Annapolis, MD — Larry Hogan’s failure to develop a relationship with Discovery Communications to keep 1,300 jobs in Maryland is snowballing with even more missed opportunities. Today Discovery announced it will invest $16 million in Northern Virginia and create 200 new high-paying technology jobs. This comes on the heels of jobs previously lost to Tennessee.
In April, a bombshell report in Bethesda Magazine revealed that Hogan had failed to develop a relationship with Discovery at the beginning of his administration, then did not contact the company for several months following its July 2017 merger announcement with Tennessee-based Scripps Networks. While Hogan sat on his hands, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam successfully courted Discovery in the month following the announcement, and lured hundreds of jobs to the state. Now, Virginia is the second state to snatch high-paying Discovery jobs from Maryland. In the press release announcing the investment, Governor Ralph Northam’s office bragged that Virginia “successfully competed against Maryland” to secure the investment
Last January, after Discovery announced that it was moving its headquarters from Silver Spring to New York, Hogan dismissed the impact of Discovery’s departure, saying that it was “not the end of the world.” Days later, Democrats launched NotTheEndOfTheWorld.org to call attention to Hogan’s tone-deaf comments. The website is designed to provide Marylanders with information about Governor Hogan’s record as the first Maryland governor to lose a Fortune 500 company to a rival state in decades, and his callous reaction to that news. It is also home to a web video that puts his heartless reaction in contrast with that of concerned Silver Spring community members.
“When Silver Spring and Discovery employees needed Governor Hogan to fight for their jobs, his office was closed for business,” said Maryland Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Matthews. “Governor Hogan’s failure to fight to keep Discovery in Maryland was a monumental failure of leadership, and he’s now somehow found a way to make it worse. It’s easy to see why Governor Hogan is so afraid of running on his record.”
Maryland keeps losing out on business opportunities under Hogan. Last year, Facebook, Nestle and Boeing chose to invest in Virginia instead of Maryland. When President Trump cancelled a project to move the headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which would have brought thousands of high-paying jobs to Maryland, Governor Hogan sat by and did nothing.