The former Maryland governor Larry Hogan said he had not ruled out a presidential run, as he contemplated the “train wreck” his Republican party had become amid infighting in Congress and the ascendancy in primary polling of the 91-times criminally charged Donald Trump.
Hogan also called the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, the instigator of last week’s historic removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the US House, “a cancer on the party and on the Congress”.
Hogan, 67, stepped down as governor of Maryland this year after two terms in the role. He has previously backed away from a presidential run but on Tuesday, speaking to Bloomberg News in Washington, he said he still wanted to “serve”.
“I’m still trying to figure that out, but I’m not walking away” from presidential politics, Hogan said.
“I don’t want to run a race and nibble around the edges. If I thought there was a path to success to win the race, then I just said I wouldn’t shut the door to that opportunity.”
Hogan is a national co-chairperson of No Labels, a group contemplating a third-party White House bid. Critics say the group, with donors including rightwing figures, will only succeed in damaging Joe Biden in the president’s expected contest against Trump – who on 6 January 2021 incited his own supporters to attack Congress in an attempt to reverse his own election defeat.
Confirmed third-party candidates – Robert F Kennedy Jr, an independent, and Cornel West, of the Green party – are also thought likely to make an impact on a race between two unpopular mainstream picks.
Majorities of Americans think Biden is too old at 80 to serve an effective second term. Trump is 77 but fewer voters say the former president is too old. His popularity with the general public is low, however, as he fights criminal charges for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, as well as civil suits over his business affairs and a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.
Among Republican voters, Trump dominates, with huge leads in national and key state polls and with a grip on Republicans in Washington through the actions of allies such as Gaetz, who initiated the removal of McCarthy that left the House without a leader.
“It’s a train wreck,”’ Hogan told Bloomberg. “I mean, it’s embarrassing, and I think it’s terrible for the Republican party. I think it’s terrible for Congress and for the country.”
Hogan said it was too late for serving governors such as Brian Kemp of Georgia and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, touted by some as presidential candidates with appeal to the middle ground, to enter the primary and beat Trump.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “I mean, they’ve missed the deadlines already.”
Among Trump’s confirmed challengers, Hogan said he thought Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, was “on the ascent” – and a stronger candidate than Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor long second to Trump in polling.
“DeSantis has continued to fail throughout the campaign,” Hogan said.
