Daniel Kucin Jr./AP Photo
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaks during a primary night election party, May 14, 2024, in Annapolis, Maryland, after he won the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate.
Fresh off his easy victory in last week’s Republican Senate primary, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan took a victory lap to reminisce about his 2014 upset that brought him to the governor’s mansion, a not-so-subtle way to warn Democrats not to underestimate him. Hogan vowed to fix “the broken politics” in Washington, to “stand up” to everyone from Presidents Biden and Trump to the entire (presumably) MAGA-fied Republican Party. At the same time, he swore that he’s not going to be “one more Capitol Hill Republican,” whatever that means in 2024.
To take on Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, fresh off her impressive win over billionaire Rep. David Trone’s attempt to buy his way into the Senate, Hogan will need to devise a more coherent strategy than conveying a passion for bipartisanship in a national legislature that has rejected the concept. If moderates are going to strike back, it’s hard to see that leadership coming from a man building his candidacy on competing for a job he professes not to want, with principles that few believe that he embraces on two issues driving the Maryland contest: abortion and infrastructure.
To say that Hogan is vulnerable on abortion is an understatement of the finest kind. Alsobrooks’s candidacy ticks every pro-choice box and spotlights the fact that nearly 60 percent of African American women live in states with abortion bans. When the issue is reproductive choice, going up against a veteran Black female politician is the most formidable challenger that Hogan could have drawn.
Hogan is unfazed that his bid sets up the stark possibility of a moderate throwback landing in a MAGA-controlled Senate with a new Republican leader from South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, or Florida, demanding his yes vote on a national abortion ban. “To the women of Maryland, you have my word that I will continue to protect your right to make your own reproductive health decisions,” he said on Tuesday night, “just like I did for eight years when I had the honor of serving as your governor.” The very next day, he told The New York Times, “I support restoring Roe as the law of the land,” adding that he is in fact pro-choice.
Promises like these recall the incredulity and embarrassment that rained down on Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) after the three Trump Supreme Court nominees talked about stare decisis in Senate hearing rooms and then put on their black robes to strike down Roe v. Wade. If nothing else, the proposed constitutional amendment on the general-election ballot that would codify reproductive rights in the Maryland Constitution is a reminder that a national abortion ban would supersede any constitutional amendment approved by Maryland voters. (Hogan said that he would vote in favor of the constitutional amendment.)
A Democratic legislature with a supermajority kept Gov. Hogan in check in Annapolis. In Washington, he’d be free to vote with Republican conservatives or exercise what until last week had been his personal anti-abortion sentiments. Two years ago, he vetoed a bill that would have expanded the ranks of health care professionals able to perform abortions. After Democratic lawmakers overrode his veto, Hogan defunded the measure.
In Washington, Hogan would be free to vote with Republican conservatives or exercise what until last week had been his personal anti-abortion sentiments.
Hogan’s newfound but dubious support for abortion is rivaled only by his attempts to style himself as a state infrastructure czar. Infrastructure funding will take up a fair amount of space in the next Maryland senator’s portfolio. Where the choice between Hogan and Alsobrooks gets interesting is the question of where Hogan stands on the infrastructure billions that Maryland needs to reconstruct Baltimore’s Key Bridge and fund the city’s Red Line, the ill-fated crosstown transit project that he so proudly and loudly deep-sixed over a decade ago.
Like his stance on abortion, Hogan’s decision to tout an infrastructure record that has shortchanged congested metro areas in favor in rural enclaves won’t help his run for office. But above all, the Francis Scott Key Bridge catastrophe has drawn scrutiny for Hogan’s Port of Baltimore decision-making.
In March, The Lever reported that Hogan advocated for bringing mega-ships to the port despite concerns from maritime authorities and insurance companies about the huge vessels navigating ports with structures like bridges. A Baltimore Sun editorial has criticized the former governor after he intimated that environmental regulations and other red tape have slowed down the replacement for the Key Bridge. He called on President Biden to set certain environmental regulations aside to help speed up replacement work, even though they’d already been set aside, and even though removing the damaged sections of the bridge and associated dredging and salvage operations are ongoing and must be completed before any rebuilding can get under way.
The editorial also corrected Hogan’s claims about the Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial/Sen. Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge, a Virginia-Maryland connector over the Potomac River that he held up as an example of his infrastructure leadership. The former governor, the newspaper said, held up funding for that project, which had already been approved under his predecessor.
Then there’s the budding controversy involving whether the new span currently projected to cost nearly $2 billion will preserve the name of Francis Scott Key, the Maryland enslaver and composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Renaming the new bridge for another Marylander, or better yet for some natural feature like the Patapsco River that it will cross, promises to become a hot-button issue at some juncture.
Hogan’s plan to replace the overtaxed American Legion Bridge, another Potomac River span, has been sidelined after the original developer dropped out after environmental regulatory delays and other issues. This year, the federal Transportation Department rejected the state’s grant application for partial funding.
On the transit front, the Purple Line light rail through Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties floundered after Hogan called for a project redesign to squeeze out dollars for other road projects. The original contractor dropped out, and additional disputes sent the project billions over budget and five years beyond its original scheduled debut.
But one of the most striking developments of Maryland’s election season is that the Baltimore Red Line transit project has come roaring back to haunt Hogan. No one in Baltimore forgets how Hogan shocked the residents shortly after the Freddie Gray uprising nearly a decade ago by deciding that a light-rail east-west link, unlike the Purple Line, was a “wasteful boondoggle” for the majority-Black city. To add insult to the injury of sending nearly $1 billion back to Washington, he spent the state portion of the line’s funding on roadway projects in white, rural areas of the state.
Before the Key Bridge catastrophe, Gov. Wes Moore had staked his political capital on resurrecting the Red Line plan that Maryland’s current senators have teed up for future transit dollars. Which begs the question of whether voters want a representative in Washington with a history of returning millions to the U.S. Treasury, or one committed to reversing years of transportation inequities. Voters in the solid-blue Washington- and Baltimore-area counties that Hogan needs to capture to win a Senate seat have valid reasons to take issue with eight years of decisions that have failed to improve regional mobility.
Hogan’s conviction that his “I alone can fix it” mindset can prevail in the snake pit that is Congress smacks of hubris. At this juncture, a lone Republican traditionalist who has declared that he won’t support the GOP standard-bearer that everyone else genuflects to is ill-equipped to snatch back Republicans from the maw of MAGA.
