ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Surrounded by pictures, knickknacks and a guitar signed by country music star Alan Jackson in his second-floor State House office, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan took stock of his dwindling time as governor.
“It’s not that I’m counting, but my calendar has a countdown on it,” Hogan told The Baltimore Sun in an interview Monday. “It says 30 days today.”
The rare two-term Republican governor has reached his term limit and will pass the baton to Democratic Gov.-elect Wes Moore, who will be inaugurated as Maryland’s first Black governor on Jan. 18.
With only a month left of an eight-year stint as the state’s chief executive, Hogan recalled his wins — both intentional and by happenstance — fumbles, and where he’d like to see the state of politics head next.
Win, lose or draw
Hogan said that he is the most proud of Maryland’s economic turnaround — something he campaigned on in 2014. He is leaving the state with a $5.5 billion surplus, thanks in part to federal pandemic relief funds.
“It’s the main focus of why I ran, so I feel like (it’s) delivering on the main focus of what we promised to do,” he said.
While Hogan was able to checkoff boxes for his gubernatorial master plan, his administration did face stormy seas:
—89 days into his first term, Freddie Gray died of injuries sustained while in Baltimore police custody.
—Nearly two months after that, Hogan was diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leaving him to run Maryland “from a hospital bed,” he said.
—And in 2020 he was faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, which Hogan said no one at the federal, state or local level was prepared to take on.
And while he isn’t claiming infallibility — there have been factual disputes over Hogan’s recounting of the aftermath of Gray’s death in his 2020 memoir and a series of inquiries related to flawed procurement deals made during the COVID-19 state of emergency, among other pandemic-related issues — Hogan believes his administration did “a pretty good job” of fielding unanticipated crises.
“I’d like to say we were defined by the things that we said we were going to do and we did, but I think also it’s how we had to respond to crises and how we led during a crisis, and I think we did a pretty good job of those things, as well,” Hogan said Monday.
But the governor feels he fumbled at least one ball legislatively, pointing to a failure to pass a bill to place tougher penalties on repeat violent offenders, despite three attempts. Democrats enjoy a veto-proof in the state Legislature.
Baltimore has seen at least 300 homicides annually since 2015 — both the year of Gray’s death and when Hogan took office. The governor blamed city and legislative leadership for the lack of movement on his “tough measures to get … the few violent criminals off the streets.”
Throughout his tenure, the Republican governor has repeatedly butted heads with city leadership. Hogan said Monday he thinks leadership was “hesitant” to work with him because he is a Republican, and that there may be more attempts “to try to cooperate” with the governor’s office when Moore is inaugurated.
Critics of Hogan allege many accomplishments over the past two terms were not his own, but the work of the General Assembly. In response, Hogan said he promised bipartisanship from day one.
“When I was giving my inaugural address in 2015, I said that the politics that have divided our nation need not divide our state — that I was going to take the best ideas, regardless of which side of the aisle they came from,” he said. “If partisan legislators criticize, ‘It was our idea and he took it,’ I promise to say I didn’t care if it was a Republican or Democratic idea, we were going to try to work together to get them done and we did and then they criticize me for going along with their idea. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Looking ahead
Many are wondering where the governor’s political compass may lead him next.
Hogan, who described himself as a “common-sense conservative” from “the Republican wing of the Republican Party,” has expressed dismay at the state of the national GOP, openly denouncing former President Donald Trump and refusing to vote for Dan Cox, Maryland’s Republican gubernatorial nominee.
“The party has still got some issues,” Hogan said. “I’m doing everything I can to kind of return to more common-sense, you know, back to a more traditional kind of bigger tent Republican Party that has a message that can appeal to more people.”
Hogan, who won both the 2014 and 2018 elections with the help of unaffiliated and Democratic voters, said he believes the only way Maryland will see another Republican governor is if they have a message that speaks to voters beyond their political base.
“I think it’s certainly a possibility, but it’s going to take the right kind of candidate,” he said. “They’d have to follow the road map that we left as opposed to veering off the road completely and getting stuck in a ditch.”
Hogan may take his “road map” to the national stage with a potential presidential bid in 2024. While he declined to say what comes after he leaves Annapolis in January, he plans to “get us back to a Republican Party that more reflects the things that I believe in.”
He first will talk with his family, friends and advisers about his next moves, and said there’s “no real time frame” in regard to any announcement.
Hogan has recently made visits to both Iowa and New Hampshire, and has recently ramped up fundraising for a new political action committee ahead of a possible presidential run.
“People have been encouraging me and I’ve been out speaking around the country — I’ve been to 24 different states and I plan to continue to travel and I’ve got ... things planned after I’m no longer governor, but I also said I’m going to finish being governor for another 30 days,” Hogan said. “But I’m definitely going to be involved somehow.”
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