Yesterday, I looked at the midterm primary situation in Maryland, where it appeared that term-limited Governor Larry Hogan was preparing to hand a significant gift to the Democrats this November. The results aren’t completely official yet because state law doesn’t allow the mail-in ballots to be opened until Thursday, but the initial results suggest that Hogan has gotten his wish. Not only will the Democrats almost certainly keep the Senate seat that is up for grabs, but the state Republicans have nominated a Trump-backed candidate for governor who will almost certainly be crushed in the general election. And the state Democratic Party couldn’t be happier about it. With more than 50% of the initial votes that were counted, Dan Cox has already been declared the winner of the GOP primary by most media outlets. (Associated Press)
Dan Cox, a far-right state legislator endorsed by former President Donald Trump, won the Republican primary for Maryland governor on Tuesday, defeating a moderate rival backed by outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan.
Cox will face the winner of the highly competitive Democratic primary in the November general election. Wes Moore, a bestselling author backed by Oprah Winfrey, had an early lead Tuesday night, with the focus starting to turn to mail ballots that won’t be counted until later in the week.
Despite being a win for Trump, Cox’s victory over former Hogan Cabinet member Kelly Schulz could be a blow to Republican chances to hold on to the governor’s mansion in November. Hogan, who was prohibited from running for a third consecutive term, was a rare two-term Republican governor in a heavily Democratic state, and he had endorsed Schulz as the successor to his bipartisan style of leadership.
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Dan Cox barely mounted a campaign to win the nomination, but he didn’t really need to. He spent only $21,000 in advertising over the course of the campaign and really didn’t make all that many public appearances. The state Democratic Party did all of the heavy lifting for him, running endless ads portraying Cox as a Trump acolyte who is “too extreme” for Maryland. The ads purported to be critical of Cox’s record, but Democratic insiders admitted that they were structured to solidify the GOP base in Cox’s corner by hammering the endorsement he received from Trump. It appears to have worked.
The coverage of the gubernatorial primary at NBC News suggests that Cox won “with the help of Democrats.” But that’s a rather misleading way to put it. State election law requires primary voters to be registered with one of the major political parties in order to vote in that election. So unless a massive number of former Democrats switched parties at the end of last year (and the registration records do not indicate this), it was the state’s heavily outnumbered GOP voters who pushed Cox over the finish line.
This is another reminder of what should already have been obvious. Larry Hogan didn’t win two terms as the Governor of Maryland because conservatives in his party loved him. He won two terms because he was basically the only Republican who could win in a state where Democrats hold a two-to-one registration advantage. And he wound up getting the votes of many Democrats as well. Maryland Republicans have already stopped listening to Hogan, as demonstrated by the way they roundly rejected Hogan’s own pick to be his replacement. And do you think any of those blue-state Democrats are going to vote for someone associated with Donald Trump in November?
Larry Hogan could have woken up this morning as a favorite to nab a Senate seat from the Democrats in November. But now the Democrats will almost surely keep that seat, making the climb to flip control of the upper chamber even steeper for the GOP. And the Governor’s mansion will almost certainly be handed back to the Dems as well.
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