Maryland Governor
In the Democratic primary for governor, author and former nonprofit CEO Wes Moore currently leads a crowded field with 35 percent of the vote. Former Secretary of Labor/former DNC chairman Tom Perez (28 percent) and state comptroller Peter Franchot (21 percent) are currently second and third. There’s still a substantial amount of the vote left to count, because Maryland didn’t start counting mail-in ballots until Thursday. But Moore’s lead, bolstered by strong performances in the city of Baltimore as well as Prince George’s and Baltimore counties, will be hard for Perez to surmount. Persistent stories calling into question aspects of Moore’s biography didn’t seem to have dragged the former Army captain down, and he benefited from being the only Black candidate in the top tier following the exit of former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker from the race. If elected, Moore would be Maryland’s first Black governor, and only the fifth Black governor in American history.
On the GOP side, state Del. Dan Cox outpaced former state Secretary of Commerce Kelly Schulz, 56-40 percent. Cox was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, promotes the unfounded claim that the 2020 election was stolen, organized buses to the Jan. 6 rally that precipitated the insurrection, and spoke at a conspiracy theory conference. Schulz was endorsed by popular outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan.
While Republicans have had success this century winning Maryland gubernatorial races, they’ve done so with moderate, low-key candidates in Hogan and Bob Ehrlich. Cox is not cut from the same cloth, and won’t be able to appeal to the Democratic voters who crossed the aisle to vote for Hogan and Ehrlich in 2002, 2014, and 2018.
The last time Republicans won an open seat, in 2014, Hogan...