Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he hasn’t decided whether to challenge President Trump in 2020, but he might just want to sit this one out, according to political analysts and poll data.
Hogan, 62, is extremely popular in his traditionally blue state. He boasts a 69 percent approval rating, and he won re-election in 2018 by double digits over challenger Ben Jealous.
His unique success in Maryland and his public opposition to the president has led to intense speculation about his political future and whether he could pose a serious threat to Trump, whose own approval ratings have remained tepid throughout his presidency. Hogan has fueled those talks by publicly mulling a primary challenge.
But Hogan would face a far tougher audience outside of Maryland and in the GOP primary states, where voters are less likely to back someone with his moderate record on gun control, abortion, and other key Republican issues.
He would also be facing off against Trump, whose approval rating among Republicans remains at 90 percent, despite the party’s vocal Never Trump faction.
“Can he win the nomination? No,” said Cook Political Report editor Jennifer Duffy, in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “He’s far too moderate, frankly, to win a nomination in a Republican primary as the party stands right now.”
Hogan, in a Washington Post interview this week, said he would not make a decision about whether to challenge Trump until the fall, after the likely conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
Hogan suggested in the interview that findings damaging to Trump could push him into the race.
“Of course you couldn’t win a Republican primary challenge today,” Hogan said. “But I also have been around long enough to know that things can change very rapidly. … A lot can happen all spring and summer and into the fall.”
[Read more: Larry Hogan not interested in ‘kamikaze mission’ against Trump]
Barring a blockbuster report from Mueller, Hogan would appear to stand no chance against Trump.
History is on Trump’s side. Republican incumbents have won three out of every four elections, Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist, told the Washington Examiner.
Trump is also wildly popular with his core supporters, and if he were somehow dropped from the ticket, O’Connell said, many of those voters would stay home in November 2020.
“And nobody has the type of enthusiasm necessary among the Republican base,” O’Connell said. “It’s about intensity. Donald Trump gives you the best chance to win the White House.”
Trump also has the unwavering support of the Republican National Committee and the organization’s immense resources and money that almost any GOP candidate would need in order to win the White House.
Hogan would almost certainly win the backing of the GOP’s influential anti-Trump faction, which is hoping a credible Republican jumps into the race to challenge the president.
Former Gov. William Weld, a former Libertarian who supported President Barack Obama, said he will challenge Trump but has so far barely registered in polls. Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran unsuccessfully in 2016, said he is also considering another bid for the White House but has not made a decision and also gets clobbered in primary surveys against Trump.
The trio of governors have frequently criticized Trump and remain popular alternatives among Never Trump Republicans, despite the long odds.
Hogan often reminds people his lawmaker father, Rep. Lawrence J. Hogan, was among the first in the GOP to call for President Richard Nixon’s impeachment.
But not even Marylanders want Hogan to run, according to a February poll by Gaucher College.
Only a third of Maryland residents said he should run for president, while 55 were against it, the poll found.
“Voters never want their governor to run for another office,” said Duffy, who analyzes governors’ races for Cook. “They just re-elected him. They are happy with the way his is governing.”
But Goucher College Poll Director Mileah Kromer told the Washington Examiner that while it would be “extremely difficult” for any GOP candidate to beat Trump in a primary, the Mueller report findings, if significant, could change that.
And Hogan would be in position to challenge Trump.
“Hogan would have the advantage of having a record of political experience that is fully independent of and distinct from President Trump,” Kromer said. “He could run as the un-Trump Republican — and if there’s something damaging enough to shake the GOP base in the Mueller report, that might be appealing to Republican voters.”
