“Hogan can serve as a moderating force in politics and can drag the ideological medians of both parties toward the center, where most Marylanders and most Americans truly sit.”
Hogan is the answer to our country’s partisan discord | GUEST COMMENTARY
The Baltimore Sun
By Charles Kay
July 30, 2024
Read the full piece here.
In 2020, as America was gripped by a presidential race between two unpopular candidates, I saw my governor do something truly courageous: reject his own party’s nominee and cast a write-in vote for the late President Ronald Reagan. I have spent the summer at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington seeking to learn from Reagan’s civic leadership, and I now understand why former Governor Larry Hogan did what he did. He sought to represent the dissatisfaction with the status quo, which, as Reagan quipped, is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” Our political division is worse today than in 2020. If we fail to address this division, it could lead to a crisis that threatens our country’s future. In Hogan, however, Maryland may hold the key to opening Americans’ minds to compromise.
If we choose to elect Hogan to the U.S. Senate, we will be rejecting the ideological polarity that plagues us and doing our part to return American political discourse to an exercise of healthy debate rather than bitter hostility. He doesn’t name-call, lob accusations or engage in political theater. He doesn’t offer up unrealistic goals or radical viewpoints that will alienate rational voters. He is refreshingly bland — precisely the palate-cleanser American politics needs in an electoral season dominated by two of America’s most disliked figures.
Hogan can serve as a moderating force in politics and can drag the ideological medians of both parties toward the center, where most Marylanders and most Americans truly sit.
Hogan won his first race for governor by promising to represent a tax-exhausted public disenchanted with both parties. After two terms, he left the state with a $5 billion budget surplus without sacrifices to essential state services, even after the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. His deft leadership meant that the state was one of the quickest to recover from COVID. His reputation for responsible fiscal policy is reason alone to elect him to serve in a government that continues to widen the national deficit. Though he and the General Assembly often disagreed, he never vilified his Democratic counterparts. He sought bipartisanship and compromise wherever possible, like on bay restoration projects and in nominations to his cabinet. At a Fourth of July parade, he embraced his Democratic opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.
His more extreme opponents on the right call him a RINO (Republican In Name Only) for being insufficiently loyal to former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. His critics on the left paint him as a radical pro-lifer; on the contrary, he has put aside his personal views on abortion and has vowed to support abortion rights if elected. Hogan’s own words explain why partisan ideologues find him so distasteful, especially when he urged “respect” for Trump’s criminal conviction.
Critics have seized on the endorsement Hogan received from Trump to attack his moderate credentials. However, Hogan’s strong ideological differences with Trump are real. He neither wanted nor expected Trump’s support and has refused to accept it. Hogan has been an outspoken critic of Trump for years and remains so.
This Senate election is more than just a partisan exercise. Maryland voters chose Hogan in 2014 and 2018 because he proved that the right candidate can bring us together on a platform of good sense, no matter their party. We chose him because we saw that he truly represented Marylanders, most of whom do not associate with either political extreme, Marylanders who seek compromise and common sense and Marylanders who still believe that civil discourse is worth standing up for. To paraphrase Reagan, there are no easy answers, but there are simple ones. We must have the courage to vote based on what we know is right. Though it may be simpler to retreat into the factions we were forced into in 2020, we must have the courage to do what we know is right and vote for Hogan. In the political animal kingdom of elephants, donkeys, and RINOs, Larry Hogan is a unicorn. We can’t miss our chance to elect such a rare creature.
Charles Kay ([email protected]) is a sophomore at the University of Maryland majoring in public policy. He’s studying presidential leadership and international diplomacy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute’s Academy for Civic Education and Democracy in Washington, D.C. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the position of the institute.
