Larry Hogan, former Republican Governor, vies for Senate seat in Democratic stronghold Maryland

BALTIMORE — Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s entrance into the Maryland Senate race for retiring Sen. Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) seat is offering Republicans what might be their best shot in decades to flip a seat in the deep-blue stronghold.

Hogan, who had been floated as a possible third-party presidential candidate for months before opting out, earlier this year launched his bid for the Senate seat Cardin first won in 2006. Hogan’s entrance into the race has scrambled the Senate playing field, with Democrats facing a tough map to hold on to their current majority, at 51 seats to 49 for Republicans. At the very least, Hogan’s candidacy will force Democrats to spend time and money on a race they had long assumed to be safely in their column.

Hogan finished his 2015-23 governorship with strong approval ratings. He’ll face the winner of the May 14 Democratic primary. Both Democratic figures lack Hogan’s name recognition: Rep. David Trone (D-MD) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

The race is the latest to test whether a popular governor can win a Senate seat in a state where he or she belongs to the minority party. While voters are often willing to split tickets for gubernatorial candidates, running are what are effectively technocratic, managerial positions, they often take a different view when those same political figures try to reach the Senate, where partisanship rules and holding the majority is everything.

Recent governors in Hogan’s position haven’t fared so well when trying to make the leap. For instance, Linda Lingle was a Republican governor of Hawaii, which rivals Maryland as one of the nation’s most Democratic states, from 2002-10. But she lost a 2012 Senate race, 63%-37%, to Democrat Mazie Hirono. Conversely, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen was a popular Democratic figure at home as chief executive of his strongly Republican state from 2003-11. Still, he got crushed in a 2018 Senate race against Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), 55%-44%. And Montana Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, at the end of his eight year term, ran for Senate against Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT). Bullock had until then bucked Montana’s deep-red tinge, even winning reelection as governor in 2016 as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump swept the state while winning the White House. But Bullock in 2020 lost the Senate race against Daines 55%-45%.

A big bucks contest

The Maryland Senate race has already proven to be expensive, with Hogan raising a total of $3.1 million from his campaign and two political action committees. However, Trone, co-founder of the Total Wine & More chain, has largely self-funded his campaign. Trone, who has represented the western Maryland and northwestern Washington exurbs since 2019, has loaned his campaign over $40 million dollars since its start.

Alsobrooks has also proven to have a deep war chest, having raised more than $6.1 million from individual donations since the start of her campaign. She can also claim name recognition locally, having been the state’s attorney of Prince George’s County for eight years before winning the county executive post in 2018.

A recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, in which Hogan led both Trone and Alsobrooks by 12 points and 14 points respectively, may have provided a much-needed boost to Hogan’s campaign, adding more weight to his run.

Whatever Hogan’s popularity during and after his governorship, Maryland is still a deeply Democratic state. In 2020, President Joe Biden beat Trump in the Old Line State by about 65% to 32%. The last successful Republican Senate bid in the state was Sen. Charles M. Mathias Jr., who won the final six-year term of his 18-year tenure in 1980.

Still, that same poll also found that voters preferred having a Democratic Senate, highlighting the battle Hogan will have in swaying voters to his side during a presidential year — particularly with Biden, a familiar figure in Maryland since he hails from next-door Delaware. As a senator from 1973-2009, before eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden regularly rode the train home through Maryland, making him a familiar figure in the state.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner on opening day for the Baltimore Orioles, Hogan, 67, expressed confidence about the Senate race. He alluded to several Senate races viewed as stronger Republican pickup opportunities, such as the virtual sure thing in West Virginia, where Republican Gov. Jim Justice is expected to replace retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are trying to hold on to their Senate seats amid a torrent of GOP criticism and campaigning against them.

“I get it is a hurdle to overcome. We have not elected a senator since 1980 that was a Republican in the state. And there is a battle for control of the Senate — it’s not going to come down to the bluest state in America,” Hogan said. “There are 10 or 12 other states that are much more likely to swing the Senate, but I will be a Republican, reasonable person with common sense that’ll go down there and try to keep things from going off the rails and try to represent people in both parties and everybody in Maryland.”

Hogan’s acknowledgment that the race will be a challenging one comes as he has attempted to distance himself from Trump, with whom he tangled while governor, including Trump’s unwillingness to distribute COVID-19 face masks in Maryland and other states and the president’s refusal to send federalized National Guard troops to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to quell the riot that aimed to keep him in office after losing to Biden. Hogan, as governor, sent 500 members of the Maryland National Guard and 200 state troopers to Washington, D.C., that day.

Hogan was only the second Republican governor of Maryland since GOP Gov. Spiro Agnew left Annapolis in January 1969 to become vice president under President Richard Nixon. Hogan won the 2014 Maryland open-seat gubernatorial race. He then won his reelection bid in the state in 2018 by 55.4% to Democrat Ben Jealous’s 43.5%. Hogan pointed to his success in the state when asked how he hopes to balance winning over Trump voters despite being vocally opposed to Trump in the past.

“I ran 46 points ahead of Donald Trump in Maryland,” he said. “I’m hoping that I can win over all of, like I have before, all of the Trump voters plus all of the swing voters, and in Maryland, you have to win all the Republicans, all the independents, and a third of the Democrats in order to be elected. That’s what I did twice.”

David Karol, professor at the University of Maryland, said he believes Hogan’s public rebuke of Trump will be a challenge for him, both in courting Republican voters and separating himself from Trump for independent and Democratic voters when they both will be on the ticket in November.

“What Gov. Hogan is trying to do is difficult,” Karol said. “He developed a personal brand in Maryland that he wasn’t a typical national Republican.”

In addition, Karol said, Hogan “never supported Trump. He tried to stay away from the abortion issue. That’s all going to be a lot harder now for him because he’s on the ballot along with Trump and then the abortion vote. And so I don’t think it’s going to be easy for him to continue to separate himself.”

Karol noted that there are “far fewer Republicans today who are willing to buck Trump publicly.”

Hogan “will run ahead of Trump and Maryland by several points,” he said. “But the question is: Is it going to be enough?”

A mix of national and local issues

Two issues are likely to shape the race: abortion and the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that killed six people and will have a huge impact on the state’s economy.

Abortion has plagued Republicans the past two cycles after the overturning of Roe v. Wade returned abortion policy to the states. It has forced Republican candidates to take a stance on abortion and cost the party dozens of races on both the local and national levels.

Hogan told the Washington Examiner that he would not vote for a national abortion ban, rebuking claims that he would be the deciding vote if elected to the upper chamber.

Hogan also disagreed that voters were concerned about his stance on abortion.

“Well, I don’t think any voters are concerned,” Hogan said. “I think they’re just false attacks by the Democrats.”

Also on top of mind for Maryland voters will be the rebuilding of the Baltimore bridge, which collapsed after a cargo ship crashed into a support beam.

He continued, “And so it’s going to be a long process that they got from this, and it’s not just the immediate tragedy of the lost lives. It’s going to be an economic impact. It’s going to be long-lasting.”