Larry Hogan Runs for Senate Centrist
By Mene Ukueberuwa
Wall Street Journal
May 28, 2024
Every candidate bets on himself, but Larry Hogan’s parlay is trickier than most. To win Maryland’s open Senate seat, he’ll need Democrats to look past his party, Republicans to look past his scorn for Donald Trump, and both sides to remember why they liked him before.
The 68-year-old former governor is a Republican seeking election in a state that backed Joe Biden by a 33-point margin in 2020. Mr. Hogan expects the presidential race to look similar this year. “I feel fairly confident that Joe Biden’s going to win Maryland,” he says in an interview.
That means he’s counting on hundreds of thousands of Biden voters to choose him for Senate on the same ballot in November. But winning a Senate seat when your state is voting for the other party’s presidential candidate is increasingly difficult to do. Only one candidate—Maine Republican Susan Collins—has pulled it off in the past two presidential election years, and she was running for a seat she had already held for nearly a quarter-century.
If Mr. Hogan beats these odds, it will be because he’s one of the best-liked politicians in America. He finished his second term as governor last year with a 77% approval rating. A recent campaign ad featured clips of Democrats praising his record, including President Biden; Mr. Hogan’s successor, Gov. Wes Moore; and even Angela Alsobrooks, his rival for the Senate seat. Plenty of Democratic voters seem to feel the same. Mr. Hogan leads Ms. Alsobrooks by 6.5 points in the RealClearPolitics poll average, though his edge may be eroding as the race picks up.
“Just look at what I’ve already done,” he says, sitting at a picnic table in a park in this Baltimore suburb. “I have the expertise to actually reach across the aisle.”
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