Larry Hogan: An unexpected headache for Democrats when defining control of the Senate in 2024

The Senate map for 2024 doesn’t look good for Democrats, who currently control the Upper House by 51-49. With only two remotely competitive seats to try to flip, Florida and Texas, they will need to keep at least seven vulnerable seats: West Virginia, Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Montana and Wisconsin, Nevada. As if that were not enough, a seat that until now was a piece of cake for Joe Biden's party just became very competitive and could be crucial when defining control of the Senate.

Maryland chose the incumbent president over Donald Trump by a margin of more than 30 points in the 2020 presidential election. Something similar happened in the last elections to the Upper House and governor of 2022, when Chris Van Hollen and Wes Moore won by a similar lead.

With this in mind, Democrats were pretty confident that the 2024 Senate elections would be a walk in the park. However, Larry Hogan's candidacy changed the game completely. Hogan was the governor of Maryland between 2015 and 2023. He ended his term with one of the highest approval ratings at 77%.

“We eliminated or rewrote thousands of job-killing regulations. We cut taxes eight years in a row by $4.7 billion, putting all of that money back into the pockets of hardworking Maryland families, small businesses, and retirees, and we turned a $5.1 billion deficit into the largest surplus in state history,” the outgoing governor said. “We ushered in the biggest economic turnaround in America, and we are leaving the state in a far better fiscal position than ever before in history,” he said in his farewell speech.

The Republican waited until the deadline to make his intentions official and quickly obtained the endorsement of Steve Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), whose strategy is to only support candidates who stand a chance of winning the general election.

By that logic, he's already been endorsed by , , Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and

Over the past few weeks, both Daines and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) held private conversations with Hogan to convince him to run. "I enjoyed conversations we’ve had with Larry over the last week. He’s extraordinarily popular. To be competitive in a blue state like that is quite a boost for us. Steve Daines and I both had numerous conversations with him. My political team as well,” McConnell said in conversation with The Hill.

Hogan is one of the few Republicans to govern Maryland and his administration was described as "centrist" and "moderate.” No Labels, a group that is looking to promote an independent candidate to compete against Biden and Trump, consider him as a potential presidential candidate.

"Hogan has broad appeal among independents"

The former governor's candidacy is expected to be a headache for Democrats, especially for Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), who will now have to allocate additional money in this race and therefore take it away from others.

Currently the Democratic Party has two strong candidates for the nomination, Angela Alsbrooks and David Trone, although neither has emerged as the clear favorite.

Emerson College conducted the first survey with Hogan as a candidate and its results showed that the Republican would defeat Alsbrooks and tie with Brook, far from the 30 point difference in favor of the Democrats that Van Hollen had two years ago.

In the first case, he would likely win with 44% of the votes compared to his rival's 37%, while in the second scenario both candidates would tie at 42%.

According to the pollster, independent voters could play a very important role in the upcoming election.

"In addition to the majority of Republican voters’ support in the general election, Hogan also holds broad appeal in a matchup against Trone among independents, at 48%, and also garners nearly a quarter of Democratic voters’ support," said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling.

"In a matchup between Hogan and Alsobrooks, independents support Hogan 43% to 18%, and 31% of Democrats support Hogan," he added.