If you’re Democrat Ben Jealous, and you’re running for governor of Maryland, you take heart knowing this is one of America’s bluest states, one that votes Democratic almost always, no matter the electoral patterns in the rest of the country.
If you’re Larry Hogan, and you’re running for re-election as governor of Maryland, you say: So what?
Hogan’s got a good point.
He surprised a lot of people when he won election four years ago. Aside from the do-nothing Robert Ehrlich, Maryland hadn’t put a Republican into the governor’s mansion since Spiro Agnew went to Annapolis back in the 1960s and happily reached under the table to pocket little white envelopes from real estate developers.
When he ran four years ago, Hogan benefited from an opponent, former Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who ran a campaign so listless, so directionless and so dispassionate that it seemed invisible even to Brown’s most fervent supporters.
Hogan ran as a centrist – a Republican that even Democrats could live with – and he’s pretty much stayed true to that positioning since taking office. President Donald Trump’s a villain to large swaths of Maryland voters, but Hogan’s been careful to keep his distance from Trump on the most controversial issues.
And this is why, when Ben Jealous finds comfort in the state’s history of voting Democratic, Hogan can reply: So what?
The latest numbers back him up.
The political website Morning Consult calls Hogan the second most popular governor in the United States. They do this on the basis of online surveys conducted with roughly 275,000 registered voters, and they find Hogan with a 68 percent approval rating and a 17 percent disapproval rating.
According to Morning Consult, there’s only one other governor in America with numbers this good – Charlie Baker, of Massachusetts, who has 69 percent approval.
The third most popular governor, until recently, was Vermont’s Phil Scott, who had a 65 percent approval rating until last spring, when he signed a landmark gun control law in historically gun-friendly Vermont. He’s since dropped to No. 4.
What makes each of these three rankings noteworthy is that they’re all Republicans serving in traditionally Democratic states – and each of them carefully keeping this Republican president at arm’s length.
With Election Day getting closer, Trump announced last week that he intends to spend much of his time out in the hinterlands, campaigning for Republican candidates.
Some of those Republicans – including Larry Hogan – are smart enough to let the White House know they don’t particularly welcome any assistance from Trump.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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