Why Larry Hogan’s long-odds bid for a Senate seat matters
FEW REPUBLICAN politicians differ more from Donald Trump than Larry Hogan, the GOP Senate candidate in Maryland. Consider the contrasts between a Trump rally and a Hogan event. Whereas Mr Trump prefers to take the stage and riff in front of packed arenas, Mr Hogan spent a recent Friday night chatting with locals at a waterfront wedding venue in Baltimore County. Mr Hogan’s stump speech, at around ten minutes, felt as long as a single off-script Trump tangent. Mr Trump delights in defying his advisers; Mr Hogan fastidiously sticks to talking points about bipartisanship, good governance and overcoming tough odds. Put another way, Mr Hogan’s campaign is something Mr Trump is rarely accused of being: boring. But it is intriguing.
The last Republican to run for Senate in Maryland won only 34% of the vote. Angela Alsobrooks, this year’s Democratic nominee, has deep experience in Maryland politics and leads Mr Hogan in polling, sometimes by double digits. The Economist’s election forecast gives him a mere 6% chance of winning.
But donors appear more optimistic. The former Maryland governor enters the final stretch unusually well-heeled for such a long-shot effort. As of October 6th, his campaign and allied groups are set to spend $30m on advertising in the state of 6m people between Labour Day and the election, $13m more than Democrats. Republicans are spending more money on the Senate race in Maryland than the theoretically more competitive races in Arizona ($23m) and Nevada ($19m). For context, Joe Biden won Maryland by 33 points in 2020. He held off Mr Trump by 0.3 points in the Grand Canyon State and by just over two in the home of Las Vegas.
Mr Hogan has a history of winning. He trailed in polls throughout his gubernatorial campaign in 2014 before winning nearly 52% of the vote, and he easily won re-election four years later in a tough cycle for Republicans. By the time he left office he boasted a 77% approval rating.
Some Republicans at his event in Middle River acknowledged that the former governor wasn’t as conservative as they’d like; he has criticised Mr Trump vociferously and said he supported codifying abortion rights at the federal level. But, with a degree of pragmatism unusual in today’s Republican Party, some of his conservative supporters acknowledged that is the cost of winning independent and even Democratic voters. If Mr Hogan governed as a centrist, he at least kept higher taxes at bay.
A deeply flawed Democratic candidate might have paved the way for a more competitive race, but Ms Alsobrooks, the executive of Prince George’s County, has run a professional campaign. She largely sticks to policies advocated by Kamala Harris: not raising taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year; endorsing a bipartisan immigration bill stalled earlier this year; and calling for the end of the filibuster in the Senate. She says that Israel isn’t committing genocide in Gaza. Republicans knock Ms Alsobrooks for claiming tax credits she didn’t qualify for in Washington and Maryland. The campaign says she is working to resolve the issue and repay any credits, and Mr Hogan himself has said that voters shouldn’t necessarily make up their mind based on tax mistakes.
“I like and respect Angela Alsobrooks,” Mr Hogan said during opening remarks at a debate on October 10th. But as the candidates began to squabble over Mr Hogan’s record on abortion, he shot back that “her whole campaign is based on lies.” The candidates argued sharply over taxes, guns and reproductive rights, but her most potent attack may be simply pointing out that Mr Hogan is a Republican, linked to national Republican figures unpopular in the state.“
In the Senate, you operate as a part of a team,” Ms Alsobrooks argues. “The team that Larry Hogan would empower is one that is, first of all, literally led by Donald Trump.” She adds that control of the Senate runs through Maryland—a bit of a stretch given that Republicans have a much better chance of winning toss-up contests in red states like Ohio and Montana.
Mr Hogan declined to accept Mr Trump’s endorsement, and made clear he will disagree plenty with potential Republican colleagues. He even says he is “very similar” to Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, Senate Democrats turned independents who are retiring next year. But Mr Hogan, citing the two maverick senators, has no interest in leaving the GOP. “While I admire both of them, they didn’t choose to run as an independent for Senate because the process is so difficult. There’s not much of a path to success,” he says. “They had to work through the party system, and I have to as well.” ■
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