LAS VEGAS — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is hosting a series of gatherings with donors and grassroots supporters after Thanksgiving as the Republican ramps up consideration of a 2024 White House bid.
That decision-making process took Hogan to Nevada last weekend for a speech at an annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference, essentially the kickoff of the battle for the GOP presidential nomination. Next week, in Annapolis, Maryland’s capital, Hogan will unveil a new, federal political action committee, “A Better Path Forward,” and headline the PAC’s first fundraiser. The event is expected to draw about 300 major donors, the governor told the Washington Examiner.
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“The things I’ve been talking about for a couple of years now, more people are starting to agree with. Some of my colleagues are actually saying it out loud,” Hogan said in an interview, referring to his differences with former President Donald Trump, who launched his 2024 campaign on Nov. 15.
“A lot of the people are saying: ‘Maybe we do need to go in a different direction,’” Hogan added. “So, I think there’s maybe a bigger lane and an easier path than there was. I’m not saying it’s an easy one.” Hogan said he would decide on a presidential bid after Jan. 18, when his second term as governor ends.
Considered a centrist, Hogan would begin any campaign as an underdog.
Also, next week Hogan is holding a “leadership summit.”
The event will feature approximately 100 people he described as thought leaders, and leaders in business and politics, with the agenda including a discussion of policy issues, Republican underperformance in the midterm elections, and what the GOP should do to right the ship in 2024. Finally, the governor is holding a low-dollar fundraising event with an expected 1,500 attendees for An America United, his 501(c)4 political nonprofit group.
Hogan, 66, was elected governor of deep-blue Maryland in 2014 in a red-wave election. Four years later, he survived a blue wave to win a second term by a substantial margin. Hogan had already emerged as among the few prominent elected Republicans willing to criticize Trump publicly. After the governor won reelection, “Never Trump” Republicans took notice and recruited him to challenge the 45th president in the 2020 GOP primary.
Hogan declined. Trump’s relationship with grassroots conservatives was, and still is, strong. The governor concluded that primarying Trump amounted to a kamikaze mission. He wasn’t interested.
“In 2020, there was a lot of speculation, and maybe some people hopeful, that somebody might challenge Trump — and they thought I might be a potential person. I didn’t dissuade anyone from continuing to have those discussions, but I never really, seriously considered it,” Hogan said. “This time, it is a little different.”
Republicans have faltered in three consecutive national elections with Trump presiding over the party: They lost their House majority in 2018 and lost the Senate and the White House in 2020. In midterm elections this year, they failed to recapture the Senate and only narrowly reclaimed the House despite President Joe Biden’s unpopularity and voter anxiety about inflation, gas prices, and border security.
Frustration with losing has sparked calls from inside the party to move beyond Trump, putting more Republicans than ever in agreement with Hogan vis-a-vis the former president. Indeed, a reassessment of Trump and a desire for fresh leadership was a major topic of discussion during the three-day Republican Jewish Coalition conference inside a convention center along the Las Vegas Strip.
Where in the past, Hogan’s attacks on Trump were lonely and might have elicited boos at an event like this, attended by party activists and campaign contributors, the governor’s Friday evening address was just one of multiple speeches over the course of the conference to offer either explicit or implicit criticism of the former president.
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“With the complete failures of the Democrats in Washington, 2022 should have been a huge red wave. Instead, it was barely a ripple,” Hogan told the group. “This is the third election in a row that we lost and should have won. I say three strikes and you’re out. If you repeatedly lose to a really bad team, it’s time for new leadership.”
“Trump was saying that we’d be winning so much we’d get tired of winning. Well, I’m sick and tired of our party losing,” the governor added. Nobody booed. In fact, quite the opposite.
