Despite high approval ratings and being a twice-elected governor in deep-blue Maryland, former GOP Senate candidate Larry Hogan’s campaign says he faced insurmountable “national factors.”
The “false narrative” from Democratic victor Angela Alsobrooks and the media that the centrist Republican would be the Senate majority-maker as the GOP’s “51st seat” doomed his odds, the Hogan campaign concluded in a post-election analysis.
“Republicans were always nearly guaranteed to control the Senate without Maryland,” chief Hogan strategist Russ Schriefer said in a memo. “However, according to our internal polling, nearly 80% of those voting for Alsobrooks did so for the reason of maintaining Democratic control of the Senate.”
The campaign’s internal polling showed the messaging was baked into voters’ minds as early as June, “suggesting media coverage about Senate control played a bigger role than paid advertising in shaping voter perception,” Schriefer added.
Senate Republicans ultimately flipped four seats to win a 53-47 majority, even with Hogan’s loss to Alsobrooks. And although he was defeated by 10 percentage points, he gave the GOP its greatest chance at winning a Maryland Senate seat since 1980 and outperformed the top of the ticket by more than any other competitive Senate race with 43.8% to President-elect Donald Trump’s 35.2%.
Alsobrooks captured 53.9% of the vote.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s 27-point victory in the Old Line State over Trump was her second-largest margin in the nation, second only to Vermont. With only 4% of the vote uncounted in Maryland as of Friday, the Hogan campaign said it expects him to exceed the support he received in 2018 for his second term as governor.
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Schriefer cited additional factors that worked against Hogan’s “underdog” fight, including Hogan’s name appearing for the first time on a ballot with Trump and Harris emerging as the late nominee for Democrats that generated downballot enthusiasm and fundraising.
“Gov. Hogan knew winning crossover votes in a federal election in a presidential year would be far more challenging,” Schriefer said. “Despite coming up short, Gov. Hogan won unprecedented numbers of split-ticket voters and consolidated Republican support in Maryland — even in the most difficult environment.”