Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) and Maryland Democrats are inching closer to ousting the state’s lone House Republican after notching a win at the state Supreme Court to keep a redistricting question on the ballot for the November elections.
Running out of options to protect his congressional seat from being redrawn to favor Democrats in 2028, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) says it’s time for Moore’s predecessor to lend a lifeline. The eight-term lawmaker plans to call upon Larry Hogan, the former two-term centrist Republican governor who left office in 2023 with high bipartisan approval ratings, to get more involved.
“I’ll be contacting the former governor,” Harris told the Washington Examiner Friday in a phone interview. “I would hope that he would take a leading position to try to defeat this referendum, because it will take some outside influences to overcome the bias that the Democrat-controlled state Supreme Court put in that wording.”
The Maryland Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling agreed with lower-court judges that the ballot question’s wording, which is a constitutional redistricting amendment to pave the way for Democrats to net one seat in 2028, “is misleading and therefore violates due process requirements.”
Still, the majority justices’ opinion determined they would allow the question after revising the language themselves, a decision that the dissenting justices said “remains misleading.” The court consists of five Republican-appointed justices — all of them by Hogan — and two Democratic-appointed justices.
“The problem is that the wording is very deceptive,” said Harris, who, as Freedom Caucus chair, is aligned on the other side of Republican Party as the centrist Hogan. “If a voter just depends upon what they read at the polling booth or on their absentee ballot, they’re going to be deceived into thinking this is not about creating extreme partisan gerrymandering.”
Hogan has largely taken a back seat to politics and current events since losing his 2024 Senate bid to now-Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD). But the anti-Trump Republican does, on occasion, still voice his opinion on state matters, particularly when he disagrees with Maryland’s elected leaders. That includes the Democratic-led redistricting effort, although his involvement has so far been confined to an op-ed accusing Moore and state Democrats of “pure hypocrisy” for embracing the very gerrymandering mindset they’ve condemned Republicans for in other states.
“This redistricting is not about election reform. It isn’t about fairness, and it isn’t about righting a past wrong,” Hogan wrote for the Baltimore Sun in August, prior to state Democrats passing a measure during a special session by the Maryland General Assembly to add the ballot question. “It is an attempt by the political monopoly in Annapolis to change the law so they can realize their goal of pushing the last Republican member of Congress out of office. Not by convincing voters to support a Democratic candidate, but by packing more Democrats into a district that tends to vote Republican.”
Hogan and Harris spoke during the special session about Democrats’ redistricting effort, according to a source familiar with the matter. In a social media post Friday reacting to the Maryland Supreme Court ruling, Hogan reiterated his opposition.
“Marylanders, regardless of party, should say NO to extreme partisan gerrymandering,” Hogan posted. “NO to politics as usual. NO to being the worst in America. We are better than this.”
Moore, who’s made remaking the Maryland maps a pillar of his reelection campaign, is a possible 2028 White House candidate. Other possible Democratic presidential contenders, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), were successful in their counter-redistricting pursuits. Moore lauded the court decision on what he describes as an endeavor to protect democracy from President Donald Trump, who’s urged GOP-led states to conduct mid-cycle redistricting in the party’s favor.
“Our democracy should not be run by Donald Trump, and our democracy should not be run by party bosses,” Moore told reporters Friday. “Our democracy should be run by the people, and that the people should be the ones to have the final say as to how our democracy and how our freedoms are going to be protected.”
MARYLAND MAY FINALLY SEE REDISTRICTING ACTION — JUST NOT THE WAY WES MOORE WANTED
Harris and state Republicans could still present legal challenges to a new map next year once Democrats redraw it, if voters in November approve the state constitutional amendment. But Harris suggested the only possible avenue to preventing an 8-0 all-Democratic U.S. House delegation could be defeating what’s known as Question 3 on the ballot.
“Unfortunately, the relatively biased position that the state Supreme Court took on this issue means that they might take the same biased position on a challenge to an extremely partisan, gerrymandered map,” Harris said.