BALTIMORE — Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is not running for president in 2024.
Hogan entertained a bid for the Republican nomination as a moderate candidate, traveling the country, raising money, and starting to build a campaign organization last year as his two terms as governor neared an end.
But in a New York Times op-ed published Sunday, the business owner and real estate developer wrote that he will not run.
”After eight years of pouring my heart and soul into serving the people of Maryland, I have no desire to put my family through another grueling campaign just for the experience,” Hogan said.
Former President Donald Trump has already announced his candidacy.
Hogan, one of Trump’s most prominent Republican critics during the former president’s term, said for months that one of his goals in running in 2024 would be to stop Trump from winning the nomination for a third time.
Not getting into a crowded primary, like the one Trump won in 2016, is a way to do that, Hogan indicated Sunday morning in a statement.
“To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Donald Trump,” Hogan said. “There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
Hogan, during frequent political appearances and interviews last year, said he believed there was a “lane” for anti-Trump, moderate Republicans, such as himself, who primary voters would pick over the former president.
But in an interview CBS News aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Hogan said a larger number of those kinds of candidates in the race may only make it easier for primary voters to divide their votes — leaving Trump at the top.
“I didn’t want to have a pile of a bunch of people fighting,” Hogan told CBS. “Right now, you have Trump and (Florida Gov. Ron) DeSantis at the top of the field — soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention — 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.”
Hogan did not say which poll or polls he was talking about. A Quinnipiac University national poll of Republican voters last month found 42% would vote for Trump at that time and 36% would pick DeSantis. Five percent supported former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, with former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo each receiving the support of 4%. No other candidate, including Hogan, topped 2%.
Political analysts have also said Hogan would have faced challenges in appealing to primary voters, who tend to be more conservative than the general electorate. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1, he maintained high approval ratings in Maryland, often by shying from making much of his positions on conservative social issues like abortion and gun control.
But while popular and successful in two general elections, when it came to the 2024 GOP primaries — even the one in his home state — he faced the potential of performing poorly. A June poll from Baltimore Sun Media and the University of Baltimore showed Trump had more than twice the support among Maryland Republicans in a potential matchup. And in 2022, it was Trump’s pick to replace Hogan, Republican Del. Dan Cox, rather than that of the incumbent governor, who won the primary for governor.
“There are few things certain in politics, but one was that Larry Hogan would not be the Republican nominee for president,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Sabato said Hogan faced “the same dilemma as the one faced by Republicans for a generation. The Republicans are more interested in conservative ideology — some would say right-wing ideology — than they are about picking a winner.”
Hogan’s spokesman said Sunday he would not be available for an interview. In the CBS segment recorded Friday, Hogan said he believes his party can get back to the conservative elements it represented before Trump, though he said that process is still “challenging.”
He also commented on a few of the potential candidates besides Trump, indicating he could support Pence as the nominee, but not committing to DeSantis, who represents more of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rebrand of Republican politics.
“He’s going right after the Trump base and he wants to be, I think, the younger version of Donald Trump,” Hogan said. “He’s trying to fire up the base, which is OK. And it may be a good strategy to win a primary. But my point was, you have to actually focus on winning swing voters as well, or we’ll have Joe Biden as president and that’s not what we need.”
Hogan, who left office in January, spent much of his last year as governor traveling to early Republican primary states like New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. In November, he ran some online ads and ramped up his fundraising efforts for An America United, a nonprofit group he started in 2019 to spread his message nationally, and a newer federal political action committee, Better Path Forward PAC.
A pair of late November fundraisers and events with more than 1,300 attendees at Maryland Live! Casino in Hanover raised a combined $1.2 million for those organizations, the groups announced at the time.
Still, Hogan didn’t demonstrate the ability to raise the amount of cash required to run a national presidential campaign. The Better Path Forward PAC had about $366,000 in the bank as of Dec. 31, according to its most recent available fundraising report. An America United, organized under a nonprofit category that many potential presidential candidates are using, is not required to regularly disclose fundraising or spending.
If he had entered the race, Hogan would have been the second consecutive Maryland governor to run for president. Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley ran as one of the few opponents to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. He dropped out after winning less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. New Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, is also widely seen as a potential future presidential candidate.
Hogan could decide to run for U.S. Senate in 2024, Sabato said, particularly if Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, 79, decides not to seek reelection. Cardin is expected to announce his plans within the next few months; he was not immediately available Sunday for comment.
Despite aggressive cajoling from national Republican figures seeking to take control of the U.S. Senate, Hogan decided not to run against Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen in 2022.
“It has to be very enticing for (Hogan) if it’s an open seat,” Sabato said. “I don’t know that he wants to run against an incumbent Democrat.”
However, Hogan himself appeared Sunday to rule out another campaign, writing in his op-ed: “I’m not a career politician, and that has never been my aspiration. I’ve spent nearly my entire career founding and running businesses, and that’s what I’m going to go back to doing.”
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(Baltimore Sun reporters Jeff Barker and Lilly Price contributed to this report.)
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