Annapolis, MD—Republican Larry Hogan has been trying to have it both ways in a state where Donald Trump is extremely unpopular. Today, the Maryland Democratic Party released a new web video where Hogan’s brags about his “cooperative and good” relationship with the Trump administration. Most Marylanders oppose Trump, who has sabotaged Marylanders’ healthcare, targeted immigrant communities in Maryland—often with Hogan’s assistance—and has raised taxes on hundreds of thousands of Maryland families.
“While Larry Hogan tries to create the illusion of distance between himself and the President, he has repeatedly shown that he will stand with Trump and his policies, even when Maryland families need him to fight for their jobs and healthcare,” said Maryland Democratic Party chair Kathleen Matthews. “Donald Trump has campaigned for Larry Hogan and the Maryland Republican Party because he knows in a second term they’ll stick with his policies. Meantime Ben Jealous is getting under Trump’s skin because he has the independence to fight the President and his policies, and stick up for Maryland families.”
With all signs pointing to a Blue Wave this year, Larry Hogan and Maryland Republicans got some much-needed support from Donald Trump at a rally in Montana last week when he attacked Democratic nominee for governor Ben Jealous for including DREAMers in his plan for tuition-free community college. Trump’s attempt to boost Hogan’s campaign for reelection came three days after the Maryland Democratic Party renewed its call for Larry Hogan to return the $100,000 in Trump cash that is helping fund his reelection campaign. Larry Hogan’s campaign staff, from senior leadership to organizers, is on the state party’s payroll.
See below for examples on how Trump’s “good” policies have hurt Marylanders.
Hogan thinks Trump’s healthcare sabotage is “good,” but here’s what it means for Maryland families:
- since Hogan entered office, the average benchmark marketplace premium has exploded from $220 to $486 per month for a single person—an increase of more than 120 percent, with the majority of increases occurring under the Trump administration;
- Hogan’s Insurance chief and Republican candidate for Baltimore County Executive Al Redmer presided over a hearing of the Maryland Insurance Administration in July, where health insurance companies proposed exorbitant rate hikes—some as high as 90 percent—citing Trump’s sabotage as the cause for the hikes. In May, Kaiser Permanente proposed a 37.4 percent premium increase, due to “the impact of eliminating the individual mandate penalty”; and
- two months ago, following after the Trump administration announced it was ending risk adjustment payments, University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business senior associate dean of research said, “so much uncertainty put in the market at this point of time is very unnerving.”
Hogan thinks Trump’s GOP tax scam is “good” for Maryland, but here’s how it hurts Maryland families:
- a Maryland Board of Revenue report found that hundreds of thousands of Marylanders’ federal and state taxes will be jacked up by the tax scam bill;
- economists think the tax scam could reduce housing values in Maryland; and
- and the tax scam has gone almost entirely to wealthy corporations, which have announced more than $480 billion in stock buybacks for their investors since January.
That Hogan thinks Trump’s hateful anti-immigrant policies are “good” is no surprise. here are examples of how Hogan has supported many of Trump’s immigration policies:
- last month, Hogan revealed that he secretly deployed four Maryland National Guard servicemembers to the U.S.-Mexico border, even though MDNG denied it had received “any request for assistance” when Trump announced his plan to deploy the National Guard to the border in April;
- last year, The Baltimore Sun discovered Hogan was secretly helping the Trump administration enforce its immigration policies. Despite Hogan’s claims that Maryland was not detaining immigrants on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Sun reported that Baltimore Central Booking—which is operated by the state—received and honored dozens of detention requests from ICE;
- Hogan said not honoring the requests would be “absurd,” and promised that state police will “detain people for 48 hours so that ICE has the ability to come in and do whatever action they want to take”; and
- when Marylanders flooded Hogan’s Facebook page requesting he join them at airports to protest Trump’s Muslim Ban, Hogan deleted their comments and banned them from his page, and then refused to grant Attorney General Brian Frosh authority to fight the ban in court.