Optimus Prime
Well-known member
Offline
Good article on Maryland Governor Larry Hogan
Republican in a mostly blue state and vocal Trump critic who has definite 2024 ambitions
=============================
Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan flirted with running for president years before his term ended, openly weighing whether trying to persuade Republican primary voters to nominate an unabashed Donald Trump critic would be political suicide.
As he left office Wednesday, it remained an open question whether the skills that catapulted Hogan to unusual popularity as the Republican governor of a Democratic state could be sold to a fractured GOP.
Any presidential bid would be built on his tenure in Maryland, where he forged rapport with the electorate through his handling of crises and a skilled public relations operation, deploying populist policies such as cutting tolls and putting air conditioning in schools.
Pragmatism drove him to embrace issues many other Republicans did not — early and widespread mask mandates, new taxes on insurance companies to keep down the cost of Affordable Care Act policies, gun-control laws and a ban on conversion therapy for gay teens, all while staring down cancer and clashing with his own party as a leading voice during the pandemic.
He delivered tax relief for retirees in his final year in office and presided as federal pandemic aid bloated the state’s balance sheets with multibillion-dollar surpluses.
Hogan used that popularity as a weapon and a shield.
It insulated him from the fringes of his party, allowing him to largely sidestep culture-war issues that marked the GOP, instead appealing to the ideological middle. He both cajoled Democrats to his side and shrugged it off when he alienated others, particularly those in Baltimore.
Former state comptroller Peter Franchot (D), who built a friendship with Hogan, described the governor as an executive who “put the interests of Marylanders over his own party’s interests.”
Hogan’s strategy also elevated his own interests, raising his national profile as an early and sharp anti-Trump voice willing to criticize the party’s embrace of the former president’s rhetoric. Hogan’s approach politically benefited him, but it did not build up the Republican Party in Maryland.
But he nonetheless opened a narrow lane in the national conversation about a future direction for the GOP, one that appeals to conservative Democrats and independents.
At times, he contradicted himself as he followed public opinion — criticizing the removal of Confederate monuments as “political correctness run amok” but later organizing the overnight eradication of the most prominent one on State House grounds.
Hogan said he has no regrets about his tenure, including a widely derided decision to cancel the $2.9 billion Red Line light rail — a critical transit project for economically challenged Baltimore that he denigrated as a “wasteful boondoggle.”
“It wasn’t going to accomplish anything,” he said in an interview. “This is one of those things where progressive politicians and the Democratic Party in Baltimore continue to harp on this, and they think somehow it was a mistake. But I don’t think it was.”
When the governor stumbled —for instance, spending nearly $9.5 million on coronavirus tests from South Korea that never worked, or having his signature transportation achievement, the Purple Line, 4.5 years behind schedule and $1.46 billion over budget — his job approval ratings did not falter much……..
Republican in a mostly blue state and vocal Trump critic who has definite 2024 ambitions
=============================
Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan flirted with running for president years before his term ended, openly weighing whether trying to persuade Republican primary voters to nominate an unabashed Donald Trump critic would be political suicide.
As he left office Wednesday, it remained an open question whether the skills that catapulted Hogan to unusual popularity as the Republican governor of a Democratic state could be sold to a fractured GOP.
Any presidential bid would be built on his tenure in Maryland, where he forged rapport with the electorate through his handling of crises and a skilled public relations operation, deploying populist policies such as cutting tolls and putting air conditioning in schools.
Pragmatism drove him to embrace issues many other Republicans did not — early and widespread mask mandates, new taxes on insurance companies to keep down the cost of Affordable Care Act policies, gun-control laws and a ban on conversion therapy for gay teens, all while staring down cancer and clashing with his own party as a leading voice during the pandemic.
He delivered tax relief for retirees in his final year in office and presided as federal pandemic aid bloated the state’s balance sheets with multibillion-dollar surpluses.
Hogan used that popularity as a weapon and a shield.
It insulated him from the fringes of his party, allowing him to largely sidestep culture-war issues that marked the GOP, instead appealing to the ideological middle. He both cajoled Democrats to his side and shrugged it off when he alienated others, particularly those in Baltimore.
Former state comptroller Peter Franchot (D), who built a friendship with Hogan, described the governor as an executive who “put the interests of Marylanders over his own party’s interests.”
Hogan’s strategy also elevated his own interests, raising his national profile as an early and sharp anti-Trump voice willing to criticize the party’s embrace of the former president’s rhetoric. Hogan’s approach politically benefited him, but it did not build up the Republican Party in Maryland.
But he nonetheless opened a narrow lane in the national conversation about a future direction for the GOP, one that appeals to conservative Democrats and independents.
At times, he contradicted himself as he followed public opinion — criticizing the removal of Confederate monuments as “political correctness run amok” but later organizing the overnight eradication of the most prominent one on State House grounds.
Hogan said he has no regrets about his tenure, including a widely derided decision to cancel the $2.9 billion Red Line light rail — a critical transit project for economically challenged Baltimore that he denigrated as a “wasteful boondoggle.”
“It wasn’t going to accomplish anything,” he said in an interview. “This is one of those things where progressive politicians and the Democratic Party in Baltimore continue to harp on this, and they think somehow it was a mistake. But I don’t think it was.”
When the governor stumbled —for instance, spending nearly $9.5 million on coronavirus tests from South Korea that never worked, or having his signature transportation achievement, the Purple Line, 4.5 years behind schedule and $1.46 billion over budget — his job approval ratings did not falter much……..
