I Have Two Questions for Maryland Senate Candidate Larry Hogan
Voters need to know if the former governor plans on handing the keys to the Senate over to Ted Cruz
A couple weeks ago, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Ben Cardin. A poll released shortly after his announcement found Hogan, a Republican, faring well against the two main contenders for the Democratic nomination: Hogan was tied with Representative David Trone 42%-42% and ahead of Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks 44%-36%.
It’s way too early to put much stock in those polls, but they do speak to Hogan’s strength in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nearly 2-1 margin. Hogan obviously saw something in those numbers or sensed something in the wind that led him to believe he has a decent shot at winning.
Hogan has a strong brand in Maryland. First elected in 2014 with 51% of the vote and re-elected four years later following a cancer diagnosis with a 55% majority, Hogan developed a reputation as a moderate pro-business Republican governor who focused on administrative matters rather than ideological battles. He often clashed with environmentalists and teachers unions and staked out positions to the right of the Democratic-led legislature, but his opposition to Democratic bills was typically framed as a matter of degree rather than a repudiation of Democratic priorities. Democrats eventually won supermajorities in the statehouse, which rendered Hogan superfluous to the legislative process but also kept him from getting pinned down on controversial matters of policy. He earned the admiration of many on the left for two reasons: His steadfast leadership during the pandemic, and his willingness to condemn Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Hogan left office in 2023 with a 70% approval rating.
Hogan had flirted with running for president both in 2020 and 2024 as a Republican and over the past year as a candidate on the No Labels ticket. He surprised many when he threw his hat in the ring as a senate candidate. Given his high name recognition and popularity in Maryland, national Republicans feel like they have a chance to pick up a senate seat in a deep blue state. I would contend the race still leans blue, but if any Republican can pull off this sort of upset in Maryland, it’s Hogan.
I completely understand why independents and even Democrats would vote for Hogan in the general election. He’s a thoughtful, conscientious, and highly competent politician, the very definition of a public servant. These are extraordinary times, though, and voters shouldn’t assume positive results will simply flow from installing a statesman in the Senate. So I’ve got two questions Hogan needs to answer before any Democrat or independent even begins to consider voting for him.
1. “When it comes time for the weekly party caucus meetings, will you be following Chris Van Hollen or Ted Cruz into the conference room?”
I assume Hogan, a Republican, would follow Ted Cruz into the conference room. That’s an instant deal breaker.
I get it: Hogan would say he is not a reckless Republican like Cruz, that he disagrees with Cruz on a lot of big issues, and that he wouldn’t vote in lockstep with Cruz. Hogan is more independent minded than that. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that by joining Cruz, Hogan empowers Cruz, particularly if Hogan helps tip the majority in the razor-thin Senate toward the Republican Party.
Majority control matters a lot in legislative politics. Politics is a team sport. Senators (even independent senators) have to pick a side, and the side you want to be on is the majority. It’s the majority that sets the agenda, the majority that runs committees, the majority that bands together to pass legislation. The minority just sits back and watches. Granted, it’s somewhat different in the Senate because of the filibuster (although it only takes a majority to pass budget bills and confirm judicial and political appointees) but it’s still the majority that drives the action. The responsibility for running the country lies primarily with majority parties.
By caucusing with Republicans, Larry Hogan would be indicating he wants Ted Cruz and every other Republican to play a bigger role in running the country than Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen and his Democratic colleagues. And it wouldn’t only be Cruz whom Hogan would be putting in charge of the country. It would also be people like this guy:
That’s Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, firing up protesters on 1/6 before heading to the floor of the Senate to undermine the 2020 election. (He would be followed to the floor a few hours later by those protesters.) Cruz and Hawley joined senators Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall, John Kennedy, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Cynthia Lummis, and Rick Scott in rejecting at least one state’s electoral votes that evening. A few weeks later, all but seven Republicans found Donald Trump not guilty during his second impeachment trial. And few months later, only six Republican senators voted to create a commission to investigate what happened on 1/6. Today, most Republican senators downplay the significance of 1/6, an event Larry Hogan as governor of Maryland sent National Guard troops to Washington to suppress.
If Hogan caucused with Republicans, he would be empowering a group that, according to Mitt Romney, listens to Trump speak, laughs their asses off when he leaves the room, and then walks to cameras to tell Americans how great he is even though they know he’s a danger to the republic. It means caucusing with and empowering people like Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and J.D. Vance who are all too cowardly to stand up to a man they once derided as a threat to the republic. It means caucusing with and empowering idiots like Ron Johnson (who tried to slip a list of fake electors to Mike Pence on 1/6) and Tommy Tuberville (who held up military promotions for months on end because he didn’t like abortion policy). It means caucusing with and empowering vaccine deniers like Rand Paul. It means caucusing with and empowering an ardent band of pro-life, pro-gun, pro-global-warming politicians.
It means caucusing with and empowering a group of people who demanded the inclusion of a conservative border bill in a foreign aid package they took hostage, and who then voted against the bill on Trump’s orders not because the bill was deficient (it contained nearly everything they wanted!) but because Trump wanted to deny Democrats a victory on immigration policy. It means caucusing with and empowering a group of people who are daily becoming more and more like the unruly House Republican majority that can barely keep the government functioning. If Hogan caucused with Republicans, it would be like handing the car keys to a drunk driver and then climbing into the backseat for the ride.
Sure, some people will say that if Hogan chose to caucus with the Democrats, he’d be empowering the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. That’s true, he would be empowering people who support policy he disagrees with. But he would also be empowering people who believe in responsible governance and democracy. That’s a pretty basic standard to meet, and something, by the way, that fits very nicely with Hogan’s vision of himself as a statesman. To extend the analogy, if Hogan caucused with the Democrats, he would hand the keys off to a sober driver, and while Hogan may not arrive at his preferred destination, it would be within the realm of acceptable destinations, and he wouldn’t have died in a fiery wreck while travelling there.
In review: This election isn’t simply about empowering Larry Hogan. It’s also about who else Larry Hogan empowers, and that’s supremely important at this moment in time. Hogan is going to say he’s an “independent voice,” but what matters more is that so long as he plans on caucusing with Ted Cruz and Co., he has terrible taste in friends.
2. “What effect do you think your presence can have on the Republican caucus?”
To counter the above argument, Hogan will insist he’ll be the adult room, the voice of reason, the check on the GOP’s worst instincts, the person who pulls the Republican Party back from the brink. To which I reply:
Hogan probably means well, but has he been following the Republican Party lately? Has he heard of Mitt Romney? Jeff Flake? Bob Corker? Rob Portman? Pat Toomey? Liz Cheney? Adam Kinzinger? What makes Hogan think he’ll be any more successful standing up to Donald Trump and reining in his wayward party than these people were? Despite their defiance, the Republican Party has only gotten crazier.
Maybe Hogan thinks he’s the second coming of Mitt Romney, the Jiminy Cricket of the GOP. OK, but Romney is headed for the exits, bruh. Romney spent six years in the Senate saving the Republican Party from itself and they thanked him by forcing him to retire and re-re-nominating Trump. Or perhaps Hogan thinks he’s some sort of Elephant Whisperer able to miraculously tame the MAGA beast. But how is Hogan going to convince someone like Lindsey Graham to break-up with Trump when Lindsey Graham couldn’t even convince Lindsey Graham to break-up with Trump?
The United States does not need yet another conscientious Republican operating under the delusion that their presence is required to talk sense to their Category-5 hurricane of a party while bothsides-ing Democrats. What this country needs instead is more Democrats, that is, politicians who will deny Republicans power and govern responsibly.
The Republican Party isn’t exactly an institution someone can reliably reason with anymore. If Hogan thinks he can keep the party from cracking up or that he needs to be there to reassemble the pieces after it’s fallen apart, he’s completely oblivious to the urgent work that needs to be done right now, which is defeating the GOP and shattering it into a million pieces. Given the magnitude of the threat, Hogan should be helping those swinging the hammer. I’m constantly amazed by the arrogance of the small band of moderate Republicans who have convinced themselves it is their brand of tempered conservatism that Americans will ultimately rally around to deliver us from this moment when they could be putting the center into a center-left coalition instead.
There’s a big difference in a blue state like Maryland between sending a Republican to the governor’s mansion and sending a Republican to the Senate. In Annapolis, a Republican governor will be overwhelmed by the Democratic legislature; at worst, they’ll be able to pump the brakes on Democratic ambitions. In Washington, a Republican senator could aid and abet the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz simply by picking which side of the chamber to sit on. I hope enough voters are savvy enough to realize that distinction between state and national government.
It will be tempting for independent and Democratic voters to check that box for Larry Hogan this November. I completely understand the impulse. I have a lot of respect for the former governor. But Maryland voters need to ask themselves this question before siding with Hogan: Why send someone to the Senate who will only empower a reckless and irresponsible Republican Party, a party they erroneously believe they can tame? The answer is there is no good reason to do that, because there is no good reason at the moment to empower the Republican Party or to believe the Republican Party has the potential to reform itself. Larry Hogan may be an honorable statesman, but so long as he chooses to side with the GOP, voters need to keep him out of the Senate.
Signals and Noise
Following up on my article from last week:
“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by Ezra Klein of the New York Times
“It’s Time for the White House to Put Up or Shut Up” by Nate Silver
A recent YouGov poll provides a good reminder from Political Science 101: 60% of voters already know which presidential candidate they’re going to vote for in the 2024 election, and another 25% are strongly leaning toward one candidate or the other. Only 15% are undecided.
BREAKING: Don Trump triumphed over Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary. It’s a tough loss for Haley, as she is a former governor of South Carolina. But Trump, who was heavily favored regardless, still only won 3 out of every 5 votes. Haley plans to continue campaigning.
G. Elliott Morris of ABC News points out that if Biden had only won 60% in a primary, people would be freaking out.
And Josh Marshall of TPM: “It’s fair to say that this is Haley’s home state. She was two-term governor. That must figure into the equation. But 40% isn’t that different from the 43.2% she got in New Hampshire or the 40.3% Haley and Ron DeSantis got between them in Iowa. I’m not going to speculate what it means for the general election. But this is a lot of persistent opposition for a candidate who has always been running as a de facto incumbent. Even if you set that de facto incumbency aside, it’s quite a lot for a candidate who is, whatever technicalities you want to get caught up in, the presumptive nominee. 40% of Republican primary voters are still showing up to say they don’t want Trump even when they know they’re definitely going to get him.”
ALSO BREAKING: The annual conservative conference CPAC was held this weekend with Trump as its keynote speaker, and it was
Where do we even start?
CNN found this year’s version of CPAC was a celebration of 1/6. As one speaker said, “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.” It was apparently so extreme, former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod urged the Biden campaign to pay voters to watch it.
And Axelrod said that before the Nazis showed up. Nazis and white supremacists have attempted to attend before and were kicked out, but this year they were allowed to stay. Ben Goggin of NBC News attended a Young Republicans event where the Nazis discussed race theories and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Others openly used the n-word. Rep. Elise Stefanik, who decried the presence of anti-Semitism at Ivy League schools during a congressional hearing a few months ago, spoke at CPAC but said nothing about the presence of Nazis among her own politically like-minded people.
Trump’s speech was full of lies, as cataloged by Daniel Dale of CNN. But one of the weirder moments occurred when he called his wife “Mercedes.” And people think Biden is loosing it. Is Trump just loopy? If not, who is Mercedes?
Isaac Arnsdorf, Nick Miroff, and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post report Trump and his allies are planning a mass militarized deportation effort that would utilize detention camps in an effort to crackdown on illegal migration should he win re-election.
“We’re going to take over Washington, D.C. We’re going to federalize. We’re going to have very powerful crime.”—Don Trump, on FOX News. Say all you want about Biden’s age or his verbal gaffes, but Trump is in a league of his own when it comes to looniness. (Or maybe he’s serious: Maybe he will bring crime with him back to DC.)
Don Trump finally mentioned Alexei Navalny’s death…and immediately segued into a generic complaint about the current state of the United States.
Is this the next line of attack that will grip the Conservativerse and that liberals will need to fend off? From Don Trump: “They want to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags. But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.”
A Manhattan jury held the leaders of the NRA liable for financial misconduct after finding they had spent millions of dollars raised by the special interest group on lavish personal expenses.
Trump owes $87,000 per day in interest alone ($600,000 per week) stemming from the outcome of his civil fraud case. CBS reports the interest payments are closer to $112,000 per day.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign is suffering from a dearth of new donors and fundraising anxiety at a time when campaign funds are being used to pay his legal bills. Bill Allison of Bloomberg estimates Trump will drain his own campaign coffers by July if he continues to use them to pay his lawyers. Daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who Trump has picked to co-chair the RNC, thinks the RNC ought to foot the ex-president’s legal bills. Some in the RNC are expressing concerns about that.
Having only refunded $400 to a single donor in 2023, Roger Sollenberger of The Daily Beast wonders what the Trump campaign is doing with donations that exceed the legal amount. It appears Trump’s campaign is attributing the excessive amount to other donors who have not yet maxed out their legal contributions.
“I saw my friends walk away when they were determined to pass a border security, and they were on board three days before that. And with Donald Trump coming as hard as he came at them, they cower down and walked away. I said, ‘We’re not fixing anything in Washington.’”—Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, explaining why he won’t be running for president this year as a third-party candidate. Did he maybe, just maybe realize the problem with “Washington” isn’t two parties that refuse to work together but a Republican Party that’s completely off its rocker?
“They’ve signed up to do serious things. And we’re not doing serious things.”—Retiring Republican Rep. Ken Buck (CO) on Republican retirements in the House.
“Wonderful! We can’t save America with the current Republican team. We have to get tougher and smarter. We need newer, bolder voices in the House.”—Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL) on Republican retirements in the House.
Juliegrace Brufke of Axios reports House Republicans are now anticipating a government shutdown. Spending bills need to be passed by March 1 and March 8 to keep the government open. Over the past few months, Congress has repeatedly passed stopgap spending bills to keep the government operating. If Congress doesn’t pass a budget by April 30, an automatic 1% across-the-board cut kicks in, which some Republicans are fine with.
House Democrats have apparently initiated a discharge petition for Ukraine aid.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson denounced President Biden’s plan to take executive action at the border even though Johnson said Biden should do just that when explaining why the House didn’t need to pass a border security bill.
Riley Rogerson of The Daily Beast notes the main issues Republicans hoped to run on in the 2024 election—the economy, crime, the border—are moving in the Democrats’ favor.
Monica Potts of 538 writes that swing state Republican parties are in chaos.
Matt Viser of the Washington Post observes the House impeachment inquiry is falling apart, as Republican investigators keep finding information that proves Joe Biden did not benefit from his son’s overseas business dealings. And now court documents indicate that the witness charged last week with lying about Joe and Hunter Biden’s business affairs received tips from Russian intelligence.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled embryos are children and that people can be held liable for destroying them, imperiling in vitro fertilization procedures in the state.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling is out of step with the 86% of Americans who support IVF treatments, including over 70% of born-again evangelicals. That 70+% apparently doesn’t include Nikki Haley, but it does include Mike Pence, who has spoken about his own family’s use of IVF and has called for its legal protection.
“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God….Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”—Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker, drawing on religious doctrine to justify his decision in the IVF decision. Seems like the establishment of religious doctrine in state law to me. Payton Armstrong of Media Matters reports Parker also recently appeared on a podcast hosted by a QAnon conspiracy theorist to share his Christian Nationalist beliefs. MORE: “Alabama Ushers in the Theocracy” by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post.
Don Trump called on Alabama to protect IVF. House Speaker Mike Johnson says he supports IVF, which is weird because he’s a co-sponsor of a House bill that declares life begins at conception with no exceptions for IVF. It’s hard to imagine Johnson—a Christian Nationalist himself—isn’t on the same page as Parker, or that he wouldn’t come up with some wacky reason to vote against a bill protecting IVF treatments.
Meanwhile, Republican Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, in the running for dumbest current senator, had nothing but brain salad when questioned about IVF.
Caroline Kitchener of the Washington Post shares the story of a Texas woman who was not only denied an abortion but medical treatment after she was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, a potentially life-threatening condition.
Following a measles outbreak at a Fort Lauderdale-area school, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo—who last month advocated for ceasing the use of mRNA COVID vaccines—did not follow the normal recommendation that parents keep unvaccinated children at home as a precaution. He instead encouraged parents to decide on their own whether to send their children to school. Measles infections can have fatal outcomes. Recent cases in twelve states have been attributed to the anti-vaccine movement that gained momentum during the pandemic.
Researchers estimate COVID deaths in the United States during the pandemic were actually 16% higher than officially reported.
Madeleine Ngo of the New York Times reports corporations with a stake in Biden’s clean energy bill are beginning to worry about what may happen to their subsidies if Trump wins the election (although many feel Republicans won’t roll the bill back since many of its benefits are directed toward red congressional districts.)
A Monmouth University poll found that while voters are beginning to give Biden credit for the economic upturn, relatively few voters feel those economic benefits have reached them personally.
The Biden administration cancelled $1.2 billion in student loans for 153,000 borrowers.
The Biden campaign is emphasizing 2/3 of Ukraine aid—about $40 billion—will be spent in the United States.
Sarah Ellison of the Washington Post takes readers inside Sinclair Broadcasting, a company that owns 185 local TV stations and uses them to scare the crap out of viewers with stories on crime, homelessness, failing schools, drug use, and other societal ills.
During a sit-down with Joe Rogan, Kid Rock said the viral video showing him shooting cases of Bud Light was a “temper tantrum with a machine gun.” (Should people who mix machine guns and beer during temper tantrums be allowed to have guns?) Rock was angry with the beer company after it asked transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand on TikTok last spring. The singer said, “Man, I was just having fun, to be honest with you. I was pissed, but it wasn’t like it was going to wreck my day, let alone my life.” He added he has since become friends with Bud Light CEO Brendan Whitworth “after five minutes of talking to him” and has since gotten drunk and gone bowling with him. Neither Whitworth nor Kid Rock have patched things up with Mulvaney, who was essentially abandoned by Bud Light and, unlike Rock, can not laugh the whole episode off. (Mulvaney: “What transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined. I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”)
According to David E. Sanger and Steven Erlanger of the New York Times, the mood at the Munich Security Conference was one of despair, as European leaders feel Vladimir Putin is becoming more emboldened while the United States dithers.
The New York Times reports some 800-1000 Ukrainian soldiers may have been captured or are unaccounted for following the fall of the city of Avdiivka. Joshua Keating of Vox gauges the current state of the war and whether Ukraine can hold on.
Nick Paton Walsh and Florence Davey-Attlee on CNN report Russia has a record amount of cash on hand thanks to oil sales to India. Some $1 billion worth of oil refined in India made its way to the United States as oil products. From Politico: “The West Tried to Crush Russia’s Economy. Why Hasn’t It Worked?”
Erin Banco of Politico found that one reason the United States was trying to keep their discovery of Russia’s space-based nuclear program under wraps is that they were trying to dissuade Moscow from going ahead with the plan.
Stephen Collinson of CNN writes about the way Vladimir Putin looms over American politics.
Following American retaliation after Iranian-backed forces killed three servicemembers in Jordan, the Washington Post reports Iran has urged its proxies to exercise restraint when targeting United States forces in the Middle East.
By Oliver Stuenkel of Foreign Policy: “How U.S. Pressure Helped Save Brazilian Democracy”
The Economist’s Intelligence Unit found only 7.8% of the world’s population in 24 countries live in “fully democratic nations,” while 37.6% in 50 countries live in “flawed democracies.” The rest of the world lives in either “hybrid regimes” (15.2%) or “authoritarian regimes” (39.4%). The United States is classified as a top-tier “flawed democracy.” The highest ranked nations include the Scandinavian nations, Finland, and New Zealand.