hogan, larry gov
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~ trump but goes maga for senate 2024?
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AN 3 26
A campaign accountant who served as the Maryland Republican Party comptroller since 2017 has been indicted, court records unsealed on Monday show.
The Baltimore Banner reported James Appel's name is no longer included on the GOP's website, and the details aren't immediately viewable online, but the indictment shows that he is being accused of wire fraud and money laundering.
Appel had been questioned in February by the FBI after a discrepancy of more than $100,000 popped up in Maryland Del. Kathy Szeliga’s campaign finance account.
"In a campaign finance report submitted at 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 21 to the Maryland Board of Elections, the Friends of Kathy Szeliga — the delegate’s campaign election committee — had a bank account balance of $287,481.55," reported FoxBaltimore in February. "The filing documents more than $106,000 in new campaign donations during the 2025 reporting period and slightly more than $52,000 in expenditures.
Appel managed as many as 40 campaign accounts as the campaign treasurer, including former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.), his LinkedIn page confirms. Under an entity registered to Appel called GOP Compliance, it reported $1,900 in expenditures during the same period. However, "between January 2020 and February 2026, GOP Compliance received $239,453.02 in payments and reimbursements from 22 campaign committees."
Szeliga alone reported paying GOP Compliance $1,900 last year.
Maryland GOP executive director Ashleigh Presnar told the Banner that Appel is no longer at the party but wouldn't give details on when that changed.
He was also the original treasurer of the Maryland Freedom Caucus, the report said. It includes seven conservative state delegates who pooled money as a slate. The caucus has also removed Appel as the treasurer.
Del. Matt Morgan, who chairs the caucus, told the Banner that they've "gone through our account and I’m not aware of any money missing."
Appel's LinkedIn shows that he owned a sandwich shop until he was appointed to be the Chief Financial Officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) Marine Fisheries in March 2007.
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an 10 24
One candidate in a high-profile U.S. Senate race is now being accused of corrupt behavior by awarding millions of dollars in development contracts to his real estate firm.
On Thursday, TIME Magazine reported that Larry Hogan — the former two-term Republican governor of Maryland now running for Senate — helped steer almost 40% of all affordable housing contracts to clients of the company he refused to divest from during his eight-year tenure. The ex-governor's firm, HOGAN, which TIME described as a "multi-purpose real estate brokerage firm based in Annapolis," had no such success during his predecessor's time in office.
In its report, TIME noted that HOGAN clients were awarded 0% and 30% of affordable housing contracts in the Old Line State in 2011 and 2012, respectively. But after he took office, his company became much more successful at winning development deals. In 2020, for example, HOGAN's clientele got $40 million in state funds and federal tax credits on 18 different projects.
READ MORE:**Trump's endorsement could sink GOP nominee in competitive race**
As governor, Hogan sat on the three-member Board of Public Works, which votes on awarding development contracts. The Maryland Republican personally voted in favor of awards between $600,000 and $1.8 million worth of contracts to four different HOGAN clients during his first three years in office. And as Maryland's governor, Hogan signed off on transportation infrastructure projects that were a short distance away from his company's properties in Brandywine and Hyattsville, making them more valuable as a result.
HOGAN's success in securing affordable housing contracts for its clients may have translated to a lucrative payday for Hogan, dwarfing his $165,000 to $180,000 annual salary as governor. Financial disclosure forms filed ahead of his second gubernatorial campaign showed that he made $2.4 million during his first term — notably the first time in Maryland history a governor made millions of dollars. TIME pointed out that in a recent financial disclosure form as a senate candidate, Hogan's net worth ranged from $12.3 million to $35 million.
When he was elected governor, Hogan didn't put his wealth in a blind trust, but rather put his brother in charge of the company and had multiple meetings with both his brother and company trustees during his first three years in the governor's mansion. According to former George W. Bush administration ethics official Richard Painter, Hogan committed "a serious conflict of interest" by participating in the contract award process without fully divesting from his firm.
Bart Harvey, who is a former Fannie Mae director and a former affordable housing developer in Maryland, told TIME that Hogan's hands-on approach to his real estate firm was likely enticing for potential clients doing business with the company, and gave HOGAN an inherent advantage.
READ MORE:**How a Trump-allied super PAC is ramping up 'scathing attacks' in critical Senate race: report**
“The state has a large role to play in this because they actually allocate the credits. Hogan, as governor, was in charge of that,” Harvey said. “Developers, knowing that, may on their own go to his entity because they think they get a step up in the very competitive tax credit allocation process.”
Hogan is running against Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland's U.S. Senate race. While he has positioned himself as a more moderate candidate and distanced himself from former President Donald Trump in an attempt to appeal to voters in the deep blue state, that may be more difficult given Trump's endorsement of his candidacy in June.
"Yeah, I'd like to see him win. I think he has a good chance to win," the former president told Fox Business. "We gotta take the majority."
Click here to read TIME's report in its entirety.
READ MORE:**Dems 'ought to hammer' this 'far from moderate' GOP candidate: expert**
an 9 24
Maryland's future, a conservative super PAC, is moving full steam ahead on its efforts to help GOP Senate candidate and former Governor Larry Hogan ramp up "scathing attacks on his opponent, Democrat Angela Alsobrooks," The Washington Post reports.
"Getting Hogan was a coup for recruiting," Cook Political Report analyst Jessica Taylor told the Post. "This was a seat that Democrats weren’t even going to have to think of before. If they spend money here, it’s going to take away from other states that they need to defend."
Per the report, the "deep-pocketed super PAC" set aside "$18.3 million in airtime during the last six weeks of the race," and "several of the group’s conservative donors have also invested heavily to back Republicans in other states — some moderate and some in line with former president Donald Trump’s far-right politics — who are in close contests that could flip congressional seats from blue to red."
In June, Hogan released an ad days after he received an endorsement from Donald Trump, emphasizing that he doesn't identify with the current state of the Republican Party.
"Sometimes party loyalty demands too much," Hogan said.
But during an MSNBC interview earlier this week, Alsobrooks declared, "He’s on their team. It’s the reason why we’ve seen even this week 18 million additional dollars by his billionaire Republican friends, who likewise recognize he’s on their team and that electing him hands over control of the Senate to the Republican Party."
The Post notes, "Maryland’s Future entered the late-summer sprint toward Election Day with nearly $16 million in the bank from conservative donors as of June 30."
READ MORE:Trump’s endorsement could sink GOP Senate nominee in competitive race
*The Washington Post's full report is available here (subscription required).
an 6 24
when former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan won the GOP nomination in the state's 2024 U.S. Senate race, some Democratic strategists were quick to sound the alarm.
Hogan is a non-MAGA conservative and a Donald Trump critic who has a history of winning statewide races in a deep blue state that President Joe Biden carried by 33 percent in 2020. And he was a popular two-term governor, enjoying a 77 percent approval rating in a Gonzales poll conducted in early 2023.
At a time when Democrats are worried about keeping their small U.S. Senate majority, Hogan's nomination was not good news for their party — as he has a shot at flipping a Democrat-held seat in one of the bluest states on the East Coast.
Regardless, the GOP's MAGA wing — including Republican National Committee (RNC) Co-Chair Lara Trump and Donald Trump adviser Chris LaCivita — is furious with Hogan for tweeting, before Donald Trump was convicted on 34 criminal charges, that "all Americans" should "respect the verdict and the legal process."
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on June 4, journalist Jill Lawrence stresses that "Hogan's crash course in MAGA-style politics has gotten a lot more intense in the last few days."
"As a Senate candidate," Lawrence explains, "the formula that won him two terms as governor is imploding on contact with the MAGA GOP…. Lara Trump, Donald's daughter-in-law and handpicked co-chair of the Republican National Committee, all but threw Hogan under the bus Sunday on CNN's 'State of the Union' over his 'ridiculous' and 'very upsetting' statement last week just before a jury convicted the former president on 34 felony counts."
Lawrence continues, "What triggered her delicate sensibilities? Hogan had posted an anodyne message urging respect for the legal process 'regardless of the result,' and for 'what has made this nation great: the rule of law.'"
READ MORE: Dems 'ought to hammer' this 'far from moderate' GOP candidate: expert
Hogan, Lawrence observes, is being reminded that a pro-abortion rights Republican who attended a gay pride festival and is openly critical of Donald Trump is out of place in "today's off-the-rails GOP."
"The MAGA hardliners, who don't represent most of us but are determined nevertheless to be the boss of all of us, are lying in wait," Lawrence warns. "The Senate is particularly easy to muck up and bog down, and they are ready…. He may have a feeling he's not in Maryland anymore, and he'd be right. Planet MAGA is home for the GOP these days — and Larry Hogan is an alien."
:{:{READ MORE: Rick Scott is aiming to replace McConnell because 'Republicans in D.C. don't have a plan': report}:
*Jill Lawrence's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.
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Former top Larry Hogan aide killed in confrontation with FBI following 21-day manhunt - Alternet.org
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gov race 2022
https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/larry-hogan-lashes-donald-trump
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GOP governor fact-checks Trump’s lie about states not needing supplies: ‘The president was on the call’
Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday suggested that the president of the United States had not told the truth.
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gop gov thu odd djt attack maryland, but cummings
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who does Maryland’s Republican governor really work for?
Eric Cortellessa / Washington MonthlyJanuary 6, 2020
Larry Hogan has more in common with Donald Trump than his reputation suggests.
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According to conservative columnist Matt Lewis, conservatives are setting the stage to primary Donald Trump and take back the Republican Party.
In a piece for the Daily Beast entitled, “Here’s How the GOP Resistance Takes Down Trump in 2020,” Lewis notes that longtime conservative activists are already working behind the scenes to push at least one challenger into a race against Trump in the hopes that others will join in and bring some Republican voters back.
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“Once considered a preposterous idea (“It’s Trump’s party!” “The takeover is complete!!”), it looks like Donald Trump will face a primary challenge,” Lewis writes. “If you read conservative sites as I do, you’ll know that a loosely formed Greek chorus of conservative Trump critics has been predicting this for some time now.”
According to the conservative columnist, quoting Jerry Taylor, head of the Niskanen Center which hosted a conservative anti-Trump get-together, activists are not looking for “a candidate representing ‘Reaganite conservatism in the Bill Buckley tradition’ who wouldn’t have a shot against Trump, since—as Taylor notes—Fox News now defines what constitutes ‘conservative.’
Instead, they will first look at Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who was described as “a more experienced, competent, ethical populist than Trump,” with Taylor saying, “…a weakened Trump ends up fighting a weird two-front primary war with Hogan on his populist left and Ann Coulter for president on his populist right.”
“Indeed, Hogan, a cancer survivor who has been elected twice in the blue state of Maryland, but is largely unknown outside his state, would pose a very different challenge from the kind of adversaries (think Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz) that Trump dispatched in 2016,” Lewis writes. “
“Back to the plan,” Lewis continues. “It goes like this. Hogan starts softening up Trump. And then, step two is this: Something magical happens. Maybe it comes from Robert Mueller, maybe it’s an economic downturn, maybe it’s Trump using emergency powers, or maybe it’s some external event nobody sees coming. But something big happens.”
“Maybe even—and this is arguably the best scenario for the anti-Trump forces—a weakened Trump ends up fighting a weird two-front primary war with Hogan on his populist left and Ann Coulter for president on his populist right,” he added. “Now comes the coup de grace: In an effort to save the party from imploding, Nikki Haley is reluctantly drafted into the race. She rides in on a white horse and instantly becomes consensus choice of what is left of the Republican Party.”
Admitting that it is a fantasy plan, Lewis suggested sometimes you have to “shoot for the moon.”
“Just as Ronald Reagan staked out the future by running (and losing) in 1976, presenting an alternate vision to Trump for young Republicans is a worthwhile endeavor,” he concluded.
You can read the whole piece here — subscription required.
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