Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is being honest with voters. The Republican isn’t winning over Democrats on his run for the state’s open Senate seat the same way he did when he cruised to election and reelection as one of the country’s most popular governors.
Democrats in blue states are consistently happy to hand the reins of state government over to Republicans with their heads for balanced budgets and centrist approaches to governance. But the Senate and the White House are different matters.
Winning as a Republican in deep-blue Maryland is no mean feat, but Hogan did it twice — once by a slim margin and then without breaking a sweat four years later. Now he’s finding that even though Maryland voters didn’t have a problem sending him to the governor’s mansion regardless of the letter that sat next to his name on the ballot, picking a senator to represent them a couple of miles south in the Capitol is a whole different ballgame.
“The last two elections, I think I got about a third of the Democrats,” Hogan said earlier this month. “We’re not quite there. I think we’re in the high 20s at this point.”