This article in the online version of The New Republic makes a surprisingly compelling case for the "beatability," if you will, of Larry Hogan, the unlikely Republican governor of Maryland. Basically, it focuses on the fish-out-of-water nature of Hogan, a former businessman who largely wants to cut taxes more than anything else, operating in a state with a strong politically blue climate. He doesn't speak out in cases where speaking out would put him at war with that climate and, on those occasions when the Democratic supermajority in the Maryland General Assembly overrides one of his vetoes, he just says nothing. Just as he does when Donald Trump or other national Republicans do or say something that might compromise his popularity among Democrats or independents (or even Republicans), Hogan just gives his best what-me-worry imitation of MAD's Alfred E. Newman, and shines it on.
The result? According to one survey, as mentioned in the TNR article, Hogan is the second most popular governor in the country. His re-election next year would seem to be all but re-assured. Except for the fact that there were some peculiar dynamics at work in his 2014 victory.
Hogan ran against an inept Democratic candidate, in a year when the national Democratic party was at a low political ebb and had no candidated for national office on the ballot to energize the largely Democratic voting base. His focus? Martin O'Malley's alleged "40 tax hikes," most of which were fee-for-service increases such as the ones pushed by Hogan's Maryland political godfather, Robert Ehrlich during his one term in the governor's chair. (The less said about Hogan's national political godfather, Chris Christie, the better--for now.) And here's the kicker: even with all of this going for him, Hogan just squeeked by in the popular vote with a margin of victory of less than 4 percent.
None of this is going to work for Hogan in 2018. The national climate will no longer be dominated by six years of weariness with Barack Obama; it will be instead burdened by two years of despair generated by Trump. There will be a U.S. Senate race to galvanize the bases of both national parties, and to force Trump into the political debate at the state level, something Hogan has dreaded for months. And Hogan's re-election campaign will need to be a part of that debate. If he wants to spend all of his time on debate stages saying "I have no answer for that" or "I don't need to have an opinion on that," he might as well do what his 2014 Democratic opponent, Anthony Brown, did for one of the debates that year: fail to show up altogether. Sure worked well for him, didn't it?
But the TNR article overlooks one area of Hogan's administration where he most definitely does have an opinion: his relationship with the city of Baltimore. And that opinion is most definitely not a positive one.
Even back in 2014, if one read carefully between the lines, it was painfully clear that Hogan's comments about "getting spending under control" and "rolling back those 40 tax hikes" were code for balancing the budget on the backs of the citizens of Baltimore, a jurisdiction where the problems of poverty, and the public expenses required to address those problems, were higher than they were anywhere else in the state. The voting population of the city was overwhelmingly Democratic, and rapidly shrinking, and therefore of no practical political assistance to a Republican running for statewide office.
Above all, without putting too fine a point on it, that population was overwhelmingly African-American.
I tread carefully in saying what I say at this point. I have no reason to believe that Larry Hogan is racist personally. He has an Asian stepfamily, as I have a Jewish one. He also has an African-American Lieutenant Governor, as did Ehrlich. But it's false respect to Hogan's tolerance in this area, including his denounciation of the white nationalists in Charlottesville last weekend, to pretend that much of his Western Maryland and Eastern Shore constituents have a great deal of fondness for the population of Baltimore and its needs. How much of that is about race, and how much of it comes from other factors, I am not in a position to say. But I have had far too many conversations in both parts of the state to pretend that the feeling isn't real.
My point: as a Governor, and therefore as a politician, Hogan is forced to take that negativity into account to maintain his popularity and his power. Obviously, the riots in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray gave Hogan an unforced opportunity to punish the city for its failures in the area of public safety. Equally obviously, those failures have continued to the present day, without any help from Hogan at all.
But Hogan's penny-wise, pound-foolish response to all of this has proved him to be more bean-counter than business man. Even the most thrifty person in business understands that, sometimes, you need to spend money you don't have to both deliver services and generate revenues for your customers. You take out a loan to build a new factory that builds a new product that makes people's lives better and soon, the loan is paid off while the factory enhances your bottom line.
That's the way businesses used to think. Not today. Everything is all about cut, cut, cut, cut, and, when all else fails, cut some more. Thus, Hogan throws away $1 billion in federal transportation money and over a decade of planning, and cancels the Red Line, which could have been the beginning (with the Metro and light-rail) not only of a true metropolitian rail system for Baltimore, but the beginning of an intercity system between Baltimore and Washington, DC, with free transfers between the two. Anyone who has seen what the Metro has done for the D.C. metropolitan area and the District itself knows that such a system could literally help bake a larger economic pie for everyone in the state.
One could go on and on along this line, beginning with the cancellation of the planned new state center for Maryland public employees. But this, as much as any other reason, is why the beatable Larry Hogan needs badly to be beaten next year. Maryland needs and deserves a governor who understands that a healthy Baltimore is the key to a healthy Maryland. Divide-and-conquer politics have come close to destroying our country; we desperately need to keep them out of the Free State.
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