Hogan challenges Alsobrooks to disavow Maryland’s recent tax and fee increases

EXCLUSIVE — Former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has penned an open letter to his Senate opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, calling on her to disavow a slate of recent tax and fee increases in Maryland.

In the letter, first obtained by the Washington Examiner, Hogan accuses Alsobrooks, who is the executive of Prince George’s County, of backing the slate of increases, which stem from the Democratic-controlled state legislature and through the state’s Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review Committee.

“I am writing you today to ask you to reverse your support of these new tax and fee hikes and stand with your constituents by joining with me to oppose them,” Hogan wrote. “The burden of these regressive taxes and fees will be paid by the struggling Marylanders who can least afford them.

“With Maryland families already facing the unaffordable cost of living, this is the last thing they need right now,” he added.

When contacted for comment about the letter, Alsobrooks’s communications director touted her tenure as executive of Prince George’s County, which is the second-largest county in the state. The spokeswoman said Alsobrooks has brought “record economic investment without raising taxes at the county level.”

“In the Senate, she’ll fight to reduce costs for hardworking Maryland families all while making sure big corporations pay their fair share,” the spokeswoman said. “That’s why it’s critical that Angela Alsobrooks has the 51st vote in the Senate to hold these massive corporations accountable because Mitch McConnell and Larry Hogan would give those corporations a massive tax break.”

Many of the tax and fee hikes referenced in Hogan’s letter took effect on Monday.

The Tuesday missive is the first open letter of this kind that Hogan has written to Alsobrooks since his campaign for Senate launched in February. The high-stakes race has been closely watched given Hogan’s popularity in the state and Alsobrooks’s primary victory over Rep. David Trone (D-MD) despite him dumping tens of millions of dollars of his own money into the race.

In the letter, Hogan mentions 338 new tax and fee increases. That is a reference to a joint report put out by Republicans in the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates, which has a running list of tax and fee increases imposed under Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), who succeeded Hogan and was sworn into office last year.

Among the changes are increases in vehicle registration fees, which Hogan’s letter said “could hike the cost of buying a used vehicle by thousands of dollars” and tax increases on tobacco products. There is also a new fee on Uber and Lyft rides, among dozens of other increases, according to the report.

In an op-ed about the report, the joint Republican caucus said that while Moore didn’t propose the increases, he also didn’t veto them.

“While we appreciated his original commitment to hold back some of the more egregious tax plans that his Democratic partners in the General Assembly were championing, he has now signed some of these tax increases into law,” the Republicans said.

In Hogan’s Tuesday letter, he also takes aim at Alsobrooks directly.

“As a result of the massive deficit in Prince George’s County, you have been openly talking about raising county taxes,” he wrote. “On the campaign trail, you have been campaigning on a promise to raise Marylanders Social Security taxes. It is simply unconscionable that you would support subjecting your constituents to tax hikes on the local, state, and federal levels.”

Hogan has painted himself as a taxpayer advocate and has touted his record of balancing the budget as governor while avoiding painful tax increases.

“We didn’t have a single tax increase for eight years, the entire time I was governor, and we turned a record $5.1 billion deficit, the worst in Maryland history, into a $5.5 billion record surplus which was the largest in history,” Hogan said during a recent campaign event where he unveiled his affordability agenda.

At the federal level, Hogan has said he wants to champion the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit. The former governor also wants to index housing gains and Social Security taxes to inflation in the tax code, according to the campaign.

He also said he wants to reauthorize a higher standard deduction and eliminate the cap on the deduction for state and local taxes paid, known as the SALT cap.

The federal deduction for SALT was capped at $10,000 by the 2017 Republican tax overhaul, and the cap applies to individual and married filers. Changes to the SALT CAP — namely, raising it or removing it — have long been a priority for Republicans in high-tax states.

Hogan is facing a tough battle against Alsobrooks in a state that hasn’t been represented by a Republican in the Senate since 1987.

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He would likely assume the centrist mantle in the Senate that is being left by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV). During a recent interview with the Washington Examiner, Hogan noted that he previously served as the national co-chairman for third-party movement No Labels, which Manchin was rumored to be a top prospect for, and “worked very closely” with him.

A RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls shows Alsobrooks with a nine-point lead over Hogan.