Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is signaling he’s very open to a 2020 primary challenge to President Trump.
“I would say I’m being approached from a lot of different people and I guess the best way to put it is, I haven’t thrown them out of my office,” Hogan said in an interview with CBS News.
Hogan’s inauguration speech in Annapolis last month, centered on the themes of political courage and integrity and appeared calculated to appeal to Republican moderates. His guests included former Florida governor and Trump rival Jeb Bush. Hogan was due to meet with high-profile “Never Trumpers” Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell, this month.
“I do believe that there are people in Congress and other leaders in the Republican party who have not stood up when they disagree or when they think that the president is doing something wrong. I’ve not been afraid to do that,” Hogan said Wednesday.
Hogan, 62, cruised to re-election in deep-blue Maryland by nearly 12 percentage points in 2018, boosting his credentials as a primary opponent to Trump.
“The issue I’m concerned about is he has a very low re-elect number, I think in the 30s, high 30s, low 40s. So the chance of him losing a general election are pretty good. I’m not saying he couldn’t win but he’s pretty weak in the general election,” Hogan told CBS, referring to recent poll numbers.
“At some point if he weakens further, Republicans would say we’re concerned about whether or not he’s going to win if we’re going to face a very far-left Democratic nominee, and is he going to take the rest of us down with him if you’re an elected official,” he said.
A cancer survivor – he fought non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma while in office – Hogan is the son of former Rep. Lawrence Hogan, the only Republican to have voted for all three articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Since Hogan’s re-election and as the hunt for a primary challenger to Trump has hotted up, he has been increasingly visible in the media and last month co-signed a letter to Trump and congressional leaders calling the partial government shutdown a “failure of governance.”
Hogan was elected vice chairman of the National Governors Association last summer, and will automatically ascend to the chairmanship within the year. He is scheduled to make an appearance in Iowa in the coming weeks, further adding to speculation he might be open to a run for president.
[Opinion: The challenge for any 2020 primary challenge to Trump]
