31
laboratories in his state, none of which had corona-
virus tests on hand. Most were federal government
labs the state couldn’t even access. Hence the ap-
peal to Pence.
Hogan’s reputation for pragmatism and modera-
tion has won him approval scores in the 70s from Re-
publicans, Democrats and independents alike and
from both white and African- American residents. “I
can’t even find Democrats in my own family who dis-
approve of the job he’s doing,” says Donna Edwards,
a former Democratic Congresswoman from Mary-
land’s D.C. suburbs. In 2016, Hogan boycotted the
Republican National Convention and wrote in his fa-
ther’s name on his presidential ballot. “That was the
kind of Republican that I wanted to vote for,” Hogan
tells me. Last year, a group of anti-Trump Republi-
cans tried to persuade Hogan to run for President.
Hogan, as he puts it, “didn’t throw them out of my
office,” but eventually decided Trump’s popularity
with the Republican base made him unbeatable in
a primary.
Hogan’s father died in 2017. The governor hasn’t
decided whom to vote for this November. He doesn’t
rule out voting Democratic. As for Trump, Hogan
says, “he hasn’t done anything to make me change
my mind.”
When I ask hogan what he misses most about life
before the pandemic, he gets wistful. “I’m a people
person,” he says. “Usually I’d be at events all day
and all night.” One of the highlights of Hogan’s year
is opening day of the baseball season in the spring,
when he spends hours walking around Oriole Park at
Camden Yards, greeting people, shaking thousands
of hands and taking hundreds of selfies. This year,
of course, there was no opening day. “That’s what
I miss about normal life,” he says. “I miss people.”
On April 24, Hogan announced a phased re-
opening plan based on a series of testing and trac-
ing benchmarks. The point is to keep people safe,
he tells me, but also to give them hope: they have to
know there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. That
the leaders they’ve elected have a plan, even if it’s far
from clear when they’ll be able to put it into effect.
The credibility Hogan’s built with his constituents
will be critical to the reopening effort. It’s a qual-
ity that’s been in short supply in the White House,
where a few hours after Hogan speaks, Trump will
force Redfield to “correct” an article that quoted
him accurately, and where the next day the Presi-
dent will muse about injecting disinfectant into peo-
ple’s bodies. After receiving hundreds of calls to its
hotline, Maryland’s emergency- management agency
is forced to issue a warning that “under no circum-
stances should any disinfectant product be admin-
istered into the body through injection, ingestion or
any other route.”
For the most part, Maryland’s residents have fol-
lowed Hogan’s lead. A small protest erupted in An-
napolis on April 18, demanding an end to the gover-
nor’s stay-at-home order. Hogan wasn’t there to see it
because he was at the airport receiving the South Ko-
rean test kits. “I didn’t think it was helpful for the Pres-
ident to be encouraging people to go out and protest,”
he says. Trump’s tweets urging people to “liberate”
certain states, he notes, came the day after the Presi-
dent’s own Administration issued guidelines calling
for the stay-at-home orders to be kept in place for now.
To the protesters, however, Hogan offers not
a rebuke but sympathy. “I get the frustration,” he
says. “I want it to be over, you know? I’m tired of it
also.” As the pandemic response moves into its next
phase, it will be up to Hogan and the other gover-
nors to lead the way. □^
A protester, part of
a caravan of cars
that descended
on the Maryland
statehouse in
Annapolis on
April 18, opposing
coronavirus-related
restrictions