Hogan said in an interview that he was not actively preparing to run against Trump and acknowledged that the president remained popular with his fellow Republicans. But in an interview during the National Governors Association conference in Washington, Hogan said he was open to running and listening to entreaties from Trump’s Republican critics.
Hogan, 62, said that while many Republican voters feel a sense of loyalty to a president from their party, he was not convinced that Trump had a “lock” on the Republican coalition. Noting he won re-election handily last year in a racially diverse blue state, Hogan suggested he was a leader who could broaden the party’s appeal.
“I think there are a lot of Republicans that are concerned about the future and that want us to continue to be a bigger tent and to reach a wider audience and to not alienate people and not to be as divisive,” Hogan said.
But Hogan also indicated that he diverges from much of the Republican base on important matters besides his unfavorable view of Trump. He criticized Republicans in Congress for having tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act without proposing a suitable alternative and declined to express a personal assessment of whether the Senate had been right to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Asked whether he believed Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal nationwide, had been correctly decided by the court, Hogan replied in the affirmative: “I think so.”
Hogan said that if he were to run against Trump, they would “differ quite a bit” on policy, though he allowed that there would be areas of overlap. He has branded himself in Maryland as a fiscal conservative focused on job creation and economic development.
“On the economic issues, some of it might be fairly similar, and I think he’s done a fairly decent job on the economy,” Hogan said, before adding: “We might differ on trade, we might differ on many other things.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.