The First Two Terms of Trump’s Running for the Senate: Larry Hogan and Other Democratic gov. Larry Haley during his 2016 Maryland re-election campaign
Hogan knows a thing or two about reaching across the aisle, as just the second Republican governor to win reelection in Maryland (where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin). He finished his second term in January.
Hogan believes that commonsense conservatives focused on issues that people cared about, like the economy and crime. They were all almost universally rejected for trying to relitigate the 2020 election.
Hogan was asked if Trump’s upcoming announcement could affect the upcoming Senate runoff in Georgia.
The two candidates that got the most votes in the primary election will meet in December after neither reached half of the vote threshold. The election in Georgia is not expected to affect the race for control of the Senate, and Democrats will hold at least 50 seats. Vice President Kamala Harris is able to break any 50-50 ties as a Democrat.
The upcoming months will see more entrants in the primary field including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who has gained national attention by being a Trump rival who dislikes the president’s policies.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said over the weekend that he won’t seek the Republican presidential nomination, ending a lengthy period of consideration and the hopes of those who had wanted the moderate — and vocal critic of former President Donald Trump — to throw his hat in the ring.
Trump faces three Republican challengers so far: his former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson.
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Hogan thinks that approach may help DeSantis win a divided primary, but doesn’t see it as a path to the White House. His own story is proof of that, he tells NPR.
“I’m the complete opposite of that style,” he says. “I won in the bluest state in America and was only the second Republican reelected in the entire 248-year history of our state, and I ran 45 points ahead of Donald Trump by winning over swing voters and independents and suburban women and Black voters and Asians and Hispanics.”
In the Morning Edition interview Hogan spoke about his concern about the state of his party and what he would like to see differently in the election.
“If the Republican Party wants to get back to winning again, so that they can govern, then they’re going to have to have a message that appeals to a wider group of people,” Hogan says. It’s not a good idea to double down on rhetoric just to appeal to the base.
One of the things that I was concerned about was that the party was focusing on things that were not what the average person was focusing [on]. That’s the reason why we have been losing elections of late. It should have been a big election year … last year; we lost races all across the country. Most of them all lost if they were not talking about things like the economy, crime, and education.
I did an op-ed in the New York Times a couple of days ago saying that I was dropping out of the race and I wanted to see the Republican Party return to a more traditional Republican Party, which was all about smaller government, but that’s not what we’re seeing from a lot of the other folks that are out there. There’s a big focus on social issues and in some cases on the government getting more aggressive.
That is what some of the Right in the Republican Party are talking about, and it seems to be playing with a part of the primary base. Now I’m not sure whether it’s a winning message for a nominee or for a general election, but it is playing well at this point in time for certain groups …