According to a new report in The Washington Post, Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan decided not to vote for President Donald Trump in this year’s election. He didn’t vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden either, though — instead, he wrote in the late Ronald Reagan. Hogan actually didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 either. In that year’s election, Hogan wrote in his father, Larry Hogan Sr. Hogan’s opposition to Trump isn’t much of a secret at this point. Throughout the early stages of the Coronavirus pandemic, Hogan, who was then the president of the National Governors Association, ended up repeatedly at odds with the White House on the issue of getting resources to states.
In this case, Hogan said the following, discussing his 2020 vote:
‘I know it’s simply symbolic. It’s not going to change the outcome in my state. But I thought it was important to just cast a vote that showed the kind of person I’d like to see in office… I’m a lifelong conservative Republican. Reagan was the guy. I marched around as a college kid on the floor of the convention with a Reagan hat and a Reagan sign.’
Hogan actually isn’t the first Republican governor to oppose Trump in this year’s election — Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has done the same, although like Hogan, he has not announced support for Biden.
In this case, Hogan’s own state will likely go for Biden in the final election results. In a recent survey in Maryland, the Democratic nominee led by about 30 percent, suggesting that Maryland is definitely not in play — although the bare realities of polling data and electoral history haven’t stopped the Trump campaign from making dubious election chance proclamations in the past. The president has, for instance, suggested that he could win New York — which seems to be about on par with suggesting that Biden could win West Virginia by 30 percent. Neither scenario is remotely likely to happen.
During the Coronavirus crisis, one of the topics on which Hogan’s team clashed with the president was testing. At one point amidst an early lack of appropriate testing support from the federal government, the state of Maryland even purchased hundreds of thousands of tests from South Korea. Meanwhile, Hogan has also advocated for direct financial assistance to state governments in order to help alleviate the fallout of the pandemic, but negotiations over a potential new comprehensive economic relief package have been stalled out for months.
