Yes. And No.
The Sun asks if a fractured Maryland GOP win any statewide race. The answer is complicated
I don’t usually speak very highly of The Baltimore Sun editorial page but occasionally they write things that are accurate and truthful. Today, they published one of them.
The Board asked a simple question: Post-Hogan, can a fractured Maryland GOP win any statewide race? The answer, of course, is yes. And the answer is no.
You wouldn’t know it from the political environment, but Maryland Republicans find themselves in a potentially winnable situation:
Incredibly, there’s reason for optimism for Republicans who can see the long game. Lawmakers return to Annapolis this month facing a substantial budget deficit. Big cuts and possible tax increases are going to be on the table and, inevitably, when tough decisions need to be made, some voters will be left unhappy. It was then-Gov. Martin O’Malley’s tax increases, especially making the state income tax more progressive and a penny increase in the sales tax, that opened the door to Hogan in 2014.
And I agree. Wes Moore’s spending was always going to be unsustainable. The Structural Deficit is already back. The State Board of Education is demanding tax hikes to fully fund the Kirwan Commission blueprint. Democratic legislators are always talking about absurd tax hikes to fund pet projects.
Wes Moore has already gotten Maryland to the point of fiscal armageddon in one year. It took Martin O’Malley seven to screw the pooch this badly. And it was that message of fiscal recklessness that Larry Hogan saw in 2012 and 2013 that allowed him to position himself and his campaign to succeed statewide.
Maryland Republicans also have the advantage of cultural overreach. Society is soon going to reach an inflection point regarding trangenderism in public schools. As we have chronicled with the “My Sister Daisy” Debacle in Anne Arundel County, parents are fed up. The ignoring of science and the force-feeding of sexual politics in school has driven even “normal” parents to consider how best to stop the madness.
On top of it, the institutionalized anti-semitism of the left has become much more pronounced since the heinous Hamas attacks on October 7th.
These are great opportunities for Republicans. And ones the Maryland GOP have shown themselves to be institutionally unprepared to take advantage of.
On top of it, certain leading GOP elected officials and candidates haven’t gotten the memo:
Outnumbered so badly, one might assume the Republican Party would be looking to change course from their woeful mid-term failures. But you won’t hear that from U.S. Rep. Andy Harris who hews the Trump line in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District. Or from Cox, the failed gubernatorial candidate who is now running to succeed Democrat David Trone in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District on a platform that includes a promise to enable more people to legally carry concealed handguns — hardly the path to winning crucial precincts in Montgomery County.
Cox of course is running another boneheaded campaign, this one for Congress, than learned nothing from his historic defeat in 2022.
As I wrote last month:
Maryland is in a lot of trouble. Conservatives in the General Assembly are outgunned. The Maryland Republican Party is completely ill-prepared to do anything to help (but hey, at least they have their damn Christmas Party, which is all some party leaders care about). QAnon Dan Cox and his conspiracy theories still hold large sway in the party. And Donald Trump is poised to again be the Republican standard-bearer, digging the hole even deeper.
Donald Trump will be the nominee. Dan Cox will be on the ballot running for Congress. And both Donald Trump and Dan Cox are electoral poison in Maryland. But scores of Central Committee members, candidates for office, and local Republican activists remain undeterred by those facts and remain loyal to Trump first, foremost, and forever. That Trump is the reason why Maryland Republicans can’t win anymore has never occurred to them.
The damned frustrating thing? I know Republicans are out there who know this. They are prepared to move the party away from the suicide cult that it has become. But they are drowned out by the voices of the naive and the ignorant who want to keep the ship pointed toward defeat.
Can Republicans win statewide in Maryland? Of course. Had Kelly Schulz been the nominee in 2022, they likely would have won then too. The model is there. Bob Ehrlich did it. Larry Hogan did it. And the political and fiscal conditions that helped put the wind in their sales are coming together. The question is not whether candidates will notice. But will activists, voters, and party leadership?