GOP Gov. Larry Hogan Launches Massive Fundraising Push to Help All the Republicans Trump has Pledged to Take Out

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) has taken his feud with former President Donald Trump to another level, hitting the road to campaign and fundraise for some of his fellow Republicans who have been targeted by Trump in their reelection efforts.

Hogan has been the rare Republican, currently in elected office, willing to publicly criticize the former president. The popular governor urged Trump to “stop golfing and concede” shortly after the Nov. 2020 election and continues to lambaste Trump’s efforts to make baseless claims of election fraud, urging his party to “move on from the cult of Donald Trump” and calling out other Republicans for their “circular firing squad” demanding fealty to Trump.

According to a report by Politico’s Alex Isenstadt, Hogan is literally traveling across the country to support the other rare Republicans willing to criticize the former president, seeking to help support Trump’s “enemies list” comprised of the GOP candidates who have dared defy him. Trump is working to replace those Republicans with candidates loyal to him in the 2022 midterm elections.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) is one such candidate getting help from Hogan. First appointed in 2007 to replace an outgoing congressman who resigned after a scandal, she was elected to the seat in 2008 and has won re-election every two years since. But voting to impeach Trump last January and supporting the creation of the Jan. 6 commission made her an apostate in her own party, and resulted in Trump endorsing her primary opponent.

Hogan threw Herrera Beutler a fundraiser in December, and his PAC has been running digital ads boosting her, a project that has gotten financial support from pro-Trump tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

Hogan has also hosted several fundraisers for Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), who committed the unforgivable sin in Trump’s eyes of refusing to agree that the election in his own state — which was overseen and administered almost exclusively by Republicans who publicly endorsed Trump and said they voted for him — was stolen.

The Maryland governor has also “loudly advocated for the Republican Governors Association to defend Kemp and other sitting incumbents under fire, a position the organization has embraced,” wrote Isenstadt.

Hogan is also looking to lend his support to additional candidates, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), whose impeachment vote so incensed Trump that he not only endorsed her primary opponent, but also made his endorsement of the state’s governor, Mike Dunleavy, contingent on him not supporting Murkowski (Dunleavy accepted Trump’s conditions).

Hogan “is positioning himself as a staunch critic of the former president and a dissenting voice in a Trump-dominated Republican Party,” Isenstadt added, noting his popularity and success winning election as a Republican in an otherwise blue state, and he’s said he’s open to challenging Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Hogan pronounced it “crazy” that Trump was “going after all these really good elected Republicans.”

“The biggest threat to Republican success next year,” he declared, “is Trump, and Trump cancel culture, what he’s trying to do to screw up these races. And asking people to swear blind allegiance to Trump is going to cause us to lose some races.”

“I think it’s having a terrible impact, and that’s why I’m trying to do my part to contain some of the damage,” he added.

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