Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) chats with admirers at a dinner Wednesday sponsored by Principles First, a conservative group whose members oppose former President Donald Trump. Photo by Josh Kurtz.
The event Wednesday night, at a fancy hotel in College Park, was billed as a look at the legacy of the Watergate scandal on today’s politics, 50 years after former President Richard Nixon’s resignation. It was sponsored by the conservative group Principles First, which has emerged as a top refuge for Republicans who oppose former President Donald Trump.
But anyone who was expecting conversations about Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Woodward and Bernstein, the Saturday Night Massacre, the smoking gun, twisting “slowly, slowly in the wind” or other reminders of that unique moment in American politics would have been sorely disappointed. There was a brief video with footage of a news report about Watergate, a burst of nostalgia featuring the flat Midwestern baritone of the estimable newsman Harry Reasoner, but that was about it.
What the event largely turned out to be was an infomercial for former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his bid to become a U.S. senator.
Hogan, a consistent and longtime Trump critic, was listed as the keynote speaker, and he did talk a little about Watergate. But he limited the conversation to the role of his father, the late U.S. Rep. Lawrence Hogan Sr., who was the first Republican on the House Judiciary Committee to call for Nixon’s impeachment and was the only GOP congressman on that panel to vote for all three impeachment articles.
“That decision cost him dearly,” Hogan recalled. “He lost friends and supporters and the Republican nomination for governor [in 1974]. But he earned something more valuable.”
Hogan said his father’s courage and political independence “helped to shape the man I am today.” Then he launched into his standard stump speech about how American politics are broken, how toxic political divides are stymying any possibility for progress on Capitol Hill, and how, while he has no burning desire to be a senator, he decided to run at the 11th hour to be an independent operator and help end the dysfunction in Congress.
Hogan, who touted his bipartisan record and high poll numbers when he left office, also attempted to define his place in the anti-Trump universe — a critical component of his campaign in a very blue state.
“Unlike many Republicans, I have never wavered and have never backed down … and I never will,” he said, to enthusiastic applause.
Hogan taking to the road to raise money for his Senate bid
That part of the message echoed a minute-long TV ad that Hogan began airing this week, in which a narrator calls the former governor “the face” of the “anti-Trump GOP,” and describes how Hogan moved swiftly to send Maryland State Police officers and National Guard personnel to secure the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, while Trump watched the chaos on television from the White House.
That ad airs as Hogan’s Democratic opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, and her allies amp up their attempts to tie Hogan to Trump and conservatives in Congress — and their policy priorities. On Thursday, the political arm of EMILY’s List, a national fundraising powerhouse that backs Democratic women who support abortion rights, announced that it would spend $2.2 million to air a 30-second TV ad attacking Hogan’s record on abortion.
Earlier this week, Hogan and the National Republican Senatorial Committee began airing a 30-second TV ad touting his record as governor and independence that, among other things, attempts to remind voters that Hogan “supports restoring women’s right to choose everywhere.”
Critics have called this an election-year conversion.
“His entire career he’s been anti-abortion,” a narrator says in the EMILY’s List Women Vote ad. “So don’t let him fool you now.”
“Angela Alsobrooks is a groundbreaking candidate with the talent and experience necessary to defeat Mitch McConnell’s top recruit, Republican Larry Hogan,” said EMILY’s List President Jessica Mackler. “While Hogan is trying to hide from his anti-abortion track record, we are going to make sure voters know his real record.”
‘I love Larry Hogan’
Hogan did not stick around for the second part of the Principles First dinner program Wednesday evening, but even in his absence, it said a lot about the anti-Trump movement within the national GOP — and Hogan’s standing in it. It also said something about the state of the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D) and Maryland’s outsized role this year in determining which party controls the Senate in the next Congress.
Watergate did not enter the conversation.
Following Hogan as speakers were Kyle Sweetser, a steelworker and two-time Trump voter from Alabama who addressed the Democratic National Convention last month; Sarah Longwell, a political strategist, publisher of the conservative news and opinion website The Bulwark, and founder of Republican Voters Against Trump; and Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who briefly challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2020 after supporting him in 2016. Notably, all are vocal supporters of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House election.
Poll: Alsobrooks has slim advantage over Hogan in Senate race
Walsh all but harangued the audience of about 100 Republicans to stop thinking about the future of the GOP until Trump exits the political scene.
“None of that matters unless we beat him!” he shouted, pacing across the stage with a hand-held microphone. “Sometimes I get pissed off about the whole ‘what next?’ [conversation]. Not now. We’ve all got one job the next 60 days: Stop him!”
That full-throated advocacy for Harris has been a bridge too far for Hogan. He has said he won’t vote for Trump or Harris this year, just as he didn’t vote for Trump or the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 and 2020. In 2016, he wrote in his father for president, when the elder Hogan was still alive; in 2020, he wrote in the name of former President Ronald Reagan, then 16 years dead.
Longwell, a Maryland resident and Hogan fan who tried to recruit him as far back as 2017 to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination, until polling and focus groups convinced her that it would be a fool’s errand, said Wednesday that Hogan’s stance on the presidential election is defensible, especially since he’s a candidate for statewide office.
“He isn’t for Kamala,” she said. “He’s running for Senate as a Republican. He probably can’t say that. I’d like him to say it.”
Within the galaxy of anti-Trump Republicans, there are different approaches to the presidential election. While many will vote for Harris, others, like Hogan, will essentially throw their votes away.
Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, a sharp critic of his former boss whose political action committee has already spent more than $1 million attempting to get Hogan elected, has said he’ll write in the name of former Vice President Dick Cheney in November. Meanwhile, Cheney’s daughter, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said Wednesday she’s voting for Harris. That news went public just as the Priorities First dinner was beginning.
Independent poll shows dead heat in Maryland Senate race
Two recent public polls have shown the Senate race to be close. One poll, released by the Maryland AARP, showed Hogan and Alsobrooks tied at 46% each. The other, from Gonzales Research, showed Alsobrooks ahead, 46% to 41%.
Both polls, as expected, showed Trump far behind Harris in Maryland, though her lead was somewhat more modest in the Gonzales survey. But one thing that’s notable is that, even in a state where Trump allies have seized control of the party apparatus, Hogan was running slightly ahead of Trump among Republican voters in the Gonzales poll, while both took 83% of the GOP vote in their respective races in the AARP poll.
The essential ingredient to any Hogan victory, political analysts and strategists agree, is for the former governor to come close to or exceed 30% of the Democratic vote against Alsobrooks — and both recent polls suggest he’s falling short.
At the Principles First dinner, a question to Longwell from a member of the University of Maryland College Republicans illustrated Hogan’s challenge. The student said that as he hands out leaflets for Hogan on campus, several Democratic and independent voters tell him they admire Hogan generally, but are reluctant to vote for him because he could flip the Senate majority to Republicans or enable GOP policies that they oppose. Longwell said she understands the dilemma.
“I love Larry Hogan, I want to vote for Larry Hogan,” she said. “But man, I’ve been burned a lot by people who wind up voting for the Trump agenda.”
Longwell said she’s able to support Hogan, even with the risk of him sometimes voting for policies that she might dislike or enabling a Senate GOP majority, because the Senate needs more Republicans who are willing to reach across the aisle and seek consensus.
If the party is to stop being in thrall to Trump, “One of the key ways we can get out of this is in leadership,” she said.
‘A stark and unsettling reminder’ of what’s at stake
That may be a comfort to some voters who view Hogan favorably, but it may not be enough to sway some of the Democrats who supported him for governor in 2014 and 2018.
Hogan on Wednesday night sought to contrast his approach to politics and policymaking with Alsobrooks’.
“My opponent in the race for United States Senate only wants to spew partisan rhetoric about the red vs. the blue,” he said. “And I want to get back to the red, white and blue.”
State Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) is protesting the use of this image of her in a Larry Hogan campaign ad. Screen shot.
But some of Alsobrooks’ allies are suggesting that Hogan’s recent messaging isn’t as bipartisan as it might seem.
After the joint Hogan-NRSC ad began airing this week, state Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery), an early Alsobrooks supporter, said it was disingenuous for Hogan to portray himself as untrammeled when he’s in cahoots with a campaign committee whose sole purpose is to elect Republicans.
“It’s rich that Larry Hogan is running ads paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee while trying to posture as some type of ‘independent,’” Waldstreicher said. “This latest bankrolled ad is just a stark and unsettling reminder that for Republicans, this Maryland Senate race is solely about taking back the Senate majority.”
And on Thursday, state Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) protested the Hogan campaign’s decision to use footage of her standing and applauding during one of the former governor’s State of the State speeches in his latest ad.
“I often tell constituents that Republican Larry Hogan isn’t nearly as moderate or bipartisan as his PR people would lead you to believe,” Kagan said in an email to supporters. “Sadly, his consultants have spent years, stretching the truth in order to reinforce that inaccurate perception. It is outrageous and misleading that I was included in Hogan’s most recent campaign ad. Just because I applauded at one part of his annual State of the State address does not imply that I approve of the Republican agenda.”
At the end of her missive, Kagan writes: “I am asking that Larry Hogan remove my image from his latest ad and never use it again without my express permission.”
But unlike liberal rock stars who are sending Trump cease-and-desist letters demanding that he no longer use their music during his rallies, Kagan may be on far less solid legal ground calling for her image to be removed from Hogan’s ad.