The danger of splitting anti-Trump Republicans and helping the former president win the nomination again “would be a pretty good reason to consider not running” for the White House in 2024, the former Maryland governor Larry Hogan said.
“I don’t care that much about my future in the Republican party,” Hogan told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “I care about making sure we have a future for the Republican party.
“And if we can stop Donald Trump and elect a great Republican commonsense conservative leader, that certainly would be a factor.”
A relative moderate in a GOP marched far right, Hogan has long been thought likely to run. He told NBC he would decide whether to do so, as “a small government common-sense conservative”, in a “relatively short period of time”, most likely this spring.
Trump and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley are the only two declared candidates so far. Polling has shown Haley splitting a non-Trump vote dominated by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and thereby handing Trump the win.
Trump did not win a majority of voters in 2016, when he first captured the nomination. Hogan barely registers in polling regarding 2024.
On NBC, Hogan was asked about culture war issues, chiefly around education and LGBTQ+ issues, on which DeSantis has based much of his appeal to voters.
Hogan said: “I was a Republican governor in the bluest state in America and got things done, working across the aisle with Democrats. So I can tell you, it’s not what everyone’s talking about.
“But I think some people are making the calculation that base primary voters in the Trump lane, that’s what they want to hear about. And so a lot of candidates are focusing on that. You can’t dismiss it, but I don’t think it should be the only thing we’re talking about.”
Haley said this week DeSantis’s so-called “don’t say gay” law, restricting how gender and sexual orientation are taught in elementary schools, did not go “far enough”.
She has refused to comment about other Republican candidates, Trump in particular, claiming only to be interested in attacking Joe Biden.
Hogan was asked about Republican attempts to have candidates commit to supporting the eventual nominee.
“I think it’s kind of silly because it’s not going to happen,” he said. “We already know President Trump has said numerous times he refuses to” do so.
“If they say you’re not going to be on the debate stage if you won’t commit to support the nominee, then President Trump won’t be on the debate stage. And I don’t think anybody believes that’s going to happen.”
Looking to Michigan, an electoral battleground where on Saturday a supporter of Trump’s election fraud lie became head of the state party, Hogan said: “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. And I am concerned about some of the parties.
“And people are taking over that are believing conspiracy theories. And I think we’ve got to get back to a bigger-tent party that can appeal to more people, otherwise we’re going to keep losing elections.”
In 2020, while still in office, Hogan publicly refused to support Trump. He did not vote for Biden, however, writing in “Ronald Reagan” instead.
On Sunday, Hogan said he wanted “to support the nominee of the party, whoever that is. However, I’ve said before I didn’t support Trump, I wouldn’t support Trump. I put the country ahead of party and not somebody [who] should not be the president.”
