Man, we’ve been waiting for this one!
Nine months ago, former governor and present Republican Larry Hogan made Democrats pee themselves (in a bad way) when he stepped into the race for retiring Senator Ben Cardin’s seat. Hogan was a well-liked governor, with his giant-baby looks and an aw-shucks demeanor. And with Democrats controlling the Legislature and overriding his vetoes, he got to take credit for progressives’ successes, and was barred from pulling any conservative monkeyshines. An AARP poll last month had him tied 47 to 47 with his Democrat opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who was not well-known outside of her county. So for a minute there it looked like he had a crab’s asshair of a shot.
But not any more! Later polls have shown him sinking. And then right before the debate was taped at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Time magazine busted open one doozy of a self-dealing real-estate scandal (more on that in a minute). That story apparently broke too late to come up in the debate, but there was plenty to drag him about anyway. And drag Alsobrooks did, all glowing and senatorial, while Hogan sputtered and repeated that he’s “not about the red and blue, he’s about the red, white and blue.” Nothing like a slogan you’ve practiced in front of a mirror to get the folks all rizzed!
But this is Maryland, where it’s not about the red and blue, it’s about the blue and deeper blue. So the debate for a US Senate seat means arguing over who hates Mitch McConnell and guns the most, and who loves abortion so much they’ll set up an abortion-and-taco truck on every corner. Ain’t the beer cold, hon!
Hogan decided to run because he was pig-biting mad at Mitch McConnell for killing the border deal, and he would vote to codify Roe v. Wade, he said. He loves Planned Parenthood and did not even veto giving them money. Look, if he went to the Senate he wouldn’t be a regular Republican, he would be a cool Republican, like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. (LOL!) And anyway everybody should be very afraid of the Democrats’ agenda, because crime in Prince George’s County has gone up a hundred percent (it hasn’t) and Angela Alsobrooks has been hiding members of MS-13 from the federales behind her pencil skirt (she isn’t)!
But Alsobrooks was waiting with a knife and a fork for that rump roast. She was a prosecutor, she was law enforcement, so go soft on crime yourself. And if Hogan is such a maverick, a rebel, and a loner, Dottie, why are the Republicans paying for his ads? If he’s independent and thinks Mitch McConnell sucks and blows so hard, why didn’t he run as, oh, I don’t know, an independent?
Alsobrooks pointed out that if Republicans have a majority, there won’t be any vote on codifying Roe, or anything else for that matter, with the “you numpty” implied. And if he thinks Mitch McConnell and his team are so squicky, why did Hogan “put on the jersey and run into the game” when Mitch blew his little whistle? And gush that Trump’s Supreme Court picks were “incredible”?
Watch Hogan twitch and deflate like an old air mattress.
And moderator Chuck Todd did not get a new haircut and drive all the way to Owings Mills just to let Hogan slide. Would Hogan have voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, or Brett Kavanaugh?
“If there’s one thing we should not be politicizing, it’s the Supreme Court,” Hogan sputtered, lamely. LOL, WHAT?!! Eventually Hogan said that he did not know. Would Hogan help to end the filibuster? He would not. Does he think weed should be illegal on the federal level? He doesn’t know. Does he think federal employees should be able to work from home two days a week? He doesn’t. Hogan lied that “nobody” wanted the Red Line, an expansion of Baltimore’s light rail that he killed, wasting $300 million state dollars that had already been spent, and giving up $900 million in federal Obamabucks in the process.
And then Alsobrooks finished him with a piledriver. Hogan fucked away his votes in three elections now, writing in the corpse of “deceased individual” Ronald Reagan twice, and he says he won’t vote for Harris or Trump this year. If he wanted to be so bipartisan, he could vote for Harris. As a Senator, VOTING IS YOUR ONE JOB! If you can’t undither yourself to even vote for president, THAT IS A DISQUALIFIER. If you only watch one clip, make it this one!
Stick a fucking fork in him! And if you want to watch the whole thing, here you go.
And Now For the New!
And then there’s Hogan’s scandal that broke yesterday. Simply the worst day ever for that flip-flopping bag of mashed potatoes!
It goes like this: When Larry Hogan was elected governor of Maryland back in 2015, he was also head of a privately held real estate brokerage, subtly named HOGAN. The head of the Maryland State Ethics Commission sent him a letter telling him to put it in a blind trust. But he did not! He made his brother Timothy head of the trust, and continued to be involved in meetings, even though he told the ethics board he would just stay apprised but not involved. Then somehow, over the eight years of his governorship, 40 percent of the competitive affordable housing awards overseen by himself went to six clients of his brokerage. And somehow, even though his official annual salary ranged from $165,000 to $180,000, in his first three years in office he made $2.4 million. Just luck, probably.
It gets better! By which we mean worse! In 2018 the Maryland Matters website sniffed out that Hogan held ownership in a company called Brandywine Crossing Realty Partners LLC, a controlling partner for a parcel of land behind the Brandywine Crossing Shopping Center in Prince George’s County. And then he earmarked $55.7 million to build a new highway interchange there, neglecting to mention to legislators that he had a financial interest. Washington Monthly reporter Eric Cortellessa also discovered he’d awarded the contract to Facchina Construction Company, which donated to Hogan’s reelection campaign. And then HOGAN (the company) bought 14 more parcels of land near it. And Hogan (the governor) earmarked $23 million in public funds for crosswalks and other road improvements near his other properties around the state.
And there’s more! Hogan revealed in 2017 he had a stake in 16 LLCs for development projects, and check out the map at this link. For every development project, a state transportation infrastructure project or five would pop up in the vicinity, like a patch of hives.
The deals added up to $90.3 million in subsidies to clients of his businesses while he was governor. All at the very same time Hogan was turning down that $900 million in federal Obamabucks to expand light rail service in Baltimore city with the Red Line. Hogan shifted $736 million of state money to roads instead.
It was all so Spiro-Agnew-y and shady that the Maryland Senate passed a law in 2020 to enhance disclosure requirements, just for Hogan, and he quickly scrubbed his client list from his website. The pandemic was raging, term limits were going to have him out anyway, and so no one was really paying attention. But the Internet remembers!
“This is what they call an October surprise, where they dredge up some old false conspiracy theory and throw it out there and then try to make it into a campaign issue,” Hogan told reporters after the debate. “There’s no truth to it at all.” Except for the part where his clients were on his own website and the money was his own disclosures, I guess!
Yeah, he’s done. And from the looks on his face, he knows it.
But at least he can dry his tears with all that sweet developer cash.
[Maryland Matters/ Washington Post gift link]
It's about fucking time Hogan's criminal enterprises got a MAJOR public expose. I and other Democrats in Montgomery County, MD have been screaming since 2014 about Hogan's shady dealings, his continual wetting his beak, his shafting Baltimore City, MoCo, and PG County, his cancellation of the Red Line in Baltimore and transferring the funds to highway projects which happened to be, guess what, near land under his and his family's control. He is a rotten, greedy, entitled shit, and I'm glad he is FINALLY getting the treatment he deserves. PS, I've been canvassing for Alsobrooks and getting positive feedback.
This is what Republicans mean by running government like a business.