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After two weeks of quibbling over “childless cat ladies”, one Republican Senate candidate is ready to say it: the top of his party’s ticket has a problem with women.
Donald Trump and JD Vance head into August beset by a number of problems: the sudden withdrawal of Trump’s main opponent, Joe Biden, and the elevation of Kamala Harris as the new Democratic nominee, for starters. But through the end of July, in the days following the GOP convention in Milwaukee, much of the coverage surrounding the Republican ticket has concerned past comments made by Vance, the vice presidential nominee.
In those comments, some made quite recently before he officially entered political life, Vance repeatedly railed against “childless” women who supposedly run America (and particularly, he argued, the Democratic Party).
He also made insulting comments aimed at all Americans without children for any reason, arguing that they had no “stake” — or less of one — in the country’s future. Finally, he reasoned, Americans with children should therefore be granted more votes at the ballot box.
Vance’s remarks have caused headaches for Republicans on Capitol Hill who have been pressed by reporters to say whether they agree with him, but one Republican who has worked for years to distance himself from the MAGA wing was happy to stick the knife in deeper. Larry Hogan, the former two-term governor of Maryland who’s running a competitive race for the state’s Senate seat this fall, spoke to The Independent about Vance’s comments while on the campaign trail Sunday.
Regarding Vance and Trump, the governor was asked: “Do you think they have a problem with women, just in general?”
“Oh, there’s no question about that,” Hogan responded. “Look, I overperformed with women in both [of my] races, I think more than any Republican in the country. I had a reverse gender gap.”
“I had much higher numbers among women than men, which no Republican has. But I think it's about the issues, and it's about the way they talk,” said Hogan. “I thought it was very unhelpful for both of them to make those kind of comments. It’s not going to help them... it doesn't seem like he's getting off to the kind of start they’d hoped.”
A blue-state Republican, Hogan has been an outlier in his party throughout the entire Trump administration and the former president’s attempted political comeback under Joe Biden. He was supportive of the impeachment efforts against Trump headed up by a Democratic-led House of Representatives, and he forcefully condemned Trump after January 6.
The governor was once hoped by #NeverTrump Republicans to be a potential challenger for the 2024 GOP nomination, but declined to run. He did say that he was almost convinced, though.
He is now public enemy #1 for many in Trumpworld. Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita publicly warned Hogan that his campaign was “dead” earlier this year after the governor called on voters to respect the verdict in Trump’s criminal fraud conviction.
But his in-state popularity was clear on Sunday as he worked through the crowds at the Maryland Latino Festival at the state fairgrounds in Timonium. As his volunteers handed out Spanish-language campaign materials, Hogan shook hands with families eager to snap a pick with the gov’.
Though he did not say it outright, Hogan appeared to agree with the general perception that Vance has done little to expand Trump’s appeal to swing voters. With a reference to the senator’s past comments about his running mate, which have included comparisons to Adolf Hitler and insults aimed at his intelligence, Hogan said he didn’t think anyone really knew the “real” JD Vance.
“I don't know JD Vance. I've never met him,” said Hogan. “I've heard, you know, he used to say things really critical of Trump — and now he's pretty much completely changed. So I don't know the real JD Vance. I just know that those kinds of comments are not helpful.”
