Larry Hogan: An Ineffective, Do-Nothing Legislator

By Dana M. Stein

During political campaigns, the actual job that is on the ballot tends to get lost in the noise. 

First and foremost, for instance, the job of a United States Senator is to be a legislator. 

As a 17-year veteran of a legislative body, I struggle to understand how Larry Hogan will be effective in the United States Senate as a legislator. 

When you watch Hogan’s ads, there is a lot of talk about bipartisanship and “putting people over party”. 

Hogan used these same platitudes for eight years as our Governor, but what my colleagues and I observed never lived up to his rhetoric. 

Few people outside of Annapolis realize how physically close the Governor is to the legislature. 

His mansion is literally across a narrow street from the State House on State Circle, and his office is directly above the House and Senate Chambers. And yet, in eight long years, Larry Hogan refused to walk a few feet down the hall or down the staircase to meet with legislators, except when he was constitutionally obligated to do so.

He refused to walk across the street to present his bills in front of House and Senate committees because he didn’t want the public to see him take tough questions from legislators. 

And he often took things a step further by trivializing the legislative work of Democrats and Republicans alike. Most notably, when he wasn’t getting his way on a bill, Hogan took to the airwaves and compared us to college students on spring break. We all rolled our eyes – Democrats and Republicans alike. 

But the message was clear: Larry Hogan wanted us out of his way because he relied on legislating by edict. He relied on adversarial press releases, social media attack ads, and solitary press conferences. When that didn’t get him what he wanted, he’d start waving his popularity in your face. 

Sound familiar? 

Right now, large parts of Congress are broken – we see it every day. And they’ve been broken by this exact ineffective approach to legislating. 

As Maryland prepares to elect a new United State Senator, I believe that we need someone more worried about what’s in the bill than what’s in the press release. More worried about their legislative strategy than their social media strategy. And more worried about building relationships and consensus than building their brand. 

That’s how Senator Ben Cardin has legislated for the past five-plus decades. 

Senator Cardin always understood that the United States Senate is not a body of one. 

He understood that it is a body of 100 equal parts, where everyone’s vote carries the same weight, regardless of how popular you are. 

He understood that being a consensus builder got Maryland a lot farther than being a self-serving obstructionist, obsessed with running for president, like Ted Cruz. 

We need our next United States Senator to be like Ben Cardin, not Ted Cruz. 

At its most basic level, legislating and democracy require participation. Talking about bipartisanship or “putting people over party” mean nothing if you refuse to participate. 

I’ve spent 17 years working with my colleagues in the legislature, building up our public school system, building up our health care system, and building up our middle class. 

Larry Hogan spent eight years working with himself, building up his brand. 

His interest in serving in Congress seems to be a poorly masked steppingstone to another job. 

Let’s take him at his word when he admitted that he couldn’t see himself serving as a United State Senator and instead elect someone who is interested in the actual job they are running for.