Michele Curbeam, a self-identified Democrat, brought her two daughters to see the governor, and said she would be voting for Hogan in November, citing his support for public education and law enforcement. Asked what she thought of Jealous, the African-American medical assistant said: “I don’t like all his cursing. That doesn’t show much self-control.”
Mike Galiazzo, the president of the Regional Manufacturing Institute of Maryland, called himself a liberal but a stalwart Hogan supporter. “I’ve been a liberal Democrat my whole life. But the Democrats, quite frankly, failed to take care of the manufacturing community in a way that created jobs. Their solution for manufacturing was to tell anyone they weren’t smart enough for manufacturing and to get retrained,” Galiazzo said.
These Democratic defections in the Maryland governor race offer a cautionary sign to the party, betting that a crop of true-blue progressives can win pivotal gubernatorial contests across the country. Democrats attribute Hogan’s lead to his widespread popularity and independent profile, and now believe that this race was near-impossible to win from the start. But the Republican Governors Association spent more than $2 million on ads attacking Jealous over his liberal policy positions, suggesting they didn’t view this race as a foregone conclusion. And Jealous’ underwater image—33 percent view him favorably, 34 percent unfavorably, according to an August Gonzales Research survey—show those criticisms have been brutally effective. (Also worth noting: Maryland has only reelected a Republican governor once in its history, and Hogan is running in a very rough environment for the GOP.)
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The next few weeks will be important for newly minted gubernatorial candidates like Garcia and Gillum to define themselves before the opposition does it for them. Hogan’s success in Maryland isn’t just an illustration of how bipartisanship is a political winner. It’s a demonstration that candidates out of the mainstream can all too easily cost a party winnable races.