Post-Hogan, can fractured Maryland Republicans win any statewide race?
Where’s Larry Hogan? Or maybe the better question is: Where’s the next Larry Hogan? The Maryland Republican Party enters 2024 badly splintered with the biggest plank in its eye named Donald J. Trump. The former president may well win the state’s Republican primary on May 14 when all but a handful of states have already cast their ballots, but whether his name appears on the general election ballot in November is nearly irrelevant. Trump won’t win Maryland. You can take that to the bank. He didn’t in 2016 or 2020. And as long as Joe Biden has a pulse (or steps down), he looks like he’s got a lock in the Free State.
That’s not especially bold talk, it’s just the numbers. Polls show former Governor Hogan, a staunch Trump critic, remains very popular in this state. Not only did Trump collect just 32.2% of the general election vote in Maryland four years ago, but his pick for governor, former Del. Dan Cox, got trounced by a similar 2-to-1 margin in 2022. Oh, the MAGA message works fine in the state’s most rural, least populous counties. If Garrett County decided statewide elections, Republicans would be on top of the heap, but capturing Maryland’s most western subdivision by a nearly 4-to-1 margin as Trump did in 2020 (12,002 to 3,281) does you no good when Joe Biden takes Prince George’s County by a 10-to-1 margin (379,208 to 37,090).
So what would any sensible political party do? They’d be looking for a candidate who can draw votes not just from the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland but from Central Maryland where most people live. Replacing retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin with a Republican is a pipe dream. With all due respect to political novice John Teichert, the retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general living in Anne Arundel County who has filed to run for Cardin’s seat (or others who may be running), Maryland Democrats aren’t likely to want to tip the U.S. Senate to GOP control, at least not this year, and a Republican candidate can’t win the state without crossover votes.
Incredibly, there’s reason for optimism for Republicans who can see the long game. Lawmakers return to Annapolis this month facing a substantial budget deficit. Big cuts and possible tax increases are going to be on the table and, inevitably, when tough decisions need to be made, some voters will be left unhappy. It was then-Gov. Martin O’Malley’s tax increases, especially making the state income tax more progressive and a penny increase in the sales tax, that opened the door to Hogan in 2014. The Prince George’s countian played his cards exactly right — staying away from culture war issues like abortion rights while vowing to protect Marylanders from the inevitable excesses of one-party rule.
There are potential GOP candidates out there who could follow that middle-of-the-road script. House Minority Leader Jason Buckel of Allegany County has gotten noticed, as has the Upper Eastern Shore’s Stephen Hershey Jr., who holds the same role in the Maryland Senate. The same could be said of former state Sen. Barry Glassman, who also served as Harford County executive before losing the statewide race for comptroller by a 23-point margin in 2022 (the loss looks more respectable when compared to Cox’s 32-point shellacking or Michael Peroutka’s 30-point trouncing in the state attorney general race).
Yet here’s the real concern: With so little success at the big elected offices, how much power can Republicans wield in Annapolis? The smaller counties might still be dominated by GOP local officeholders, but within the so-called “Big 8” — the state’s largest subdivisions — only one, Harford County, elected a GOP county executive/mayor in 2022. Of the Maryland General Assembly’s 188 members, 134 are Democrats.
Outnumbered so badly, one might assume the Republican Party would be looking to change course from their woeful mid-term failures. But you won’t hear that from U.S. Rep. Andy Harris who hews the Trump line in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District. Or from Cox, the failed gubernatorial candidate who is now running to succeed Democrat David Trone in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District on a platform that includes a promise to enable more people to legally carry concealed handguns — hardly the path to winning crucial precincts in Montgomery County.
The more the Maryland GOP continues to be the party of Trump, the less it can be a viable alternative to the Democratic Party that Maryland needs right now.