Larry Hogan Not Running for President
The popular former Republican governor of Maryland has correctly assessed his chances.
NYT (“Larry Hogan Says He Will Not Run for President“):
Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, announced on Sunday that he would not run for president in 2024.
Mr. Hogan, a moderate Republican who has been a frequent critic of former President Donald J. Trump, said in a New York Times opinion essay and in an interview with CBS News’s Robert Costa that he had seriously considered a campaign but concluded that running would not be productive.
In 2016, Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination over a mass of primary competitors who splintered the support of voters who opposed him. No candidate was able to consolidate anti-Trump voters, and Mr. Hogan said he did not want to contribute to a similar situation in 2024.
“Right now, you have, you know, Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field — they’re soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention,” he told Mr. Costa in an interview for “Face the Nation,” referring to Mr. Trump, who has formally entered the race, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not but is widely expected to. “And then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits, and the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up.”
In his Times essay, he was explicit about the implications of such a large field.
“To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr. Trump,” he wrote. “There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. The stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
Mr. Hogan spent eight years as governor of Maryland, a blue state where he was popular despite his party. In weighing a presidential run, he said on multiple occasions that he thought his record could be an example for the Republican Party, which has moved sharply to the right and has lost or fallen short of expectations in all three election cycles since Mr. Trump was inaugurated.
Last year, Mr. Hogan backed a number of Republican candidates for governor and Congress who had stood up to the former president.
But while his brand of Republicanism appealed across the aisle in a liberal state like Maryland, and he argued it could have appealed in a general election for president, there has been little indication of an appetite for it in a Republican primary.
While I would dearly love for my old party to nominate a competent leader who’s a decent human being, the odds of either seem long right now.
Why, just bout a month ago, on February 2nd, The Hill reported that:
Basically, Larry is just another spineless waste of time.
@al Ameda: This Hill story?
I prefer the Liz Cheney position but Hogan’s wishy-washiness is probably necessary for someone with any hope of getting the Republican nomination for anything.
@James Joyner:
Necessary is a long way from sufficient. He was delusional to believe he ever had a chance to begin with, so he might as well have taken the morally correct position, instead of staining his legacy for no good purpose.
Of course it’s quite possible he was being honest and would in fact prefer Trump to any Democrat. The assumption that he only said it to pander to the Trumpists is giving him more credit than he deserves.
@James Joyner:
I understand, but the reality is someone as pedestrian and-non-MAGA as Hogan has no chance regardless of whether he is spineless or wishy washy.
@Kylopod: At considerable political risk, he repeatedly excoriated Trump, probably dooming whatever chance he had at higher office. That he give a bad answer to Hugh Hewitt on a talk show—immediately clarifying it—shouldn’t outweigh that.
@al Ameda: He got elected, twice, as governor of a Blue state as a Republican. Maybe he has the qualities we should be looking for in a President?
@James Joyner:
He built his brand as a Trump critic while trying to maintain a career as a Republican in one of the bluest states in the country. It enabled him to win a landslide reelection during a blue wave year. And given how carefully he considered a presidential run, only deciding against it now, it would seem that his having doomed his chances at higher office was motivated more by blindness than bravery. I still give him credit for it. But let’s not kid ourselves that it was purely based on principle, that he didn’t convince himself he’d benefit from it long-term.
The 2024 GOP nomination will be a referendum on the soul of the Republican party. The voters will have four basic choices:
1. Donald Trump
2. MAGA sans Trump, a Trump surrogate like DeSantis.
3. Mainstream conservatism, such as someone like Mike Pence.
4. A more moderate choice like Hogan or Chris Sununu.
Personally, I don’t think choice #4 has a chance in hell. The irony here is that either Hogan or Sununu would clean Biden’s clock in a normal election year. But 2024 will not be normal either way, thanks to Trump and the hold he has over at least a statistically significant portion of the electorate.
@James Joyner:
“Maybe he has the qualities we should be looking for in a President?”
For what definition of “we”? Certainly not Republican primary voters.
@James Joyner:
I like Hogan. But, until such time as the MAGA base no longer steers the GOP, no Republican, regardless of caliber, should be President. Even if he could miraculously get elected, he would never be able to stand athwart the worst tendencies of the party he chooses to align with.
He correctly assesses the odds and quits. To that I reply with an old basketball saw: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Nobody thought McCain had a chance, hardly anyone had even heard of Obama when he announced, and he didn’t think he had a chance in hell. Just raising his profile for the next rodeo. Did Trump run thinking his odds were good? Probably not, far more likely it was just a ploy to boost his public profile. There is no such thing as bad press in show business.
@dazedandconfused:
That is not even remotely accurate.
Obama was a national figure by 2007, and from the moment he entered the race he held a fairly consistent second-place in the polls. A lot of pundits thought the Clintons were too politically powerful for anyone to overtake her in the primaries, but it was pretty much undisputed from the start that Obama was her most formidable rival for the nomination.
As for McCain, he also started off 2007 in second-place, with Giuliani as the front-runner. His campaign faltered later in the year and nearly collapsed, then he recovered and quickly shot to the top after Giuliani’s rapid descent once the primaries began.
Literally the only thing Hogan has in common with Obama or McCain is that they were underdogs of some kind. But your statement that “nobody” took Obama’s or McCain’s campaign seriously at first, or that they were underdogs in anything remotely approaching Larry Hogan 2024 territory, is quite simply a rewriting of history.
@Kylopod: I’m talking about outside the punditry on Obama. He was certainly well known the to the political junkies but outside of that? Not so much.
The game is decided by the public, not the pundits, and most of the public pays little attention outside of POTUS election cycles.
@dazedandconfused: Obama had over 70% name recognition in March 2007. That was well below Clinton’s and slightly below Edwards’, but it’s quite inconsistent with your claim that “hardly anyone had even heard of Obama when he announced.” For a freshman Senator who hadn’t run for president or vp before and wasn’t a former First Lady, that was pretty high.
I wasn’t able to find any polls on Hogan’s level of national name recognition currently, but I’m willing to guess it’s quite a bit lower than Obama’s was then.
@Kylopod:
March of 07 is a month after he announced he was running for POTUS.
@Kylopod:
I think you’re overestimating Hogan. I can think of no one among the leadership of the GOP (or among the followership for that matter) who actually objects to Trump policy. Part of this is because Trump has no policy of his own, but a significant part of it is because Republicans are in favor of the wall, in favor of white supremacy, in favor of gay and trans bashing, in favor of Russia winning in Ukraine, in favor of add whatever else you want. Hogan will support whoever will bring about the GOP agenda for the nation. He’s not tarnishing his name over this, he’s reminding us of who he is. That he finds Trump repulsive is simply a demonstration of his sense of esthetics not being completely rotted out. There’s no principled stand here other than being wise enough to realize that to eliminate Trump, everybody but one needs to stand down to maximize support for “not Trump.”
But if that isn’t enough, then Trump it is. Program over personality.
@James Joyner:
Got to dispute that “we.” Right now this is primarily a Republican problem. Pretty sure base Republicans look at Hogan as a RINO.