By AIDAN HUGHES
Maryland isn’t typically fertile ground for Republicans hoping to reach Congress.
Only one of the state’s eight congressional districts has voted to send a Republican to the House of Representatives since 2012. It’s been even longer for the Senate, where Maryland Democrats have held a monopoly since the 1986 election.
Still, Maryland Republicans entered the 2024 election cycle with reasons to believe those fortunes could soon change.
In what Mitch McConnell called his best recruitment of the cycle, former Gov. Larry Hogan entered this year’s race to replace retiring Sen. Ben Cardin.
Polls from Gonzales Research & Media Services showed he obtained massive popularity despite the state’s solidly blue tilt – leaving office with a 77% approval rating.
Hogan’s reputation as a moderate, anti-Trump Republican is also seen as a boon considering only one in three Marylanders voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
In addition to raised hopes in the Senate, a pair of factors has also boosted the competitiveness of a House seat in northwest Maryland.
After a judge struck down a gerrymandered map in 2022 that would likely have solidified Democrats’ dominance in House races, the new map shifted Maryland’s 6th Congressional District to a much more competitive battleground.
That alone wasn’t enough to clinch a GOP victory in 2022, but 6th District incumbent David Trone’s unsuccessful primary bid for the Senate this year has left his House seat open – raising hopes that Republican Neil Parrott’s third try for the seat might be successful.
The district includes all of Frederick County and parts of Montgomery County – plus the more conservative Garrett, Allegany and Washington counties.
Parrott’s campaign did not respond to interview requests for this article, but he previously told Capital News Service of his hopes for this year’s election because there is no incumbent and said people in the 6th District don’t know his new Democratic opponent, April McClain Delaney.
Nevertheless, election forecasters have remained skeptical of Republicans’ odds.
Decision Desk HQ’s forecasts, published by political website The Hill, give Hogan only a 1% chance of winning a crucial Senate seat for Republicans and have set Parrott’s odds at 15%.
Cook Political Report – a respected nonpartisan newsletter that specializes in analyzing and forecasting U.S. elections – rates both races as “likely” Democratic wins, which it defines as “not considered competitive at this point but have the potential to become engaged.”
Maryland Republican Party Executive Director Adam Wood criticized forecasters’ predictions as “laughably inaccurate” and described both as “highly competitive races.”
But other forecasters – including The Economist, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, FiveThirtyEight, and Inside Elections – give the GOP similarly low odds to win either seat.
One of the main reasons to doubt Hogan’s chances, according to Cook Political Report’s Senate and Governors Editor Jessica Taylor, is a key difference in voting behavior for governor and Senate races.
Hogan isn’t the first popular governor running for Senate in a state that tilts toward the opposite party. Taylor pointed to similar candidates in prior elections – including former Governors Phil Bredesen in Tennessee, Steve Bullock in Montana, and Linda Lingle in Hawaii – who were unable to translate their cross-party popularity into successful Senate campaigns.
“If you’re voting for governor, you are voting more for the person and not for the party,” Taylor said. “But if you’re voting for Senate, you’re voting for who you want to control the Senate, and that is Hogan’s biggest challenge.”
Hogan’s opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, has made that a central tenet of her pitch, saying that she is “running to stop Republicans from taking control of the Senate” and branding campaign events as being part of a “Defend Our Majority Tour.”
Perhaps the biggest obstacle that Hogan has to contend with when Maryland voters consider the prospect of a Republican majority is abortion.
Hogan has stated that he would serve as a pro-choice senator and support legislation that restores the protections from Roe v. Wade. Alsobrook’s campaign and outside groups have sought to push back against those claims – with millions in outside spending during September alone portraying Hogan as a threat to abortion access.
In response to interview requests, Hogan’s campaign spokesperson Blake Kernen provided a written statement that “if people stay in their partisan trenches, we will certainly continue to be the underdogs.”
“We’re excited about the homestretch of the campaign because we see more and more Marylanders are willing to split their tickets and defy the constant polarization that has made our politics so toxic,” Kernen wrote.
Still, polling data aggregated by FiveThirtyEight backs up forecasters’ skepticism about Hogan’s chances. Of the twelve polls listed since Maryland’s primary in May, only one showed Hogan pulling even with his opponent – with Alsobrooks leading by wide, often double-digit margins in the rest.
Although polling data is much more limited in Maryland’s 6th District, what does exist offers House-hopeful Neil Parrott more cause for optimism. Two August polls – one by Gonzales, and the other a Republican-sponsored poll – showed Parrott and April McClain Delaney within just two points of each other.
“It probably does give you a reasonable indication of where the race was in August,” according to Matthew Klein, U.S. House and Governors Analyst at Cook Political Report.
Klein – a native of Montgomery County – said that those polls were conducted before the period of election season where high spending candidates, like Delaney, hit their stride.
Klein also suggested that the race might have been rated more competitively if someone more progressive or with less resources to self-fund their campaign was the Democratic nominee, or if a less-conservative Republican had taken Parrott’s place.
However, Klein believes that Maryland’s 6th District would have been a difficult pickup for Republicans regardless of Parrott’s right-wing leanings.
“They had far better targets elsewhere on the map,” Klein said. “I’m not sure any recruit could have truly competed with Delaney’s financial reserve, and her entry into this race was ultimately out of their hands.”
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