The Dispatch Podcast - Back On Track with Larry Hogan

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

You’ve heard the rumors…then the rumors turned into headlines: Governor Larry Hogan will not seek the GOP nomination for 2024. The former Maryland Governor sits down with David Drucker to talk about the factors that led to this decision and his remedies for the GOP. Show Notes: -WATCH: David M. Drucker interview Larry Hogan on our new YouTube channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit TELUS.com. Total Security to learn more. Conditions apply. I'm David Drucker, a senior writer with the dispatch, and welcome to another edition of the Dispatch podcast. On this edition, Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, and we discuss his decision not to run for president in 2024, and what's next? Governor Larry Hogan, thanks so much for joining us on the Dispatch podcast.

You decided, and you decided a lot earlier than I thought you would either way, not to run for president in 2024. Talk to me about your decision. Well, it was a difficult decision, David. I can tell you that. I really wrestled with it, and I did give it serious consideration. We were having people all around a country encouraging me to consider running. And I gave it a lot of thought.

It was, I'm normally a very decisive guy, but this time I actually was pretty deliberative. And my heart was telling me to do it in my head was saying maybe it wasn't the right thing. And it was kind of a mixture of personal in that I wasn't sure after eight years of really leaving it all in the field as Governor Maryland. If it was the right thing for my family and to put them through, you know, what would be an uphill battle for president. But part of it was, you know, kind of putting the country in the party ahead of myself. I didn't really need to have another elective office. I was in it because I actually cared and wanted to make a difference. And I thought that by getting out of the race or not getting in the race, that it might help us prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee because if we had too many people in a crowded field in a different lane other than Trump lane, that it would be harder.

And so it was somewhat of a personal decision and somewhat of a selfless act. But I think I feel very comfortable in making the right decision. And I did it early because I could have dragged it out. A lot of people, you know, some people might run for president or pretend to run for president because they want to be a cabinet secretary or they want a book deal or something. I really was only going to run if I actually thought I could win, not just the primary, but the general. once I reached the decision, I could have waited until summer and played it out, but I just wanted to come out and be straight and give other people the chance. And I didn't want to mislead supporters and donors into supporting me when I wasn't going to do it.

It really struck me as an old school decision when people that Mulderun for president actually thought about whether they could win because they really didn't want to lose. I mean, there's always a chance in politics that it's not going to turn out right, but you want to at least feel like there's an opportunity to win. win. And in the old days, you didn't think about book deals necessarily or cable television news contracts necessarily, although I'm a big fan of those. And so it was interesting. A couple of things I want to drill down on in your statement that you issued upon making a decision public, what struck me of all the things you've said in there was that you didn't want to be a part

of a, quote, multi-car pile-up, end quote, that would ease Trump's path to the nomination. And obviously thinking back to 2024, there at least in the earliest primaries and caucuses were a majority of Republican primary voters voting for somebody other than Donald Trump, but because he had a rock solid, you know, 30 to 40 percent of the Republican electorate kept winning. So how much of that was primary in your decision not to run, number one? Well, it was certainly one of the big factors that, as I stated earlier, I looked at a lot of things, but that was a big part of it because, look, I've been saying for years that the influence of Donald Trump was going to diminish. And it has to a certain extent. I think we've been, I predicted that it would happen.

I was one of the few that was speaking out the whole time, but more and more voices are speaking up and speaking out. And he has gotten down to maybe 30 some percent of a core vote that would vote for Donald Trump no matter what. It's still very sizable. But if you have 10 or 12 people all dividing up the rest of the vote, then it's harder to prevent him from winning. And I just don't think that's Donald Trump as the nominee would be good for the party or for the country. And I want to get back to winning elections again. And I want to get back to a more traditional Republican party that has a more positive, hopeful, vision and I think the more you know so you currently you look at polling and it's you know the the

all the oxygen is taken up by Trump and DeSantis and they're you know you know it's like the fight the Titans fighting and then you had a whole bunch of people myself included that were down here in single digits and the more of us there are the less likelihood there is of someone you know getting up there and capturing the attention and so that we have a lot of great voices in the party we've got some some people who have a lot of respect for and i'm i'm for competition you know i hate coronations and i don't like us anybody picking uh you know year out from the first primary who's going to be the nominee but i don't think we should have a bunch of people running unless they believe they're going to

win i i think people that aren't that don't have the ability to contend you know shouldn't be in the because they're going to end up hurting us in the long run. I want to continue asking you about how you looked at your own position in this race. But on your point there for a moment, given the polling we see month after month going back to the fall of last year that shows Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, dominating among Republican primary voters, sometimes Trump is ahead, sometimes DeSantis is ahead. it depends on if it's a national poll or a state poll, should the other candidates in the race besides those two, as well as other potential candidates? And I'm talking about Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo and Chris Sununu, Governor of New Hampshire, Vivek Ramoswamy, who is now a candidate in the race. Should all of these candidates consider dropping out of the race, unless

less it is immaterial to them that Trump can become or could become the nominee in 2024. Well, look, I made a decision after weighing all of the things that we've been talking about. But I think everybody has the right to make those decisions for themselves. And I do think, I mentioned earlier, I do think that if people think they have a shot to contend, then they ought to get in the race. But if there are a whole bunch of them and they're not getting traction, I think people ought to make a similar decision that I did, which would be do the right thing for the party in the country and not put us in a position where we're going to have that kind of a multi-car pile up that just ends up nominating Trump. What do you think would be, look, you mean, you've run two successful campaigns in Maryland, not easy for a Republican to do. you were able to carve out a space for yourself as a national figure.

Also not easy to do when you're a Republican from Maryland. What do you think is a good time frame for figuring all of that out? Governor Glenn Yonkin of Virginia, your neighbor is somebody else thinking of running? In other words, do you think it's still fine for a whole host of candidates to wait for the first few debates? The debates set by the Republican National Committee won't begin until August. first votes are going to be next year in January, February, March. Do you think there's still plenty of time for people to explore their viability if they have a higher opinion of their viability than you had of yours

and still not lend itself to the multi-car pile up? Again, unless they just don't care, right? I mean, if you're somebody who's like, listen, I want to beat Trump, but if it's Trump, I'm just fine with that, then who cares? But if you're looking at it like you do, is there still time, even though you decided very early? Yeah, well, so from my standpoint, you know, I went in 2014, I won the biggest surprise upset in America in the bluest state in the country. And then in 2018 in the middle of Trump, Trump lost Maryland by 31 to Hillary and 33 to Biden.

I ran 45 points ahead of them and I became the second Republican in 248 years in the whole history of our state to be reelected. I think in a general election, I believe I had the best ability to win swing voters and win over converts, which I think is important for us. to do in the fall. But the primary is a different kind of calculation. I don't, you know, on the one hand, legally, I think the filing deadlines are in November to get into Iowa and New Hampshire, but that's not practical. The first debates will be in August. They're talking about the criteria for the debates being how much money and how many individual donors you've raised or how high you are in the polls. And so I think, you know, in order to raise the hard dollars that you need, Um, it's the super PACs are one thing. I mean, you can get people to write big checks. You can run. You can get out there and get known. That wasn't really the concern. But you can't, you can't wait much longer before actually starting a real campaign and raising real hard dollars or it's difficult to take off. So I, I think people will have to start getting in, uh, in, uh, in April or may at the very latest if they want to be on that stage in August. And if you're not on the stage in August, it's hard, hard to capture attention. I want to, uh,

take a little trip on a time machine and go back to the 2020 campaign, leading up to that campaign. There were Republicans opposed to Donald Trump that were trying to encourage you to get into the race and challenge him in a primary. And you entertain the encouragement, and I know you were flattered by it, but I remember you telling me at the time for a story I reported for the Washington Examiner, where I worked before coming to the dispatch, that you weren't interested in a kamikaze mission, that you wanted. to know if there was a market for your brand of republicanism in a Republican primary, which you ultimately concluded, to nobody's surprise, is that there just wasn't a market for what you were offering in 2020 in a primary. It was part of your decision heading into the 2024 primary that there may be more Republicans interested in Larry Hogan this time around, but that there still just wasn't enough of a market for Reagan era republicanism in a primary

enough to get you to take a chance on a race? Well, so in 2020, and I remember talking with you, there were, you know, kind of people that didn't want Trump to be the nominee were trying to encourage me. But I didn't, I never filed an exploratory committee. I really didn't take it that seriously. As you said, I didn't, I entertained and I was flattered that people were mentioning me. But I never took any overt steps to actually seriously consider running. This time I did actually take a look seriously at it.

And I think we're in a different place than we were in 20 in that there are, I would say back then seemingly, you know, 80% of the Republican primary base was solidly behind Trump. And that has changed dramatically where we're now down to he's in the 30s. And it's what I predicted what happened. And I think we are convincing more and more people, even if they have. supported Trump and his policies that they're willing to consider someone else. Now, as you pointed out, Rhonda Santis is capturing a big portion of that Trump base, but there's a solid, you know, another lane of 35% that want to go in a completely different direction. And so it's Trump and Trumpism, I would say. And then more traditional, I say I come

from the Republican wing of the Republican Party, and I'm a Reagan guy. You know, I don't want to look backward, but I did like the fact we had a hopeful positive message that we won 49 states and then landslide and were able to govern and change the country and change the world. I'd love to get back to that party. I'm not sure if we're there, but we have, we're moving in the right direction. You know, I'm encouraged by the fact that more people are stepping away from that blind loyalty to Trump, and I don't think we need a cult of personality. I think we have to be a party that has principles that we actually run on.

And I think we've got to have a message that appeals to a broader group of people or we will continue to lose elections. We've had three very disappointing cycles in a row. And it's because we've been shrinking the base and we need to broaden the base, which is what I've been done probably more successfully than just about anybody in the country in our state. I'm going to make you look back where just one more time and hopefully you have. in the audience, we'll forgive the shameless plug here. But when I interviewed you for In Trump Shadow, the battle for 2024, the future of the GOP. That was a shameless plug, but I like it.

It was good. It was a good book. I mean, and not only politicians can do shameless plugs, reporters can do them as well, especially when they're hawking books. But when I interviewed you for my book, you used this analogy, and you didn't only use it with me. You used it with other journalists. But I thought it was an interesting analogy that during

the Trump administration, his four years in office, you felt like you were in a little rowboat or a little skiff next to this big ocean liner, the SS Trump, for lack of a better name, and that at the end of the 2020 election, he loses. He, of course, won't concede. A lot of Republicans start to rethink their support for him. And you felt like a lot of them were jumping off the SS Trump and starting to pile into your skiff. And you said, pretty soon, I think I'm going to need a bigger boat. What I wanted to ask you is do you still think that analogy, I was going to say holds water, but that's just getting, it's just, it's, it's too rich. Do you think the analogy still works, or given that there are so many Republicans that are done with Trump but have shifted their support to Governor Ron DeSantis, another culture warrior who you have criticized for his use of government power to punish and influence corporations and metal in the free market?

at least that's been your criticism, do you think the analogy holds, or have they simply found a new hero and dumped the old one overboard? Well, I think it's a little bit of both. So, you know, when I was saying, I was one of the few people that was speaking out about Trump the whole time. I was not obsessed with Donald Trump. I didn't spend my days trying to criticize them, but I had to courage to stand up and say exactly what I believed. And I felt sometimes as if I were all alone in a lifeboat, but an awful lot of people are now finding the courage to stand up and speak out. And if you listen to a number of the potential candidates for president, they're now saying nearly exactly the same thing that I've been saying for years. And they weren't before. So

there are a lot of people kind of merging into that lane or jumping off the Titanic into that lifeboat that I was talking about that are trying to find a voice that's, they're starting to say we should move away from Trump. I mean, you heard Mike Pence last. week say that he wouldn't support Donald Trump if he was the nominee. That's a big step. You listen to Chris Sununu and Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson and a number of people are making the same kinds of comments that I've been making for a long time. So I think we do need a bigger boat. And there's a sizable chunk of people moving in that direction. However, there's also another whole chunk, 30 percent, that are saying, you know, we're looking for the new Trump.

And maybe Ron DeSantis is the younger, smarter version of Trump. But they're going to stick with it. So we still are in this kind of fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party, and it's not over. And we're still a year away from the first primary. And I think, you know, a year is an eternity in politics. And how it's going to turn out, we still don't know the answer to. Or maybe it's not going to return to my way of thinking in this election, but it will at some point in the future, I think. But it's right now, I would say it's divided.

And it's roughly one-third Trump, one-third Trump, one-third. Trumpism that's not Trump and one third more traditional Republicans that are, you know, common sense conservatives. And if you look in the last election cycle, all of the kind of hardcore Trump, some of the people that were focused on the 2020 election or focused on, you know, grievance politics, nearly all of them lost. And the places we did well was with common sense conservatives that won over swing voters in in tough suburban districts. And so while I'm I'm somewhat disappointed it hasn't happened fast enough. I'm encouraged that we are heading in the right direction. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how

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more Reagan-era policies, even though he puts his own rhetorical spin on it, versus somebody, let's say, like Ron DeSantis, who in Florida has been a very. effective culture warrior, with the help of a Republican legislature, but has actually governed past laws, established regulations that maybe do a lot of the things that Trump said he would do in the White House, but actually never got around to doing. What I wanted to ask you is somebody who's always been very concerned about his place in the party and what it means for the country to have him in office. Is Trump, from the perspective of a Republican, and, you know, and and the perspective of somebody who thinks he's not been good for the country, singularly dangerous

among the viable Republican presidential candidates as we head into the next election? Well, I think he's probably the most dangerous. And I think he'd be particularly bad for the Republican Party and bad for the country. But, yeah, I get what you're saying. I mean, look, I don't want to get into. Ron DeSantis has been a successful governor. I don't always agree with his politics or in how he goes about some of the things he does, but he won re-election.

The state is getting redder and redder. And, I mean, he's got an argument to make. He's got every right to be out there running. But it's a different focus than I would have. And, you know, we've been successful in winning swing voter. So Ron DeSantis has done a pretty good job of firing up the Trump base. But how that would play out in a general election is something that I would be concerned about with either one of them. Are they the strongest one to win swing voters? I don't know the answer to that

question. Notwithstanding that, though, I guess what I'm getting at here is if it becomes clear down the stretch of this primary or heading into the votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, or somewhere in the middle, that the best way, the surest way to block Trump from the nomination, which means he's not going to become president, not by an accident or not by his own merits if he can't win that nomination. And not that Ron DeSantis would necessarily want your help in a Republican primary because they'd probably try to use it against him. But would you be very comfortable doing everything you could that would be helpful to him if that was what it took to defeat Trump? Well, look, I don't want to talk about hypotheticals and what might happen after we've been

through the whole primary that hasn't even started yet. And we're a year away from the first one, let alone getting close to a nomination. But, and that's something we'd have to discuss. I mean, look, I know DeSantis where we were fellow governors. I'm not sure whether he would ask for my help or not. I mean, I did do just as well in the primary as Donald Trump did, but did a better job of winning over, you know, independence and Democrats and black voters and Hispanics and Asians.

So some people might think I might be helpful in a race. But, I mean, I think it's too early to speculate. I think there are potentially a lot of candidates. I would caution, I don't, I don't think you can say today that it's either going to be Trump or Ron DeSantis. I mean, if you go back historically and you look at every other past election, a year away from the first primary, every single time that somebody thought this person was going to be the next guy or this is the only one that could win, it almost never happened. And so, I mean, you just go back in time and, you know, at this point in time in the 2016 election, It was, Jeb Bush was going to be the president. Donald Trump was below one percent. If you look back, it was Scott Walker, it was Rick Perry, it was Tim Pawlenty, it was whoever.

And so now, today we're talking about Ron DeSantis, but I don't know if that's what we're going to be talking about a year or a year and a half from now. Are there any of these fellow Republicans of yours? Because you assessed yourself within a potential hypothetical field. you were trying to figure out what your prospects were that you think could go further than, you know, the bozos like me in the reporting class think that could do better than we are giving them credit for? I think potentially. And I think it's, I think we'll see who's going to emerge. But we started the conversation talking about I didn't want to be part of the multi-car pile up. And you reminded me of the thing which I did say a lot about being in the in a lifeboat and and I was going to need a bigger boat. And we, we do need one. And so now you have a bunch of people that are jumping into that boat, but there may be only room for one. That was part of the thinking was there are four or five, six people who now are, you know, sounding an awful lot like me and who are agreeing with me about the direction that we need to head and are speaking out.

Some of them felt that way before, but weren't speaking out. Which one is going to emerge? I don't know, but there's a, right, I think we're right now in an almost an equal split between, you know, the Trump, DeSantis, and this other direction. And you can't have six or ten people trying to, you know, fill that same lane. So you can't have two debate stages and a farm team and a, you can't have a varsity and a junior varsity. It's just not going to work this time. Yeah, the last thing in the world I would ever want to do would be on that kids table, you know. That wouldn't be fun.

Is there a secret sauce to what you were able to accomplish in Maryland that you think is applicable to a national race? Because look, I come from California. They don't like Republicans much there either. But every once in a while, you find a so-called centrist or moderate Republican who isn't a culture warrior that focuses on bread and butter fiscal issues. And we're going to fill the potholes. And whatever my position on abortion is, I just won't talk about it. So I sometimes wonder if partisans are willing to cross the aisle for governor in ways that they wouldn't for senator, something else Republicans tried to get you to do, that was last cycle, or for president, because now they're thinking about who's appointing judges and what, you know, what are your executive orders at the federal level going to be? Well, I think they do look at maybe congressmen and senators differently, but I think they look at governors and presidents, you know, pretty similarly.

And it's why I was talking earlier about Ronald Reagan was successful in winning Reagan Democrats and making a dent and winning. winning 49 states in two landslides because he appealed to a broader group of people. And it's exactly what we were able to do in Maryland. You know, I was focused. I didn't, I wasn't a culture warrior, didn't focus on all the things that we're talking about now. And it's not what most Americans are focused on. Most Americans are concerned about the economy. So we came in and I got a 70% progressive Democratic legislature to cut taxes eight years in a row by $4.8 billion.

I mean, Ron DeSantis didn't do that with a Republican legislature in Florida. You know, we went from 49th out of 50 states in economic performance to number six. It's the biggest economic turnaround in America. You know, I led the fight when they first started talking about defunding the police. You know, I came out and talked about the absurdity of the far left in that direction, and we pushed a half a billion dollar refund the police initiative. And so I think there are issues that cross party lines, that people are concerned about the economy. They want to cut taxes.

They want to have more jobs and more. opportunities. They want to have safe communities. They care about their kids' education. They don't want to argue about all the things that sometimes we do when we're at Republican functions. And if the goal is to win elections, then you have to be talking about the things that the average person cares about. And so I did that in Maryland very successfully, which is why not only did I win nearly 100% of all the Republicans and nearly all of the independents, but I picked up about 30% of Democrats. And I, you know, I left office after eight years in the bluest state with a 77% approval rating and 81% approval rating among African Americans, which, you know, no Republicans

has ever gotten close to that. I think it's just what you talk about, what you focus on, and how you say things. I think tone matters. And, you know, I think what you may, what people seem to think we have to do to win a primary is almost the opposite of what you need to do to win have a real governing coalition and win long term. I think you've got to have a more hopeful, positive message that appeals to more people and that focuses on the things they actually care about day-to-day. I think a lot of Republicans, even those that are wary of another Trump candidacy, believe that President Joe Biden is very beatable in 2024, even with Trump as the standard bearer,

because he's four years older and now he's running as a full-fledged man in his 80s. And, you know, knock on wood, there's going to be no coronavirus pandemic that's going to enable him to stay off the trail for extended periods of time and not have voters look askance at that kind of a strategy, right? So he's either going to have to have the physical and mental stamina to be out there campaigning like a normal candidate or voters are going to wonder if he's too old. Do you subscribe to that theory, or do you think, among the other problems you have with Donald Trump, that he's maybe the one candidate that just can't be Joe Biden? Well, that's a great question. There's no question that Biden is weaker than he was before. And his age is certainly a factor. And I think it's painfully obvious to most people. And he was able to get by in that last race without campaigning because of the pandemic and basically campaigned from his basement. And he won't be able to do that. this time. But look, Donald Trump is probably the only person in America that could lose to Joe Biden, and he did. And he could, you know, maybe Biden is weaker than he was before, but so is Trump. And so it's, there's probably, I think polling would show at least 65% of the people in America

that do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president. And it's kind of, it would be a race to the bottom if those are the two nominees and which one of them is, is less popular. than the other. I think they both are breaking records about, you know, being the two least popular presidents in America and would be the two oldest ones. So it's, you know, I'm not sure that either one of them is going to be the nominee, frankly. Look, I've always, I have to say, by the way, I've always found it kind of ironic that that perhaps Trump's biggest nemesis in the Republican Party is another outsider businessman real estate developer. So in theory, you guys should have a lot in common and be fast friends.

Well, you know, there was a piece in the Washingtonian magazine where they said I was Trump before Trump because I was an outsider who captured, you know, we won over blue collar with Democrats and union workers. We just had a totally different tone. But look, I agree with a lot of the Trump policies and I supported them on tax cuts and I liked when he was getting tough on China. I just didn't like the mean tweets and the angry rhetoric. And I was concerned that he actually wasn't as effective as he could have been.

because he didn't really work to get anything done. But, yeah, I mean, we do share some similarities. We both won with outsiders and with a populist message, and then we just govern completely differently. I want to close our dispatch politics interview by focusing on what's next for you. But before I get to that, I just want to ask this one question because it pops up so often in my conversations with voters, particularly voters who still support Trump, but even others, where, you know, they will say, listen, under Trump, we had manageable, if not just outright, low gas prices. We had low interest rates until the pandemic, which was not his fault that it

happened. You had a booming economy. It seemed like our threats around the world were being managed better, or at least we're less threatening to us here at home. And so what if there were mean tweets. You know, be an adult, so he's mean sometimes. But just look at, you know, the condition of the country in our place in the world is worth a few mean tweets. I mean, is there a point to that? Sure. I mean, look, the economy was in much better shape. You know, the moving to the far left and having the Democrats and control the White House and the House of Representatives is not good for the country. But it was enabled because, you know, we turned off so many voters, we couldn't keep the White House, and we lost the House in the Senate

while during Trump's term. And so he did some good things. I agreed with some of the policies, but I think he could have been much more effective. And no question that the pandemic was not the president's fault. And, you know, I credited him with the Operation Warp Speed and the discovery of the vaccines. But his handling of it, I think, you know, didn't help him in his reelection either. Okay. So the last time I caught up with you one-on-one at. length was at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas was just after the midterm elections. And you were heading into a whole bunch of events, some fundraising events. You've got a couple of political groups. And I don't want to get your lawyers all mad at me by saying you

oversee them or not. But whatever, there are Larry Hogan groups, if you want to support Larry Hogan. So when you talk about staying in the fight, and I talk to a lot of Republicans no longer in office, and they always, because I think they mean it sincerely. They want to stay in the fight. They still love politics. You know, you're not as old as Joe Biden, so you've got a lot of life left in you to be active in all sorts of endeavors. But are there concrete ways of which you could explain today that you have laid out for yourself

in terms of how you are going to continue to be active politically influencing the direction of the Republican Party if you're able to do so? What is next for you in that regard? Well, it's a great question. Look, I've spent most of my life in the private sector, but always been involved in politics. And I think have been making a difference since I was a kid. I was a chairman of youth for Reagan and active in young Republicans. But without holding office until I was governor, it was the first time I held elective office.

I think there are a lot of ways to contribute. Look, I don't need to be in elective office in order to still be passionately involved and caring about things. We have a number of organizations. We have a group called an America United, which is a C4. It's going to continue to exist. I'm going to go around a country and continue to talk about the kinds of issues I care about in this race. Hopefully, we'll find a candidate to get behind, and I can support so we can not only support the Republican nominee, but win the general election. And I think I can help them focus on issues that can appeal to swing voters and maybe help us get the White House back, get the Congress back.

I started a federal pack in the fall that we've raised some money that I can help support like-minded candidates that are running for various offices. And, you know, I've been involved in the Republican Party my entire life. And I think I can continue to contribute. I don't know exactly, you know, what that's going to entail. But I'm going to go back to the private sector and do some of the fun things I spent most of my life doing. But I am not even close to giving up. the fight. I care deeply about the party in the country and I'm going to do whatever I can.

Fun fact for people that may not be aware, but you should read Larry Hogan's book only because if for no other reason, there's a great story in there. And I think, Governor, I'm remembering this from the book, although maybe it's just from talking to you. I got a seamless plug is the book is called Still Standing, by the way. It's a great memoir. My favorite part of it was the part where you and your father were both at the 76 convention, I believe, and you were walking around. He was a big shot for President Gerald Ford at the 76 convention and you were marching with your with your sign for Reagan on the convention floor so no question I mean I go you know that's the funny part about it I came from the

conservative wing in the party my dad was a chairman of for Ford and I was marching around with my Reagan hat and sign and my dad was like what in the hell are you doing you know where we're supposed to be with Ford and I was like I like Reagan and then in 80 I was a chairman for Reagan and worked in his 80 and 84 campaign so you were you were a troublemaker so now you've you've totally gone now you've totally gone establishment but you used to be a troublemaker no i've always rebelled and gone in the direction the same my philosophy hasn't changed one bit uh and i was rebelling against the establishment is now the trump wing and i want to get us back to Reagan just like uh you know i was trying to move from fort oh very good all right and finally here i wanted to ask you you know

there's a there's a group out there people may or may not be aware of it called no labels which is um all about bipartisanship and and and you know solutions and people getting along And, you know, some people think that they're full of it, and other people think it's a very good group. They do raise a lot of money. And they are planning, laying the groundwork from an infrastructure standpoint to amount a third-party bid for president if they feel like the two nominees are unacceptable or something like that. I'll have to check my notes. But the reason I'm asking you about this is you're the kind of Republican that they have quietly either talked about or mentioned or targeted as a possible candidate, should they? they have to go in that direction. Is that anything, a third-party bid for president through no

labels or anybody else that you would ever consider or ever rule out? Well, it's not something that I'm really giving any consideration, too, but, you know, I don't like to ever rule out anything. Governor Larry Hogan, he was a two-term chief executive from the state of Maryland. Governor Hogan, thanks so much for joining us on the Dispatch podcast. Thank you very much, David. Great You're going. Calling all Book Lovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more, with over 100 authors from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Ketourou Isaku and Kieran Desai.

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