Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is having to navigate tricky political terrain after Donald Trump endorsed him in the state’s Senate race — no doubt a disadvantage for a Republican in the deep blue state.
Trump told Fox News last week that he would like to see Hogan win, even though the former governor has emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics in recent years.
Hogan has since taken steps to distance himself from Trump, including publishing an ad touting his independence, highlighting the difficulty he faces facing Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in November.
“It is more than anything illustrative of the problem that will plague Governor Hogan throughout this campaign, which is that no matter what he does or says to distance himself from Donald Trump, that will always be the canopy over which he commands this race.” , said Len Foxwell, a Maryland-based Democratic strategist.
Hogan’s decision to run shook up the race to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), in what otherwise would have been an easy victory for Democrats. Hogan won a surprise victory when he was elected governor in 2014 and was comfortably re-elected in 2018, the first Republican to be re-elected as the state’s chief executive since the 1950s.
He campaigned both times as a moderate Republican and enjoyed a high approval rating that placed him as one of the most popular governors in the country during his term in office. During Trump’s time in office, Hogan emerged as one of the Republican Party’s most prominent critics of the former president — drawing plaudits from all sides of the aisle and briefly sparking speculation that he might seek to run for president in 2024.
Instead, Hogan made the surprise announcement to run for Senate, a hurdle that gave Republicans hope of landing a Republican senator in a blue state and increasing their chances of regaining control of the House.
Since then, Hogan has sought to emphasize his independent streak and convince voters that he would not automatically side with other Senate Republicans if elected. He said he would support federal legislation to codify abortion protections into law and would sponsor legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). He also stated that Republicans could not count on his vote in the Senate.
Hogan also said he will not support Trump in the presidential election. In response to Trump’s endorsement, a Hogan campaign spokesperson counted Fox News that the governor “has made clear he is not supporting Donald Trump, just as he did not in 2016 and 2020.”
But Democrats say Hogan will have a hard time separating himself from the Republican label, and Trump in particular, now that the former president has given him his support.
“This really crystallizes the arguments that Democrats are going to use against Hogan, which is that voting for Hogan, whether you like him personally or not, is a vote for Republican control of the Senate and a vote for Trump’s agenda.” Foxwell said.
He said Hogan’s response that he does not support Trump was a necessary statement he made, but the governor still faces a challenge in a race with national implications beyond Maryland.
Hogan followed up his response to the endorsement with an ad released on Monday in which he did not mention Trump by name, but highlighted instances of Republicans acting independently, including the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voting against repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and Hogan’s own record responding to the COVID-19 pandemic as governor.
He said Washington needs “strong, independent leaders” and quoted former President John F. Kennedy as saying “Sometimes party loyalty demands too much.”
The Hill has reached out to Hogan’s campaign for comment.
Alsobrooks campaign spokesman Connor Lounsbury argued that running as an independent voice will be a tough sell for Hogan.
“The reason Trump wants Hogan to win is the same reason Hogan wants Hogan to win, is they have a majority in the Senate. And I think we can all attest to the fact that the majority controls 100 percent of the agenda, period,” Lounsbury said.
Democrats also accused Hogan of changing direction on abortion, pointing to comments in which he avoided saying whether he would support bills to codify Roe and protect in vitro fertilization. They also pointed to legislation he vetoed as governor, he required most insurance plans to cover abortions and lifted the requirement that only doctors be able to perform them and his decision to to retain funding allocated to train new abortion providers.
“I don’t know what to say other than the puck is loud and clear here,” Lounsbury said.
Meanwhile, Republicans stress that Hogan can support his position as an independent and say the platform is more important than Democratic attempts to link him to Trump.
Republican strategist Doug Heye, who worked on former Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele’s unsuccessful Senate bid in 2006, said Democrats would still try to link Trump and Hogan even though the former president continually criticized him. He said the same thing happened in 2006, with Steele linked to the unpopular President George W. Bush despite Steele’s willingness to criticize the administration.
“Those Democrats who voted twice for Larry Hogan, or those independent voters who voted twice for Hogan, know what Hogan said, and that’s more important to them, I think, than Trump essentially saying that, as a Republican, he supports the Republican candidate,” Heye said.
Trump’s endorsement of Hogan, notably, did not come in the same big announcement made for his other endorsements. He just said he “would like to see [Hogan] win” in an interview with Fox and did not post on Truth Social that Hogan has his “complete and total endorsement,” as he often does with other candidates.
Hogan’s campaign did not expand its comment on Trump’s endorsement beyond the brief opening statement.
Hogan himself reportedly told Fox in a spring interview that Trump losing Maryland in 2020 by more than 30 points would not be “helpful,” but he hopes to “overcome that challenge.”
Still, Heye said having Trump’s support is better than the criticism Hogan received from Trump surrogates just before the endorsement.
After Hogan said Americans should respect the guilty verdict in Trump’s silence case last month, Trump adviser Chris LaCivita wrote in a post on X that Hogan “just ended” his campaign. Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump said Hogan “does not deserve the respect” of anyone in the Republican Party or the country.
But Trump’s word is what matters, Heye said.
“This allows him to continue to have this conversation with a very diverse group of people,” he said.
State Sen. Justin Ready (R), also a strategist, said Hogan has developed his own “brand” of Republican politics and will benefit from having a track record for running. He said Marylanders will be better able to trust Hogan’s word because of his time as governor, compared to if he were running for public office for the first time as a businessman.
Ready noted that Hogan won in 2018, in a difficult year for Republicans nationally.
“I think it’s well established that he’s been pretty independent of the national Republican scene and is a Republican, but his focus is on a lot of consensus-based issues,” he said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
