Larry Hogan Is Running a West Wing Campaign in an Idiocracy World

The popular Republican ex-governor needs Democrats to vote for him. He has to reach them first.

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

Baltimore, Maryland
FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE Larry Hogan’s event was about to start in Baltimore last week, and the campaign had a problem on its hands.

The Copper Union beer garden, where the “Democrats for Hogan” event was being held, was almost entirely empty—the exception being a table in the center, where a group of women sat, drinking beers. The Hogan campaign’s bus had just arrived, but with about fifteen minutes to go, even those few remaining patrons were heading for the doors.

A Hogan staffer wandered over.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna stay?” he asked. “No thanks,” at least four members of the party simultaneously chirped.

And then, out of nowhere, the former governor was saved. As the event was about to begin, dozens of attendees arrived, rescuing the campaign from the specter of a poorly attended dud of a campaign stop.

These are the risks and perils confronting Hogan. A popular former governor with bipartisan credibility, he has staked that reputation on a Senate race with dramatically bad odds. He is a Republican candidate in need of Democratic support at a time when split-ticket voting is often scarce. Hence the long-shot bid of going into the most densely populated city in one of the more reliable blue states and hoping to come out not just politically unscathed but having won over skeptics. But before he can convince any of those skeptics, he needs them to come out.

Eventually, dozens of people attended the “Democrats for Hogan” event, although it wasn’t clear how many of them were actually Democrats. Men wore Rhoback golf polos and women were sporting bleach-blonde hair. Several old Jewish men engaged in a spirited debate about how President Joe Biden is “such an antisemite,” and at least one woman muttered “Trump 2024” to her friends at multiple points during Hogan’s stump speech. If it was a Democrats for Hogan event, it was aesthetically Republican.

Over the course of about 10 minutes, Hogan delivered a pitch that didn’t seem quite tailored to the crowd assembled. If elected to the Senate, he stressed, he could serve as a moral check on an increasingly belligerent and ideologically bankrupt Republican party.¹ 

The crowd sat there, listening intently. Running to restore the moral fiber of the Republican party is a compelling (if far-fetched) message in the current moment. But its resonance runs thin with many Republicans, who don’t think the party needs restoring. And for Democrats it doesn’t quite answer the fundamental question: Why shouldn’t they just vote for a Democrat?

“I come from what I call the traditional Republican party,” Hogan said in an interview with The Bulwark after his speech. “Maybe I’m not a MAGA Republican, like many people today, but I think there’s, I think there are people on both sides of the aisle that would like to get things done and fix some problems, but they don’t have the courage to speak out quite as much as I do. And rather than just giving up on the party and walking away—which I don’t think is going to fix anything—I’m trying to be one of the few that’s willing to stand up and fight back.”

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WITH JUST WEEKS TO GO IN the election, Hogan is not just attempting to fill the Senate seat left open by retiring Democrat Ben Cardin, he is trying to prove that a template still exists for candidates like him to succeed. His entrance into the race was considered a coup² for the Republican party—perhaps the only GOP candidate who could help the party put the reliably Democratic seat in play.

But Hogan isn’t just running as the savior for the Republican party, but also as a check on it. He argues the party can go back to what it was, pre-Trump, and that, as a result, politics itself can change. His bus is emblazoned with the slogan “Send a message to Washington!” And he is betting big that a mix of nostalgia and gladhanding can convince Democrats that this is what they need too.

Hogan doesn’t lack the political skills to pull it off. When he stepped off the bus at the beer garden, he worked the crowd of about 50 attendees, mingling and shaking hands, maintaining eye contact, and doing it all without looking like he had somewhere more important to be. Hogan never glanced over his shoulder to take cues from aides (at least without making it obvious).

But a candidate can only shake so many hands. And to win this race, Hogan has also embraced a slew of policy proposals designed to endear him to Democrats—or, at least, obscure the differences between him and his opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, the executive of Prince George’s County.

Hogan says he isn’t voting for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. “I’ve decided I’m not voting for any of either two major candidates,” he told me. “It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion in Maryland, it’s a 32-point race with Kamala Harris being elected. But I’m not gonna—she hasn’t earned my vote. I don’t agree with her on issues and my position on Trump is pretty clear.”

Beyond that, he backs a legislative effort to codify Roe v. Wade, overturned two years ago in a ruling made possible by the expanded conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Hogan also backs a right to in vitro fertilization and opposes the many proposals outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s headache-inducing Project 2025. In our interview, he also reversed course on an assault weapons ban—a law he fought when Democrats pushed it during his governorship.

“I said I would support a common-sense assault weapons ban,” Hogan argued. “I’ve always been for universal background checks and I’ve always been for keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and people with a criminal background. I signed a red flag law, signed a bump stock law, and I think we need some bipartisan compromises.”

But there’s an irony in Hogan’s desire to scrounge around the middle of American politics for policy wins: Those wins would be more easily achieved through big Democratic victories this fall. Being in the Senate isn’t like being the chief executive in Annapolis. You’re one of a hundred, stuck inside an almost entirely partisan body.

And while senators do cobble bipartisan deals on key issues, which sometimes make their way to the president’s desk, the majority of action comes when one party has full control. If Hogan were elected this fall, he would likely make his mark not by working across the aisle but by being either the key enabler of his own party or a frustrating thorn in its side. Think of John McCain’s thumbs down to prevent the Obamacare repeal, or Joe Manchin tanking the $2 trillion Build Back Better agenda.

Being bipartisan in the Senate isn’t limited to mavericks, either. That’s why polar opposites like Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) can, in one-minute, be enraged over the certification of an election and in the next, work together on banning stock trading for members of Congress.

“Well, look, I’m going to be a key voice in the middle,” Hogan said, when I asked him how he could advance these various policy goals in a chamber led by Rick Scott or one of the Johns.³ “It doesn’t matter to me who it is [in the Senate majority]. I’m going to be fighting for those things. I’m the key swing vote to get those things done.”

Hogan speaking in Baltimore at Copper Union (Photo via X, formerly Twitter)

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AS HE AIMS TO FILL THE SEAT Cardin is vacating, Hogan benefits from a successful tenure as governor. He is mild-mannered and for most of his career, kept the party’s fringes—arguably now its mainstream—at arms length. He was a very popular Republican in a blue state. If Republicans were ever going to have a chance in this race, Hogan is it.

Polling in Maryland has been sparse, but what exists underscores the mountain he has to climb. In September, an influx of credible surveys showed Alsrobrooks with a comfortable lead. The central problem for Hogan might not be his appeal—he remains very popular—but voters view the role of a senator much differently than that of a governor. A recent Washington Post poll found that while Hogan has a 52 percent favorability, 60 percent of Marylanders want a Democratic Senate.

And so, the man who is running as a check on Republicans has to hope for a big Republican turnout on November 5. It’s not just that he needs the votes—though clearly he does. His allies also believe if the prospect of a GOP wave and Trump victory comes into clearer focus, it will compel late-deciding voters to cast their ballots for someone to check the MAGA forces. And, naturally, that someone would be him. 

Hogan’s top Democratic ally, former State Sen. Bobby Zirkin, made the argument to me that in a slim Republican majority, Hogan would be able to tip the scales in ways that Alsobrooks simply will not.

“Republicans aren’t going to get 50 or 51 seats,” Zirkin said. “It looks like it’s gonna be more like 52 or 53 when you’re looking at West Virginia and Montana and some of those other places, then having a Larry Hogan in that room is really important.”

Zirkin’s affinity for Hogan is rooted in the cooperative relationship they had during their respective tenures in Annapolis. Zirkin was once branded as the governor’s “new best friend” who had Hogan’s back when he supported a fracking ban against his own party’s wishes. Zirkin also went after Hogan’s Democratic opponent Ben Jealous over what Zirkin characterized as politicization of the state Supreme Court.

Still, Zirkin hasn’t quite squared away what he wants the Senate to look like in 2025, only that he wants Hogan in it. He said he doesn’t want to see Ted Cruz leading the Commerce Committee, and he doesn’t like the status quo in which Bernie Sanders is chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

“I’m conflicted,” he said. “So it’s more of a complex answer than just, I’m a D, I’m an R, I’m a blue, I’m a red.” Zirkin tried to reduce the issue to its simplest form. The prevailing issue of the day was not a single policy, but the issue of partisanship—all of which made Hogan preferable over his own party’s nominee.

“Having Larry Hogan—a Mitt Romney type, a John McCain type—in the room where decisions are being made,” Zirkin explained, “who’s the voice of reason when so many of the right wingers are in that room, you have to have voices. Just being somebody sitting across the hall twiddling your thumbs waiting to vote? No, that isn’t really all that helpful in that scenario.”

At the Copper Union beer garden, some attendees echoed Zirkin’s refrain. But others had different ways of explaining their support for Hogan. Many believed that the Senate was already lost for Democrats and concluded that a vote for Hogan made the most strategic sense. After all, wouldn’t a sane person want to make sure the GOP doesn’t go too far off the rails?

As he worked the crowd, Hogan portrayed himself as someone who could stand up to Trump and even create a new political paradigm; that he wouldn’t be just another Republican politician but someone who could police the party from within.

The attendees were attentive. They waited around for selfies, even as the rain got worse and the beer garden’s sun canopies did little to hold in the water. Hogan had done what he could to win them over. If he wants to win a Senate seat—to say nothing of de-radicalizing American politics—he’ll need to visit a lot more beer gardens.

1. With Mitt Romney’s retirement, there’s certainly an opening for the job. I don’t count Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) or Susan Collins (R-Maine) as successors in this category because frankly, they don’t put in the effort like old Mitt.

2. Phrasing. 

3. Mitch McConnell’s decision to step down as Republican leader means the next Senate GOP boss is likely to be named John. Whether that’s John Thune (R-S.D.) or John Cornyn (R-Texas) will be decided in the coming months. The number two post might also be named John, for what it’s worth.