Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is trying to win a U.S. Senate seat in deep blue Maryland on the strength of his reputation as a Never-Trump Republican. But a damning new report in Time magazine suggests that Hogan, who put a family member in charge of his real estate firm while he served as governor, resembles Trump more than we knew. Hogan may have been able to use his power as governor to help boost his business in a manner reminiscent of the former president.
Before becoming governor, Hogan was the president and principal owner of a real estate brokerage firm in Maryland. When he entered the governor’s mansion, he neither divested from the firm nor formed a blind trust, as politicians sometimes do to maintain an ethical distance from their assets. Instead, Time reports, he put his brother in charge of his company and made executives at the firm trustees. He reportedly kept abreast of the firm’s financial matters and the location of its real estate projects, and held routine meetings with his company’s leaders.
This matters because Time found that “[o]ver Hogan’s eight years in office, nearly 40% of the competitive affordable housing awards overseen by the governor went to developers listed as clients” on his company’s website, according to a review of public records. According to the magazine, those awards “were concentrated among six developers who competed against more than 60 other companies during that time.” Time found no record of Hogan’s recusing himself from decision-making or the oversight of decision-making that could affect his assets; nor did his office provide examples of any such recusals. Time noted that, according to historians of the state, Hogan’s tenure marks the first time that a Maryland governor made millions of dollars while in office.
Hogan’s set-up generated, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest and appears to have potentially allowed him to use the governor’s mansion to enrich himself.
The legality of this situation is confusing. Hogan’s trust arrangement was approved by the Maryland State Ethics Commission, Time reports. “Gov. Hogan adhered to a legally-binding Trust Agreement, approved by the independent State Ethics Commission, that prohibited his participation in any matters related to his business,” Michael Ricci, a former state official and Hogan spokesman, said in a statement to Time. But, according to the magazine’s report, in practice Hogan did participate in matters that affected his business. And Maryland public ethics law “prohibits government officials from taking part in decisions in which they or a close relative have a known financial interest, or if the decision could reasonably be expected to ‘result in a conflict between the private interest and the official State duties of the official.’” Several government watchdogs told Time that Hogan’s failure to recuse was an outright conflict of interest. Others say it warrants investigation. Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., posted on X: “What’s going on here?”
I share the same question as Raskin. Hogan’s set-up generated, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest and appears to have potentially allowed him to use the governor’s mansion to enrich himself. This is a situation in which Hogan, even if he did nothing illicit, seems to have done something self-serving and inappropriate. There is something ironic about reports that Hogan displayed Trumpian qualities. He has long been seen as a moderate in Maryland politics, and during the pandemic he was a vociferous critic of Trump’s policies and character. He sells himself as a man who stands for common-sense solutions for the middle class. But his business arrangements while he served as governor suggest someone motivated by private interest. That Trump managed to avoid any accountability for enriching himself using the presidency doesn’t make it any less unethical. Even without the Time exposé, we know that Hogan isn’t the moderate so many Marylanders have claimed he is. As governor he vetoed criminal justice reform, renewable energy initiatives, voters’ rights bills and bills that would have increased the number of abortion providers in Maryland. We don’t know exactly what kind of player he would be in the Senate, but he remains a part of the Republican Party, and there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t often side with the GOP. The most recent revelations should only give Marylanders more reason to pause and consider whether he deserves the trust of liberals and good-government fans that he claims he does.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
