Former Gov. Larry Hogan Walks a Political Tightrope in Maryland

August 1, 2024 Michael Olesker

In June, former Gov. Larry Hogan met with potential voters about his Senate campaign at Pikesville's Essen Room eatery. (File photo by Robyn Stevens Brody)

Larry Hogan now attempts the shakiest balancing act since the final performance of the Flying Wallendas.

The former Maryland governor wants to become our next U.S. senator, replacing the retiring Ben Cardin, by overtly seeking the full embrace of Democrats and risking the instinctive rejection of his own Republican party.

Hogan runs campaign commercials boasting he won’t reflexively support Republican issues if elected. He’ll try to do the right thing, he says, and not just the politically expedient thing.

What was once seen as political moderation and diplomacy is now regarded as mutiny.

Hogan dared to put in a good word for justice itself preceding Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 criminal charges, and thereby caught additional Republican wrath. He did this by issuing explicit words of sanity.

“Regardless of the results,” Hogan said on social media, “I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process.”

Gosh, what a radical concept: respect for justice.

When he heard this, Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump, told Hogan, “You just ended your campaign.”

And the Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump, told CNN that Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point — and, quite frankly, anybody in America.”

So in mid-July, as Republicans gathered in Milwaukee for their national convention, Hogan was not there to contribute to the GOP ongoing salute to national insanity.

Last month, Hogan’s campaign spokeswoman, Blake Kernen, told The Sun, “I can definitely tell you Gov. Hogan will not be in attendance.”

By now, all of this is part of an extended pattern. Hogan infuriated many Republicans while he was still governor and Donald Trump was president and not yet a convicted felon.

Hogan’s balancing act is based on numbers. He wants to woo Democrats because they outnumber Republicans in Maryland by about a two-to-one margin. He knows in the last presidential election, Trump got a puny one-third of the vote in Maryland. But Hogan knows the more he reaches out to the Dems, the more he infuriates his own party members.

And as national polls have repeatedly shown, millions of GOP voters are standing with Trump and don’t care what any criminal conviction, or any lingering federal investigation, might say.

But as Hogan runs for Cardin’s old senate seat against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, this campaign carries the weight of national politics. The Democrats currently hold a 51-49 voting edge in the Senate.

What would happen if Trump won reelection to the White House and had the U.S. Senate on his side as well? For a vindictive man who has already vowed retribution on all who have turned against him, and already has the U.S. Supreme Court in his back pocket, what kind of power might a Republican senate give him?

So we’re left with Hogan’s great balancing act. As Maryland’s two-term Republican governor, he was able to stand up to President Trump. This was regarded as pretty brave, but a little distant from the real action, and a little bit safe in blue Maryland.

If he got elected to the senate, he might be the deciding vote on any manner of proposed Trumpian outrage. Maybe he’d continue to stand tall, but maybe he’d cave in to pressure from fellow senate Republicans.

Alsobrooks, on the other hand, would have all the support of her entire party anytime she were to stand up to Trump.

There’s some family history to suggest Hogan’s inner strength. His father, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1975 for Maryland’s 5th Congessional District, was the first Republican to take on Richard Nixon in public in the dark days of the Watergate scandal.

“Hogan to vote to impeach: Republican brands Nixon a conspirator,” read a Sun headline on July 24, 1974. That was 50 years ago. Rep. Hogan’s gesture gave courage to other Republicans in that summer of fierce political contentiousness.

The younger Hogan must have been watching his father stand tall. He’s done the same with Trump. But in the process, he’s standing on a high wire.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of seven books. His most recent book, “Boogie: Life on a Merry-Go-Round,” was published by Apprentice House.