ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican running to flip a Senate seat that could determine control of the chamber, will once again skip the Republican National Convention as national party leaders hedge on whether the GOP will help fund his campaign.
Hogan’s campaign has confirmed that the former governor will not attend the GOP’s convention next month in Milwaukee, July 15-18. Hogan, who has been one of the party’s fiercest critics of former President Donald Trump, also did not attend the party’s conventions in 2020 and 2016.
Hogan, who is trying to navigate a difficult path running as a Republican in a heavily Democratic state, angered party leaders last week when he said before Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts related to hush money payments that the public should “ respect the verdict and the legal process.”
“At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship,” Hogan posted on X before the verdict was announced. “We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser, shot back on X: “You just ended your campaign.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was convicted on all counts related to a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who said the two had sex. The former president slammed the verdict as politically motivated.
On Sunday, Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and daughter-in-law of the former president, sharply criticized Hogan’s comments, saying on CNN’s State of the Union that Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point.”
Asked whether the Republican Party would provide resources to support Hogan’s campaign, Lara Trump said, “Well, I will get back to you on all the specifics monetarily, but what I can tell you is that, as the Republican Party co-chair, I think he should never have said something like that. I think that’s ridiculous.”
Hogan is trying to become the first Republican in more than 40 years to win a Senate seat in this deep-blue state, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-1 ratio statewide, with much of the Democratic support in Baltimore and the suburbs of Washington. He is running against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks, the chief executive of Prince George’s County next to the nation’s capital.
In the past two presidential elections, Hogan said he did not vote for Trump. Hogan said he wrote in the name of his father, former U.S. Rep. Larry Hogan Sr., in 2016 and the late President Ronald Reagan in 2020. Trump received about 32% of the vote in Maryland in 2020.
Hogan won his first term as governor in 2014 in an upset victory using public campaign financing against a far better funded opponent, receiving considerable crossover support from Democrats. Four years later, he became only the second Republican in the state’s history to be re-elected governor.
