Larry Hogan wants to run a local race. Will Donald Trump let him?

Larry Hogan grinned as he saw the cowboy hats for sale, and immediately put one on before giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

The former governor of Maryland was wearing a black polo, gray dress pants and a baseball cap as he made his way through the various tents and food stalls with cheap festival toys, gimmicky costumes as well as a wide array of steaming arepas, elotes and grills churning out delicious beef and pork. He stopped at every stall, even dipping behind the counter for pics with the workers.

The Maryland Fiesta Latina was one of several campaign stops for the governor on a busy weekend that included a remembrance walk for a young woman murdered on a hiking trail northeast of Baltimore. In the sweltering heat, singers belted out lyrics to a crowd of a few hundred while others escaped the sun in what little shade a few tents could offer at the venue — a grass field in the middle of the Timonium horse track.

Hogan was all smiles, however, as more and more families approached him, many gripping wriggly, uncomfortable youngsters who didn’t understand why their parents were pulling them into pictures with some stranger. The former gov treated the fairgrounds like a mini-Iowa State Fair (having declined that experience when he turned down a White House run) as he shook hands and took photo after photo.

Out of the glare of the sun, he sat down for a few minutes to speak about where his race stands (after declining my offer of checking out the tequila tasting first). Maryland’s Senate race, he reasoned, looks virtually the same as it did one month ago — before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and gave Democrats around the country a breath of new life with the sudden coalescing of a massive wave of