Good Riddance To Larry Hogan

I've waited eight years to write that headline.  Sometimes, it felt like I would never get a chance to do it, even though I knew it would happen.  In an election season where it seemed like that the political tide would flow toward the GQP, I was able to console myself, as a native and nearly lifelong resident of Maryland, with one powerful and incontrovertible fact.

Come January of 2023, Larry Hogan would be out of the Governor's Mansion, and out of Maryland politics.  He would be free to pursue the fantasy shared by him and an incredibly supple corporate press:  using his reputation as a "moderate" Republican to tame the Trump-transformed national party, sweep through the 2024 primary season toward nomination for the presidency, and Make America Safe Again from both the Orange Iguana and the leftist hordes of the "Democrat" Party.

Well, you be the judge of how likely this fantasy is to come true.  I know that polls are increasingly unreliable as the thermometers of political reality, but I read their results at any rate, and I have yet to see a single one concerning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination showing Hogan with anything other than single-digit support.  To be precise, low single-digit support.  To put an even finer point on it, think of the numeral 1.  But not as in "number one choice."

Consider this fact as well:  Hogan's would-be Republican successor in Annapolis, Dan Cox, made absolutely no effort to appear "moderate" next to anyone, except possibly Attila the Hun.  He ran an unabashedly Trumpian campaign, and the voters handed him his political head as a result, preferring the moderate-in-tone, progressive-in-substance Wes Moore.  But why?  Why, if Hogan's brand of so-called moderation was so impressive, was no Republican able to capitalize on it?  Why, by electing Moore, did Maryland effectively return (thankfully) to its prior default position as a state that preferred a slow but steady policy course to the left?

Because, politically speaking, Larry Hogan is a complete fake.  And, when it comes to Larry Hogan, that's the good news.  Because Larry Hogan, deep down inside, is little more than a kinder, gentler version of Trump.

I take no pleasure in making this assessment.  Like an all-too-growing cohort in conservative politics, Hogan is a legacy politician.  His father, with whom he shares his first and last name, was a true moderate back in the days when such creatures actually existed in office.  Of special importance is the fact that he served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate period, and broke with his party's official line at the time to support the impeachment of Richard Nixon.  The subsequent release of Nixon's Oval Office tape recordings revealed how farsighted, as well as courageous, that break was for our democracy.

Hogan rode his father's reputation into office in 2015, running against an inept Democratic candidate (good luck to him as our new attorney general, by the way) as well as voter frustration with Martin O'Malley's pursuit of national office at the expense of his local obligations.  Then, early in his first term, when he and we learned that he was facing a battle against cancer, he was able to rally Marylanders across party lines to route for his recovery, including me.  However, when Hogan noticed that this had the effect of softening and even reducing political criticism of him generally, he did not do what most public figures do when they disclose a health-care battle:  treat it as a personal matter, and ask for privacy.  Instead, he used it as the center of a full-court-press reshaping of his image, wiping out most if not all discussion of his more controversial moves and transforming his image from that of a politician to that of a heroic survivor.

Hogan's use of his cancer diagnosis to soften his media image, and the media willingness to accept the soft-news bait he was offering them by doing so, has been incredibly useful in disguising the fact that, as "moderate Republicans" go, Hogan is more Republican than moderate.  He managed to stretch the cancer-related good will through two terms, making the prediction in this article a bit off.  But, in a sense, the article also anticipated the outcome of Hogan's re-election as governor, by noting the role that positioning himself as a cancer survivor played in obscuring the substance of his governing.

And this media slight-of-hand was by no means limited to local coverage.  He even managed to parlay his diagnosis into a national reputation, of which this New York Times interview is a sad, pathetic example.  I have a very high regard for Frank Bruni, but this piece just absolutely reeks of what has been described (I think fairly) as "helicopter journalism":  well-known national reporter drops in on a local official for a day and, solely on the strength of that visit, performs a complete public diagnosis of politics in that state.  It's not an exaggeration to say that Hogan's national reputation is almost entirely built on puff pieces like Bruni's.

The worst things about those pieces are not only their contribution to the well-deserved poor reputation of journalism today, but the role they have played in obscuring the hard political facts of Hogan's governance--or, more precisely, his failure to govern and even subvert good governance.  On that subject, the facts speak for themselves, in articles that have not received the same level of attention as the cancer-related coverage.

Let's start with the giant anchor around both the GQP and the nation, the 800-pound gorilla that refuses to go away, even though he can't win a majority of the popular vote:  Donald Trump.  Since then, a significant number of Republicans have walked away from their party, clearly stating that there is no chance of their return until Trump and the lunatic brand of politics he represents goes away.  But Hogan has gone in the opposite direction, refusing, in fact, to refrain from declaring that he would not support Trump if he were once again the GQP nominee.

And why should he?  What really is the substance of Larry Hogan's politics?  The fact is that he's gone out his way to dodge taking positions on a number of issues, and many pieces of popular legislation addressing these issues, even going so far as to allow many of them to become law without his signature.  Frequently, this is what corporate media means when they describe him as a "moderate."  Apparently, if you're a public official in contemporary America, all you have to appear to be a "moderate" is to do is nothing at all.

Unfortunately, that's a trick that not even Hogan has been able to pull off.  He has done things.  Bad things, unfortunately.

When he had the opportunity to bring refugees into the state that would have helped boost its economy, especially in Baltimore, where block after block is filled with empty houses, Hogan said no.

When, early last year, it was first apparent that the Supreme Court would reverse Roe v. Wade, and the Comptroller requested that state funds be released to train abortion providers, Hogan said no.

While hate crimes and opioid deaths rose here and around the country, Hogan failed to keep a promise to treat the latter as an emergency, and ignored the pain created by the former by associating with supporters of the likes of Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh.

And, in a state that prides itself on having world-class public education, not only did Hogan make war on the General Assembly's implementation of a plan to make Maryland education second to none, he used funds from dark-money sources to do it.

Of course, it's not like he made it easy for you to find out about any of this, as he found and implemented a way to subvert state record-keeping laws.

Perhaps his greatest act of both hypocrisy is his handling of state transportation needs.  Despite a reputation as "Governor Asphalt," ready to pave Maryland with roads, roads, and still more roads, the fact is that Hogan grossly underfunded state transportation projects, then proposed a monstrous "public-private partnership" that would use park land to create more traffic-clogged lanes in the DC area, and stick taxpayers for the bill if the "partnership" fails to make money off of it.  

This, and many other penny-wise pound-foolish decisions in other areas of state spending, is the cost of his war on taxes and user fees.  If you're going to fight that war, and deliberately starve the needs of the public, you owe it to that public to advertise the price tag.  But that was not Hogan's style.  Never has been, and never will be, for any Republican; far easier, as well as far more deceitfully to pretend that every meal can consist of three courses of dessert.

But then, there was one transportation decision that summed up Hogan's deceit, as well as the subtextual racism of his party and his administration:  his cancellation of what he characterized as a "wasteful boondoggle," the Red Line potentially connecting eastern and western Baltimore County (in which I live) with the existing Metro and light-rail lines in Baltimore City.  Had this been allowed to become a reality, it could have led to the beginning of a true metropolitan rail system in the Baltimore area, and one that might have been able to connect with the Washington Metro system and create a regional system on the scale of New York and Chicago.  And, were that to happen, the economic benefits for the state would have truly been explosive.  You need look no further than the D.C. metropolitan area to see the dynamic effect that the Metro has had there.

A small personal digression is in order.

I worked for the State of Maryland for twelve years, the last eight of which were spent working in procurement.  During that time, I saw a transition in state government from a Democratic governor, Parris Glendening, to a Republican successor, Robert Ehrlich.  I expected, as did many of my colleagues, that fiscal belt-tightening would be the order of the day.  But one exception to that made by Governor Ehrlich had to do with federal money.  He believed the state had an obligation to capture every federal dollar that might be available to it.  This was especially important with regard to child welfare, the area in which I worked.  Despite the fact that the Governor and I were members of different parties, I appreciated the fact that he took the impact of federal spending on the state seriously.

Would that Hogan had followed his example, not only regarding the Red Line but other public priorities as well.  But Hogan's fiscal strategy was not entirely designed to address fiscal purposes.  In truth, it was part of a larger strategy was part of a larger strategy to keep Baltimore segregated, and poor.  In other words, to fulfill the goals of his political base in Western Maryland, the people who believe that public money should only be spent according to the wishes of the people who provide it.  In practice, that means more for white people, and less for people of color.  And you may be sure that, for Western Marylanders and Hogan, their political patron, that was the real point.

This is why Hogan not only cancelled the Red Line, but spent eight years making war on Baltimore's economic development and education funding.  He did his best to hide this, and the cancer diagnosis helped him do that.  But, every so often, something would seep out into public attention.  Here is one example:  some of Hogan's Anne Arundel County supporters wanted to close light-rail stops in their county, for specious reasons.

But then, all you really have to do is take the word of the man himself.

I will give him this much credit.  Larry Hogan did a brilliant job for two terms as the Governor of Western Maryland.  But he did it at the expense of the short-term and long-term needs of the rest of the state.  And he has left behind a residue of racial animus that reminds those of us with a long memory for Maryland politics, and not in a good way, of this man.

Do you get it now?

This is the man who wants to now run off to Iowa, and other presidential primary states, along with his corporate media press clippings, and sell himself as some kind of middle-of-the-road alternative to Donald Trump, as well as Ron DeSantis.

Larry Hogan is not an alternative to them.  He may be slightly softer in style, but in substance he is a carbon copy of Trump.

And I think that voters on the ground know it.  Which goes a long way toward explaining the 1%.  Why buy a steak with no sizzle, when you can buy one that ignites itself to become as well-done as the customers want?

That's Trump.  And that's what DeSantis wants to be, although, when it comes to presence, he's still quite a ways behind Trump, no matter how many times he says "woke."

But that's the national battle, to be fought nationally over the next two years.  For now, I am grateful that the local political scene has reverted back to sanity, to inclusion, to public service over self-service.  With our first governor and lieutenant governor of color, and a state legislature solidly in Democratic hands, the future of the Free State looks bright.  Maryland can be Maryland again.  Maybe, just maybe, with a little bit of luck and hard work, America can be America again.  Meanwhile, Marylanders can look forward to projects like this, which one day could become a major hub of a truly regional rail system.

Good riddance to Larry Hogan.  G-d grant that, soon, we may say good riddance to Trump, and to MAGA politics.