Larry Hogan says he doesn’t want to be a senator – but he’s polling well anyway

Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland who says he doesn’t really want to be a US senator but is running anyway, is tied with or leads his possible Democratic opponents, according to a poll released Thursday.

The former governor of Maryland leads Angela Alsobrooks, a state politician, by seven points in a hypothetical matchup and ties at 42% support with the US congressman David Trone, in a poll by Emerson College, the Hill and DC News Now.

Governor from 2015 to 2023, Hogan left office as a popular moderate Republican in an otherwise generally Democratic state. Opposing Donald Trump’s grip on his party, and flirting with a third-party presidential run, Hogan repeatedly said he did not want to succeed the Democrat Ben Cardin in the Senate after Cardin retires next year.

Last week, Hogan said he would run after all.

Last May, Hogan said he did not “have a burning desire to be a senator”, would find sitting in the Senate “really frustrating on a personal human level”, thought being a senator was “not where my skill set lies” and said that although he could win a seat, “the problem was I would win and I would have to go be a senator”.

On Wednesday he told CNN “not much” had changed.

“I still feel exactly the same way,” he said. “Not a lot gets done in Washington. Who in their right mind would want to go in and be a part of that divisiveness and dysfunction? I said I wasn’t going to walk away from politics, I was going to try to be a voice, standing up to try to fix things, and you can’t just sit back and complain about things if you’re not willing to try to make a difference.

“Still personally, there’s not a burning desire to go be a senator … I’m only doing it because I think I have a unique voice and