In February 2021, weeks after January 6, Larry Hogan, then-Republican governor of Maryland and a frequent critic of Donald Trump, told Katie Couric that a battle for the soul of her party was underway – and that Trump’s influence was really be , finally decreasing.
He realizes that the declaration was a bit premature.
“I guess I’m not as smart as I thought I was,” 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 this battle. He knows that many of his Never Trump colleagues have lost re-election, decided to retire or changed their minds. And he’s running for Senate anyway, preparing for a bitter fight that will test whether there is a path forward for anti-Trump Republicans seeking federal office in 2024.
“I kind of feel like I’m running toward the burning building,” Hogan said. But he added: “You can either give up and walk away, or you can keep trying to fight to get things back to where you want them to be.”
Hogan, 67, is a prized recruit who is expected to cruise to victory in Maryland’s Senate primary tomorrow. His surprise entry into the race earlier this year transformed his state into a legitimate Senate battleground — a cherry on top of a Senate map that already favors Republicans.
As Hogan campaigned at the Double T Diner in Annapolis this morning, he was clearly trying to keep his distance from the national party. He spoke warmly to the Democrats in the restaurant, who had no idea he was coming by, before walking to the back of the restaurant, which was decorated with black and yellow campaign signs reading “Country Before Party.”
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 with any of the other candidates,” said William Boulay, 71, a retired Marine commander and Republican who ate pancakes soaked in maple syrup at Hogan’s event. “The biggest problem he has is Trump.”
A call from another former president
Hogan was a little-known real estate executive when he won the 2014 race for governor. Four years later, he easily won re-election, presenting himself as something of a foil to Trump, who clashed with the president over the response to the coronavirus pandemic, Jan. 6 and the way Trump talked about Baltimore.
According to one tracker, Hogan left office in January 2023 with an approval rating of a whopping 77 percent.
Since then, he has repeatedly expressed the idea of running for higher office. He flirted with the idea of running for president. This year, he said, he faced lobbying from the third party No Labels to join their ticket — but he decided against it.
“It wasn’t a party,” Hogan said. “They didn’t have the infrastructure.”
And while speaking to No Labels in New York earlier this year, he said he received a call from former President George W. Bush, joining the chorus of Republicans urging him to consider a run for the Senate .
Hogan said Bush told him, “I think you’re an important voice for the party and for the country, and it’s a voice that’s missing.”
Around the same time, Hogan said, a deal that combined billions of dollars in new border security measures with aid to countries like Ukraine collapsed due to Republican opposition – a development he found both frustrating and puzzling.
“I don’t understand some of the burdens of the current Republican Party, where we are isolated, where we don’t want to stand up for our allies or stand up to our enemies,” he said, adding that it is a modern party and Republicans are ” a politics of personality rather than actual ideas.”
He believes his party will eventually return to its more “traditional,” Reaganesque roots.
“I just don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen,” he said.
A shock for the Democrats
Hogan says he won’t vote for Trump this year and that he doesn’t plan to campaign with him. His strategy of keeping his distance from Trump contrasts with that of another pre-2016 figure who had a big hit this year: former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire who is now running for office there running for governor.
Ayotte, who broke with Trump in 2016 and narrowly lost re-election that year, endorsed him in March.
Hogan’s looming presence in the general election has accelerated the Democratic primary, which, as my colleague Luke Broadwater put it, is turning into a nasty fight between Rep. David Trone, the Total Wine & More magnate with immense personal wealth and bipartisan appeal, and and Angela Alsobrooks, a charismatic county manager who enjoys the support of the state’s Democratic establishment.
Voters are wringing their hands over who appears best positioned to beat Hogan. A Washington Post poll in late March showed him with a double-digit lead in head-to-head matchups with Trone and Alsobrooks; However, other recent polls have shown both Democrats with an advantage over Hogan.
Whoever emerges from the primary will have to contend with voters like Gisela Barry, 80, a Democrat, who was overjoyed when Hogan came to her table at the diner this morning.
“He would be a calming voice” in the Senate, Barry said, explaining that she would “absolutely” vote for him — although her conviction seemed to waver when she considered that it would give Republicans more power during a second Trump presidency could provide.
More races can be seen on Tuesday
A (further) warning for Democrats in Georgia
After President Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia in 2020, Democrats thought they might have a new swing state on their hands – a hope bolstered by the victories of Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in 2021 and 2022. But the latest New York Times polls have sobering news for the state’s Democrats. I asked my colleague Maya King, who covers politics from Atlanta, to tell us more.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll of battleground states found former President Donald Trump leading President Biden by 10 points in a head-to-head matchup among registered voters.
What may be even more worrisome for Georgia Democrats than the top number is this: About 20 percent of black voters support Trump. If this remains the case in November, it would be an astonishing shift of an important part of the Democratic base to the Republicans.
Some Democratic donors and political observers see Georgia as the toughest battleground state for Mr. Biden. Without Stacey Abrams, the two-time candidate for governor, leading a campaign and boosting his robust turnout machine, or without the galvanizing effect of Warnock or Ossoff’s entry into the election, they argue, the president faces a greater challenge. Four years ago, he won the state by about 12,000 votes.
Still, there is evidence to suggest that the Democrats’ apparent advantage on abortion and the significant number of conservatives in Georgia who voted for Nikki Haley are evidence that Trump is weak. They hope that a summer of canvassing and an advertising campaign through the fall will lure black voters, white suburban women and young people into the Democratic corner.
— Mayan King
Source link
2024-05-13 23:03:33
www.nytimes.com
