You probably won’t hear about it in Larry Hogan’s incessant TV ads from now until November, but you’ll hear it ad nauseam from the Democrats: Hogan is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland.
Democratic translation: He’s automatically a Trumper, antiabortion and a whole mess of other bad things.
Republican version: Yes, he’s ours and we’re all for him right now because we need the seat to win back the Senate majority. But if he’s elected, we’ll go back to denouncing the never-Trumper as a RINO.
Hogan’s version: What, me, Republican? Heck, I’m independent. I’m for you!
All of which will make for an entertaining few months of TV viewing, but what’s a voter to think of such efforts to bleach away the party label?
When I spoke with Hogan recently about what it means to be independent, he was sure that Americans crave candidates who avoid extremes and refuse to toe the party line, but he was also refreshingly upfront about the fact that the system makes it virtually impossible for independents to win.
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“Americans are fed up with the extremes of both parties,” Hogan told me. “But the fact is that the most extreme, loudest [politicians] get the attention. You don’t have a lot of elected independents because all the rules favor the parties.”
I asked whether he based his brand of independence on any models, and he shook his head: Independent candidacies have “never been successful on a presidential level,” which is why he ended up deciding not to run against Donald Trump and President Biden this year. It’s also why he’s not running for the Senate as an independent, though Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) have made careers in the Senate while remaining nominally party-less.
But why stick with a party that you believe has lost its way, a party of Trump-fawning bootlickers for whom you publicly display disgust? “I’m a lifelong Republican,” said Hogan, who served two terms as governor. “I want to fix the party and get them back on track … to be a broader, Reaganesque party.”
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Surely you can’t realistically expect such a pivot from congressional Republicans who seem to suffer no whiplash as they swivel from one position to another to match the momentary whims of their unprincipled leader, right?
Hogan agreed: No such return to Republican principles is on the horizon. He has the same off-the-record conversations with GOP leaders that reporters do: “Even Trump Cabinet members would say to me privately, ‘Thank you for saying what you do about Trump, but I can’t say it.’ It frustrates me deeply.”
So what’s a Maryland voter to do if they’re attracted to Hogan’s independent streak but also want things to get done, which, the way Congress works, requires a political party to rustle up votes?
Hogan believes he can bridge that contradiction. He occasionally did so as a supremely popular governor in a heavily Democratic state, but a governor is an executive who can push folks around, offering recalcitrant legislators favors that might nudge them to vote for his priorities. A senator is one vote among a hundred.
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On the day we spoke, Hogan campaigned with cancer survivors at a coffee house in Silver Spring and with cops at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge in Upper Marlboro. Any politician worthy of the profession is in favor of fighting cancer, and Hogan’s personal battle with the disease makes him a solid messenger for research funding. But how many Democrats these days would be greeted with backslaps and broad smiles at an FOP lodge? Earlier in his career, Biden. Today?
Attitudes toward the police are a fault line in the nation’s cultural divide, and Hogan knows his Republican label and emphasis on fighting crime will help him reach independents and Democrats who are alienated by the left’s antagonism toward cops.
Maryland voters know Hogan goes his own way, but they have to decide just how independent he would be in a Republican Senate majority perhaps led by someone to the right of Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — such as Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.).
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Democrats want voters to conclude that Hogan’s strong, post-primary endorsem*nt of abortion rights was political theater. Hogan now not only calls himself “pro-choice” but also promises to vote against any Republican drive to ban abortion nationwide.
Hogan’s Democratic opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, is skeptical. She maintains that Hogan will inevitably join his party in limiting women’s ability to manage their own pregnancies. Of course, she doesn’t say that about Sen. Tim Kaine of neighboring Virginia, who, like Hogan, says his Catholic faith makes him an opponent of abortion personally but pledges to guarantee women’s reproductive rights. The difference? Kaine’s a Democrat.
Independence is a tricky thing in politics, which is the art of creating coalitions, or, as we call them in this country, parties. Just how independent is Hogan? He says he won’t vote for either Trump or Biden this fall.
So who will you actually vote for? I asked.
“I need to figure that out,” Hogan said.
