Larry Hogan, Feuding With Trump Campaign, Once Again Won’t Attend Republican National Convention
The Senate candidate’s opposition to President Trump could be an appeal to Democratic and independent voters in the blue state, yet some say he needs ‘every Republican vote he can get.’
The Republican former governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who is running for Senate, will not attend the Trump-led GOP convention in July — sustaining a long-standing feud with President Trump that has come into the spotlight recently after Mr. Hogan said to “respect the verdict” ahead of Mr. Trump’s conviction last week.
A vocal anti-Trump, moderate Republican, Mr. Hogan also did not attend the conventions in 2016 and 2020. He is in the middle of a competitive Senate race in Maryland that could make him the first Republican senator from the deep-blue state in more than four decades.
“I can definitively tell you Governor Hogan will not be in attendance” at the 2024 Republican National Convention, a campaign spokeswoman, Blake Kernen, told the Baltimore Sun, ahead of the RNC in Milwaukee that will be held from July 15 to 18.
By sitting out of the convention — and more generally opposing Mr. Trump — Mr. Hogan could be appealing to independent and Democratic voters, in a state where Mr. Trump won only 32 percent of the vote in 2020.
“It makes absolutely no sense for Hogan to go to Milwaukee,” a political scientist at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, told the Baltimore Sun. “There would probably be unfortunate incidents or catcalls — the Trump base is known to do that to those who have offended their leader.”
Yet others warn that Mr. Hogan’s anti-Trump branding could lose him a key Republican voting bloc. Mr. Hogan has recently been exiled by the Trump-aligned segment of the Republican party after comments he made urging Americans to “respect the verdict and the legal process” ahead of Mr. Trump’s conviction last week.
“At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship,” he wrote on X. “We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
Those comments were met with fierce blowback from supporters of Mr. Trump within the party, as the Sun reported. The president’s daughter-in-law and co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Lara Trump, called Mr. Hogan’s statements “ridiculous” and declined to say if the committee will keep supporting Mr. Hogan’s Senate run.
“You just ended your campaign,” a senior advisor to Mr. Trump, Chris LaCivita, said, adding that Mr. Hogan needs “every Republican vote he can get.”
