Op-Ed: Larry Hogan is neither courageous or brave

(SILVER SPRING – April 10, 2024) – I have to laugh when people act like former Governor Larry Hogan is a “moderate” who deserves a “Profile in Courage” award for saying that he won’t vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 general election or would oppose a national law banning abortion if elected to the U.S. Senate.

I don’t see the courage in a candidate for statewide office in Maryland to say he’s not going to vote for a presidential candidate who lost the state in 2016 by 26 percentage points and lost in 2020 by more than 33 percentage points.

However, Governor Hogan’s lack of political courage went a step further in both elections because – just like in 2016 and 2020- he still refused to vote for the only alternative candidate with a chance to beat Trump – the Democratic nominee.  (Hogan clearly knows that voting for a non-Democrat can help Trump, because he declined to run on the “No Labels” ticket, saying, (“I just didn’t want to be a spoiler, and I didn’t know if you could really get to 270 [electoral votes].”)

Instead of voting to protect our democracy by voting for someone who actually could defeat Donald Trump, count on Hogan to cast a write-in vote for another Republican (dead or alive) with no chance of becoming President, essentially making a PR move while abstaining from voting in the most important election of our lifetimes.   In 2016, he said he voted for his father, Larry Hogan, Sr. (then 88 years old – he passed away in 2017).  In 2020, after four years of Trump as President, he said he voted for former President Ronald Reagan, who died 16 years earlier in 2004.  If he had voted for Mickey Mouse, it would have had the same effect on the result.