Larry Hogan, former Maryland governor and Trump critic, won’t run for president
Larry Hogan #LarryHogan
Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan said Sunday that he will not seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024 in a move that avoids a showdown with Donald Trump, the former president whom Hogan has unsuccessfully sought to steer his party away from.
In a statement, Hogan said that the party “must move on from Donald Trump” and that “the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
He also added that after eight years as governor, “I have no desire to put my family through another grueling campaign just for experience.”
Hogan’s announcement, echoed in a television appearance and op-ed in the New York Times, comes as Trump leads a small, but potentially growing, field of challengers for the Republican nomination. That field includes Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador under Trump and former governor of South Carolina, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. It is also expected to include more popular figures like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin; Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state under Trump; and Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence.
“I did give it serious consideration,” Hogan said during an appearance Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He called it a “tough decision.”
Trump takes victory lap at conservative conference
Trump won a straw poll of potential 2024 candidates at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on Saturday, casting his third run for president as a continuation of the grievance politics that propelled him into the Oval Office in 2016 and that marked his refusal to acknowledge his loss in 2020.
Hogan criticized Trump in 2016 and in 2020, adding that he cast a vote for the deceased former president Ronald Reagan rather than voting for Trump. In January 2021, Hogan called for Trump to resign or be ousted following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
“I still believe in a Republican Party that stands for fiscal responsibility and getting the government off our backs and out of our pockets,” Hogan said in his statement Sunday, adding: “And I still believe in a Republican Party that upholds and honors perhaps our most sacred tradition: the peaceful transfer of power.”
In the Times essay, Hogan seemed to also criticize the infrastructure that enabled Trump’s rise to power. “For too long, Republican voters have been denied a real debate about what our party stands for beyond loyalty to Mr. Trump. A cult of personality is no substitute for a party of principle,” he wrote.