Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan teased a possible 2024 presidential bid and said he would man the barricades in opposition to President Trump if the outgoing commander in chief seeks the White House again in four years.
The Republican emphasized any campaign for national office would come after he leaves the governor’s mansion in January 2023, saying the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and struggling economy, plus the more mundane aspects of his day job, take priority. But Hogan expressed concern about the future of the GOP after Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden, and he plans to be active in charting its course post-Trump.
The president is planning to remain active in Republican politics and could even declare for the 2024 race as Biden assumes office. Hogan acknowledged that Trump’s hold on the party, even in defeat, would make it difficult for Republicans in Congress to exert their independence from the 45th president and for the party generally to turn the page.
“He is going to be a force to be reckoned with. He’s not going to stop tweeting,” Hogan told reporters Monday after delivering a keynote address at the Ronald Reagan Institute, a Washington think tank located blocks from the White House.
“He’ll still continue to be out there saying and doing the things that he has been,” Hogan added. “Whether or not that’s something that the party continues to want to do after losing this election, or if they want to look to a different path, we’ll find out. But I’m going to be the one on the other side saying we have to think about the future, not look to the past.”
In the short term, Hogan is worried about the Senate.
The governor said Trump’s refusal to concede to Biden is “tarnishing” the Republican brand and imperiling the party’s prospects in a pair of Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will determine the Senate majority and decide whether the president-elect has a blank check in Congress. The Republican incumbents, Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are favored in those contests, but Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, the first Democrat to do so since 1992.
“Whether you voted for President Trump or not, the way our system works is, we cast the votes, we count the votes, and we live with the results,” Hogan said.
Hogan won two landslide elections in deep-blue Maryland, running as a pragmatic, Reagan Republican who eschewed the party’s turn toward combative populism. After the governor won reelection in 2018, bucking the blue wave that swept Democrats to power in the House, Republicans opposed to Trump encouraged him to challenge the president in the 2020 GOP primary. Hogan declined after concluding there was little demand for his style of cooperative conservatism among Republican voters.
But Hogan never embraced Trump. He wrote in “Ronald Reagan” on his Nov. 3 ballot and claims there is an opening to steer the GOP away from Trump after Biden made him a rare, one-term president in an election in which Republicans otherwise excelled. The GOP gained House seats and is poised to hold the Senate. Many Republicans credit that success to Trump’s coattails. Hogan argues the outcome proves voters repudiated Trump and his pugilistic populism.
“Here is a truth that our party needs to hear: Divisive rhetoric and toxic politics is alienating large parts of the country, and no one will listen to our message if they don’t believe that we’re listening to them,” Hogan said, dismissing Trump’s “modest” improvement with nonwhite voters as insufficient for winning national elections. The GOP has won just three of the last eight president contests, winning the national popular vote just once during that period.
“We cannot continue failing to expand our tent the way Reagan did. Addressing the concerns of everyday people is harder than political virtue signaling or preaching to the choir,” Hogan said. “On the issues, I think a lot of people agree with President Trump. But they didn’t like his tone, and they didn’t like what they perceived as kind of a loose affiliation with the truth.”
On the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus, Hogan was more charitable.
Through his chairmanship of the National Governors Association, Hogan acted as a liaison between the states and the White House on efforts to defeat the pandemic. In a conversation after his prepared remarks, Hogan praised Operation Warp Speed, in which the federal government financed the development of COVID-19 vaccines, some of which could be ready for distribution early next year. And he complimented Vice President Mike Pence for his leadership of the coronavirus task force.
However, Trump’s political posturing as it relates to the pandemic is another matter completely, Hogan said.
“Mike Pence did a great job chairing the coronavirus task force,” Hogan said. “But [the president’s] message on: ‘t’s going to disappear, it’s only 15 people, and soon, it’ll be nothing, anybody that wants a test can get one, that it’s going to be over in 14 days to flatten the curve, it’s going to be over by Easter, it’s going to be over by July.’ Well, no, it’s not — and not wearing a mask.”
“We would have a great meeting with the vice president, the whole coronavirus task force, all the governors on both sides,” Hogan recalled. “Then, the president would have a press conference and completely says just the opposite and steps on everything everyone was working on.”
