MILWAUKEE — As the country’s premier Republican Party event was nearing its first-night high on Monday, the party’s most successful candidate in modern Maryland politics — one whose next chapter is on the line in just a few months — was the elephant not in the room.
Larry Hogan, the two-time former governor and nominee for U.S. Senate this year, was 800 miles away, making him the only major Republican candidate in a competitive Senate race not in Milwaukee for his party’s third celebration of Donald Trump atop the ticket.
Hogan’s absence was planned and of little surprise.
He and Trump have sparred since the early days of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement nearly a decade ago, with the populist’s brand of politics faring extremely poorly among Maryland’s heavily Democratic and sometimes more moderate electorate.
But in a year when both men are on the same ballot for the first time, Hogan’s decision to turn a cheek once again to his party’s nominating convention highlighted, in some ways, the difficult balancing act Hogan has this year.
Hogan needs the support of Trump’s Republican followers but at the same time is trying to keep a distance from anything Trump is doing to help him, which could be viewed negatively among the larger electorate, said Tom Kennedy, an RNC delegate and chair of the Baltimore City Republican Central Committee.
“They are two sides of a magnet,” Kennedy said in an interview Tuesday. “They repel each other and yet they’re absolutely necessary to each other. Trump needs Hogan in the Senate and the conservative Republican Party within Maryland, and I regard myself as part of that, wants Hogan. And I have to battle that question every day with people.”
Kennedy and other delegates don’t blame Hogan for skipping the trip — far from it.
“Gov. Hogan needs to be in Maryland. He has a campaign to run, he has a campaign to win,” said Nicole Beus Harris, the Maryland Republican Party chair and leader of the state’s dozens of delegates. “It makes no sense for him to spend any of his time here because time is precious.”
Harris said it was irrelevant that Hogan wasn’t at the convention among the rest of the party faithful. With only about 120 Maryland voters — and, presumably, Hogan supporters — in Milwaukee, his time is best spent elsewhere, she said.
That echoed Hogan’s own comments Monday night in an appearance on CNN, where he said he needed to be campaigning back home in his race against Democratic nominee and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.
At the same time, he said his stance on declining to endorse Trump had not changed in the wake of the attempted assassination of the former president Saturday.
Harris, who previously acknowledged the Hogan and Trump factions among Maryland Republicans, said in an interview Tuesday that that divide still exists, along with her belief that it will unify before November. And the shooting at his rally Saturday — something Trump and some of his supporters have used to set a new unifying tone — has already shown signs of making a difference, Harris said.
“I have definitely seen a change in people’s tone for those people who say that they’ll only vote Hogan or they’ll only vote Trump. And that’s been minimizing. Every week it gets better,” Harris said. “I think we all kind of learned something this weekend. I think that definitely kind of opened some people’s eyes to what’s going on in the country.”
Kennedy said he tells hesitant Trump-Hogan voters that Hogan could be a pivotal vote for Trump’s next Supreme Court nominees or on policies like those affecting the southern border.
Kennedy said nobody in the Maryland delegation or elsewhere had been asking about Hogan’s absence. He noted that it may be different if Hogan had a commanding lead and could take the time to step away, but even then he would probably not receive the warmest welcome, Kennedy said. He noted that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who has criticized Trump in the past but has supported his nomination, was loudly jeered when he announced Kentucky’s votes for Trump on the floor Monday.
“It’s pointless. It’s unnecessary. Nobody’s saying he should have been here,” Kennedy said. “Those of us who want him to win, believe he’s where he needs to be. There’s no hard feelings.”
Marcus Alzona, an alternate delegate from Bethesda, worked in both the Hogan administration and, until recently, under Democratic Gov. Wes Moore in the State Department of Assessments & Taxation.
He said there have always been different groups within Maryland Republicans, and some people will always vote based on the “team” they envision. But it’s important to keep an open mind and be exposed to new ideas, something he said he’s been pleasantly surprised to see from the convention so far.
He and others noted, for example, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s rousing speech Monday night that not only voiced support for Trump but also evoked many pro-union and workers’ rights points that Republicans have not traditionally supported.
“It’s not that I wholly agreed with [O’Brien], but it was fascinating to have him speak there and say these things that are a little bit different,” Alzona said.
He suggests Republicans think about the Trump-Hogan divide not based on what they’ve said about each other in the past, but as a decision based on the job each of them is applying for.
“You can think that overall for the country that President Trump is the one that would bring people together,” Alzona said. “And at the same time, you can look at the people of Maryland [which is more politically moderate], and that’s Gov. Hogan. That’s Larry Hogan. He’s the right balance.”