Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
From left, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) speak during a news conference following the Maryland delegation’s meeting on the federal response to the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, April 9, 2024, at the Capitol in Washington.
After the calamitous Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, the spectacle of Maryland Democrats taking charge has complicated the Senate campaign of Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan. Despite his “We’re all one Team Maryland” assertions and offers to “help” Gov. Wes Moore (D), everywhere he turns Democrats are in the headlines, shunting him aside. President Biden has set the federal emergency funding machinery in motion for Moore, Hogan’s successor in the governor’s office. It’s looking like Democrats have little interest in providing Hogan with many, if any, opportunities to burnish his leadership credentials.
Moreover, the efforts of congressional Republicans to put limits on federal funds needed to get Metro Baltimore back in working order pose a dilemma for Hogan, who needs to win Democratic votes if he’s to carry the blue state of Maryland come November. Were a Hogan victory to result in Republican control of the Senate, Marylanders would be confronted with a MAGA-dominated body that prizes partisan flexing over crisis management.
The House Freedom Caucus quickly signaled that bipartisanship even in the matter of bridge repair was the furthest thing from their hive mind once Biden pledged to fund 100 percent of the cost of rebuilding the bridge and speeding the Port of Baltimore’s recovery. The caucus has demanded that the president relax endangered species regulations to speed up construction, reverse holds on natural gas export project go-aheads, move funds from electric-vehicle programs to offsetting the costs of the collapse, and delay federal funding while seeking redress from insurers and shippers’ policies, processes that will take years. The ecosystem that Hogan now navigates is an indicator of how difficult life would be for him, ending up pretty much in the “principled conservative” slot soon to be vacated by Utah’s Mitt Romney. While Hogan has cultivated an image of moderation, his election would empower fellow Republicans who believe that crises merely afford them an opportunity to leverage their niche concerns.
For his part, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has shown some faint bipartisan inklings and signaled that he is willing to deal. But with the MAGA caucus already demanding offsets and givebacks, Johnson may find himself in the same motion-to-vacate territory he has been in on foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel if he sides with making Maryland whole on the bridge collapse.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ Team Maryland has actually been moving dollars, something that arm-twisting by a former Republican governor can’t quite accomplish. On Tuesday, Sen. Ben Cardin (D), whose retirement opened up the Senate seat Hogan is seeking, announced that he planned to file a bill to cover a smaller portion of the cost, while reminding the GOP naysayers that in cases involving catastrophes like the 2007 Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the federal government typically pays 90 percent of the costs. Maryland officials have also submitted an initial $60 million request for emergency assistance.
Hogan, a former real estate developer, has a history of favoring highway projects over transit, at the expense of some glaring long-term needs.
Then there’s one of Hogan’s Democratic opponents, Rep. David Trone. He has a real-world vote in meting out federal funds from his perch on the House Appropriations Committee. Lest anyone forget, if the subject is Baltimore, some recent press releases have been headlined “Appropriator Rep. David Trone.”
Despite Hogan’s protestations of moderation, Senate Republicans keen to regain control of the body in November may saddle him with debts to the Republican right. While Hogan was recruited into the race by Mitch McConnell, the current crop of candidates to replace McConnell as Republican Senate leader—Texas’s John Cornyn, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Wyoming’s John Barrasso—are all staunch right-wingers. Thune is raising money for Hogan, and should Hogan win despite his anti-MAGA reflexes, that bill and others like it will come due.
The problems posed to Hogan by the bridge collapse don’t end there. The accident has already attracted media scrutiny of Hogan’s management of the Port of Baltimore. NPR has reported that the Hogan administration was keen to bring megaships to the port, and focused their efforts on improvements to the port’s wharves and channel. The commensurate structural reinforcements that the Key Bridge needed (and ones that other ports made to accommodate the megaships) did not happen during Hogan’s tenure. His administration did greenlight a pier-protection project that had been scheduled to get under way—in 2025.
Baltimore has a long memory for Hogan’s transportation miscues. In 2015, shortly after the Freddie Gray uprising convulsed the city, Hogan singlehandedly scuttled the Baltimore Red Line light-rail plan, sending nearly a billion dollars back to Washington, a decision that still incenses many Baltimore residents.
Before the Key Bridge accident, the Red Line was a major priority for federal transportation funding, if not the priority for Moore. Moore has vowed to restart the project, but the Red Line still has to get back in the queue for federal dollars. A decision on whether the finished project would be bus rapid transit or light rail is expected in the coming weeks. The failure to build the line laid bare Hogan’s dubious decision-making and the predominantly African American city’s frustration with being denied rapid-transit links that other sections of the city enjoyed. Hogan’s indifference to building the line calls into question whether he’s the right person to insist on the federal funding for the entire bridge rebuild—one of several arguments Democrats may raise as the election draws near.
Hogan’s cred doesn’t rank high with many Baltimore voters. “He used Baltimore as a punching bag for eight years,” Maggie McIntosh, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates who represented the city, told The Baltimore Banner. “He’s probably looking forward to winning and trying to cancel the Red Line a second time.”
Hogan, a former real estate developer, has a history of favoring highway projects over transit, at the expense of some glaring long-term needs. As governor, he wanted to pursue a public-private partnership for a project to widen Interstate 270, a vital Metro Washington link, and replace the structurally deficient American Legion Bridge connecting Maryland to Northern Virginia, a hugely complex financial undertaking of a type that doesn’t always redound to the benefit of the public-sector entity that initiates the plan. Hogan also cut tolls on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which drivers cheered but which cut into state revenues for rehabilitation and new construction of roads—and bridges.
