Where Did the Republican Candidates Go?
The Maryland GOP's Extinction Level Event of 2022 Comes Home to Roost
Right after the 2022 election, I wrote:
Cox’s incompetent, conspiracy-laden campaign also seems to have led to down-ballot losses that could have been avoided. Early results tell us that there will be fewer Delegates, fewer State Senators, fewer County Councilmembers and other county offices elected as Republicans this year as there otherwise would have been. Cox decimated the Republican bench. Republicans and conservatives in Maryland are going to be feeling the electoral repercussions of his failed campaign for a decade or more.
It’s almost like Democrats knew that when they poured millions into his primary campaign. And yet the rubes who supported Cox thought it was a sign of strength.
As we have passed the filing deadline for the 2026 Maryland State and Local Elections, the damage to the Republican bench caused by Cox’s historic defeat in 2022 is ever more obvious.
The most obvious failure is to recruit a candidate for Attorney General. Whereas in 2022 two competitors ran for AG, Republicans could not muster a single candidate this year.
In Howard County, one Republican filed for county office, for County Council in District 5. No Republicans filed for the other four council seats, for County Executive, for Sheriff, Clerk, Register of Wills, or Orphans Court judge.
Even in Anne Arundel County, a traditionally right-leaning county, Republican candidates were few and far between. Only one candidate filed for County Executive, and even he is a candidate with no experience, little name ID, money, or a base. Most primaries, even for the Central Committee, are uncontested. No Republican filed for Register of Wills or Clerk of the Court despite a decades-long run of Republican dominance in those offices prior to 2018.
Across the state, 15 State Senate seats did not draw a Republican Challenger. In the House, over 50 seats had no Republican file.
This is no doubt not just the historic ass-whooping Cox took in 2022, but also in the ineptitude of former MDGOP Executive Director Adam Wood (and his main controller, National Committeewoman Nicolee Ambrose) in recruiting candidates other than Wood’s recruitment of himself. You can always count on Nicolee and her ilk to care about nothing other than themselves.
Where the dearth of Republican candidates willing to serve really shows up, however, is in Central Committee candidates. In 2022, 374 people filed to run for the Republican Central Committee across Maryland. In 2026, that number was only 271. A lot of those folks are retreads, deadender Central Committee members so accustomed to losing that they are comfortable keeping their elected role as Central Committee members instead of doing the hard work of actually building a Republican Party that can compete.
That so few people wanted to step up and lead in the Maryland GOP says a lot about the party (burnout, Trump fatigue, a lack of direction toward local politics), but ultimately comes back to a party still reeling from the 2022 general election debacle. A result easily predicted before that fateful primary:
A Dan Cox nomination for Governor would be an extinction-level event for the Maryland Republican Party. It would show crossover Democrats and independents that Republicans aren’t serious about governing. It would be a calamity up and down the ballot. Scores of Republican candidates would lose in November solely because of the anchor that Cox was around their necks. It would be even worse than the 2018 election where Larry Hogan won, but the rest of the ballot was dragged down into the electoral abyss by Trump’s shadow. The bench would be wiped out. Democrats would control every county executive seat in the Baltimore-Washington area. Republicans would be practically reduced overnight to a small, regional party. And Democrats would have carte blanche to run their leftist extremism at full speed.
It would be a post-apocalyptic political hellscape where Democratic priorities will be allowed unfettered access and funds. It will be California on steroids. And this is the world that Cox voters plan to give us.
Republican voters across the state are still feeling the effects of the disastrous decision by primary voters in 2022 to nominate an unqualified conspiracy theorist for Governor. Combine that with a sour national mood toward Republican candidates and a lack of any statewide candidates worth voting for, and you have a recipe for disaster for the Maryland GOP that could take an additional decade to overcome.
Always remember, GOP Primary Voters. The majority of you chose this.