Popular former Gov. Larry Hogan is all but assured to win the Republican nomination for Senate in Maryland on Tuesday, but the GOP should think twice before investing too heavily in a Senate race in a state that is heavily Democratic.
In a recent interview, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told Politico that the Republican Party intends to expend significant resources to win Senate seats in “Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland.”
Three of these Senate races are no-brainer investments for the GOP. Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are facing daunting reelection bids as they are the last Democrats to be elected statewide in those states. There is little dispute that these seats are the easiest pickup opportunities for the Republican Party.
Pennsylvania, as a perennial swing state, is also a smart investment. Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is popular, but in a polarized presidential cycle, Casey’s electoral fortunes could rise and fall with President Joe Biden’s reelection hopes in the state, especially since split-ticket voting has declined significantly.
This brings us to Maryland, which has not been a remotely competitive state in federal elections since the 1980s. George H.W. Bush was the last Republican presidential candidate to win the state in 1988, and the last time a Republican won a Senate race there was in 1980 when liberal Republican Charles Mathias won a landslide reelection.
But at the gubernatorial level, the GOP has enjoyed some recent success. In 2014, a strong Republican electoral year, Hogan narrowly defeated his Democratic opponent Anthony Brown, becoming the state’s first Republican governor since Bob Ehrlich won the governor’s mansion in 2002. In 2018, Hogan won reelection by a significant margin.
In 2024, the GOP recruited Hogan to run for Maryland’s Senate seat, which is presently held by the retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). The former governor left office in 2023 with a sky-high approval rating despite the state’s partisan lean. If any Republican could win a Senate seat in Maryland, it is Hogan.
In the general election, depending on what happens in the Democratic primary on Tuesday night, Hogan will face either Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks or Rep. David Trone (D-MD), who brings with him extensive personal wealth that he will no doubt freely spend in the general election.
Current polling has mostly shown Hogan maintaining a consistent lead, with a number of voters undecided. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Hogan leads Trone by 3.8 percentage points and Alsobrooks by 6.5 points. But the most recent poll, from Emerson College and The Hill, shows Hogan trailing both candidates by double digits.
Senate races throughout the last decade or so are littered with popular governors who ran against the political lean of their state, believing they could parlay their popularity at the state level into a Senate seat. They all lost.
In 2002, Republican Linda Lingle overcame Hawaii’s overwhelming Democratic lean and defeated Mazie Hirono to become the state’s first Republican governor in 40 years. Four years later, Lingle won reelection in a landslide. Her success and popularity in the state was widely viewed as an opportunity to turn the state’s 2012 Senate race into an unusual pickup opportunity for the GOP, and she was even facing off against Hirono, whom she had beaten 10 years earlier. But on election night, Lingle failed to break 40%.
The Democratic Party has also tried its hand at running popular former governors in safe Republican territory. In 2002, Phil Bredesen narrowly defeated his GOP opponent to become the governor of Tennessee. Four years later, he, like Lingle, was reelected in a landslide. Eager to capitalize on his enduring popularity, Senate Democrats turned to Bredesen in 2018 to run against then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Polling late in the campaign showed the former governor had a real chance at winning the seat. But on Election Day, Blackburn won by 11 points.
While not nearly as electorally popular as Lingle or Bredesen, Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT), who was finishing his second term in office, mounted a campaign for Senate in 2020 against Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT). Bullock had won a pair of tight elections in 2012 and 2016 and was seen as a formidable candidate who could overcome Montana’s deep Republican hue. But on Election Day, Daines prevailed by 12 points.
These are cautionary tales. Both Bullock and Bredesen led in numerous polls prior to Election Day but ultimately lost by significant margins, even though the Democratic Party spent millions of dollars on both races. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, seems poised to expend significant resources to boost Hogan in yet another foolhardy errand.
The 2024 Senate map is chock-full of prime pickup opportunities that would be a better use of resources than a long-shot campaign to win a Senate seat in deep-blue Maryland. Senate Democrats are defending seats in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. The NRSC would be much better served to expend the bulk of its resources on these states, along with the aforementioned Ohio, Montana, and Pennsylvania.
Hogan winning Maryland would be a nice bonus, but the GOP and the NRSC should be focused on those Senate races that are competitive because of the partisan lean of the state rather than hope a popular personality will overcome partisanship in a state that has not sent a Republican to the Senate since Ronald Reagan was first elected president.
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Hogan’s candidacy may not be enough to win the state, but it will, at the very least, ensure that Senate Democrats must spend significant resources defending a seat they would otherwise be guaranteed to win. And every dollar the Democratic Party spends defending Maryland is a dollar it is not spending in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Nevada, Michigan, Montana, and Arizona.
If the NRSC spends significant resources for a losing cause in Maryland, it will lose the advantage that Hogan is providing them in the campaign to take back control of the Senate. The NRSC should encourage the Democrats to spend in safe territory but should not be taken in by the fool’s gold that Hogan’s candidacy represents.
