Both U.S. Senate seats from Maryland have been reliably blue since 1987. But this election cycle, one Republican candidate could be the winner of a vacant seat in the upper chamber, turning a blue seat red for the first time in almost four decades.
The last two GOP senators the Old Line State sent to Washington were J. Glenn Beal, who left office in 1977, and Charles Mathias, who ended his career ten years later. And there hasn’t been a viable Republican candidate for either of the two slots since then.
But this year, sitting Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin is not running for re-election after nearly a dozen years in Washington D.C., and that leaves an open seat for the 2024 election cycle.
Into that breach has stepped former Gov. Larry Hogan, a name on the Republican side that has shaken the Democratic Party in Maryland.
Hogan has formally announced that he is going to run for the open Senate seat from Maryland, a move that has shocked nearly everyone on both sides of the aisle.
The former governor launched his campaign with a video touting his independent nature and his long record as a multiple-time office winner with Maryland voters.
Hogan also pointed out that he has a moderate record and will “stand up to both parties.”
“My fellow Marylanders, you know me. For eight years, we proved that the toxic politics that divide our nation need not divide our state. We overcame unprecedented challenges, cut taxes eight years in a row, balanced the budget and created a record surplus. And we did it all by finding common ground for the common good,” Hogan said in his announcement video.
“One party alone can’t fix it,” Hogan added. “We desperately need leaders willing to stand up to both parties, leaders that appreciate that no one of us has all the answers or all the power.”
I am running for the United States Senate – not to serve one party – but to stand up to both parties, fight for Maryland, and fix our nation’s broken politics. It’s what I did as Maryland’s governor, and it’s exactly how I’ll serve Maryland in the Senate. Let’s get back to work. pic.twitter.com/d0TuZchAtN
— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) February 9, 2024
This move has come as a surprise for many. First of all, Hogan was openly mulling a run for the White House this year, but ended up closing out on that speculation.
He was also a principal member of the centrist No Labels group, and some thought he may become the group’s presidential candidate.
He also shut the door on running for the Senate in the last election cycle in 2022. At the time, he insisted that he did not “aspire” to serve in the upper chamber, Fox News reported. Apparently, though, he has undergone an abrupt change on that position.
The lead Democrat running for the Senate in Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks, is already experiencing problems and even engaged in a staff shake up. And that was before Hogan even announced his candidacy.
Alsobrooks should be worried. Hogan has a long record of easily winning elections, even as a Republican in the reliably blue state of Maryland.
In 2014 he won the gubernatorial election with 51.6 percent of the vote. Then in 2019 he won re-election by an even bigger margin, taking 55.4 percent of the vote.
MAGA voters will find it very difficult to cozy up to Hogan, granted. He is generally soft on the Second Amendment, has a mixed record on abortion, and was a mask zealot during the COVID pandemic.
Will Republicans win Maryland’s Senate seat?
But the fact is, a MAGA candidate would get little to no traction in Maryland, anyway. Just look at Ben Cardin’s last election in 2018 for example. The hard left Cardin won almost a million and a half votes in that election. Meanwhile, GOP candidate Tony Campbell didn’t even get 700,000 votes total. Yet polls are already showing Hogan in the lead.
In a day when the balance in the U.S. Senate is so close, having a senator that will join the conservative side even 50 percent of the time is better than having one who would never, ever vote red. Larry Hogan is no strict conservative, for sure. But he would certainly be better than a Democrat in that seat, and his being there could be a boon at crucial times in the coming years.
