republican who retired rather than seek reelection.
Maryland’s GOP has found periods of success in statewide races, nominating for governor moderates such as Hogan and Robert Ehrlich Jr., who himself stunned Democrats in 2002 when he defeated then-Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
But running for Senate is different than running for governor — especially in 2024 with Trump looming over the Republican Party.
Hogan’s challenge is to separate himself from Trump’s policies and style of politics, even as he runs on the same ticket as the former president, said Mileah Kromer, a Goucher College political science professor.
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“He has to tell voters, ‘Remember me? I’m the governor you liked for eight years, and if you send me to the Senate I will continue to be an independent voice,’” said Kromer, who has written about the former governor’s political rise. “That’s a heavy lift because a lot of Democrats are very afraid of a Republican majority in the Senate in a post-Roe era.”
Democrats, Kromer said, tried to “damage Hogan’s personal brand or lessen his standing” while he was governor “and were not able to do it,” as Hogan’s favorable ratings remained high “for the better part of a decade.”
“It’s not just that he was popular; he was persistently popular,” Kromer said. “That was the benefit of running as an individual. But now you don’t need to make him personally unpopular. You just have to tie him to the Republican majority.”
It’s an open question whether Democrats can convince voters that Hogan is in lockstep with a GOP establishment he has railed against since Trump’s emergence as a force in the party.
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Hogan added to his image as an independent voice in 2020 when he bucked Republican orthodoxy on how to handle the pandemic and later became co-chair of No Labels, a bipartisan third-party movement. He left his post in December, a couple of months before announcing his Senate campaign.
Tethering Hogan to the GOP’s Trump wing will be “a tough noose to hang around his neck,” said Doug Gansler, a Democrat and Maryland’s former attorney general. “He comes across as a regular guy, which makes him very difficult to beat.”
But Gansler also said that Alsobrooks can be a formidable opponent for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that she is running in a state where registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans.
As important, perhaps, is her race and gender, Gansler said, and her potential to inspire Black and female voters. Maryland’s congressional delegation currently features 10 men and no women.
Hogan, who grew up in Prince George’s County and whose father once served in the office Alsobrooks now holds, has shown that he can draw Black support. Between the campaigns of 2014 and 2018, the former governor doubled his support among Black voters.
“The challenge,” Steele said, “is how much of the African American vote Alsobrooks can hold and how much Hogan can take.”
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