Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Sunday that he will not seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
“I have long said that I care more about ensuring a future for the Republican Party than securing my own future in the Republican Party. That is why I will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president,” he said in a statement.
After leaving office in January, Hogan said that he was seriously considering running for president.
But on Sunday, the longtime critic of former President Donald Trump said that “the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
Trump is making his third bid for the Republican nomination in a race that has been slow to take shape. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy entered the primary last month. Other potential contenders for the GOP nomination include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President MIke Penceand New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
In his statement Sunday, Hogan, who served two terms as Maryland governor, argued that his party needs to “move on” from Trump. A relatively moderate Republican, Hogan has long been critical of Trump’s influence on the party and was even seen as a potential challenger to him in the 2020 GOP primary. He has said that had he been in the US Senate, he would have voted to convict the former president at his 2021 impeachment trial.
“Our nation faces great challenges; we can’t afford to be consumed by the pettiest grievances. We can push back and defeat the excesses of elitist policies on the left without resorting to angry, divisive and performative politics,” he said in his statement Sunday.
Hogan was first elected governor in 2014 and comfortably won reelection in 2018. In recent decades, the state has been dominated by the Democratic Party at the state and federal levels. George H.W. Bush was the last Republican presidential nominee to win the Old Line State, in 1988.
