2024-07-22 11:40:02
With President Joe Biden announcing Sunday that he won’t run for re-election after all, all eyes are turning to the next generation of Democrats, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
For more than a year, Moore has been one of Biden’s most stalwart surrogates, serving on a national advisory board for the campaign. He’s raised money for the Biden-Harris campaign, made on-the-ground campaign stops in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina and done the rounds of TV political talk shows.
Moore has diligently stayed on his pro-Biden message, even as other Democrats ramped up pressure on Biden to consider dropping out — and as the governor’s name was floated among those who might have a shot on a Biden-less ticket.
With Biden withdrawing from the race in a letter posted online Sunday, Moore issued a statement praising the president.
“President Biden has dedicated his life and career to serving the American people,” Moore wrote in the statement. “His legacy of hard work, dedication, optimism, and strength have shaped the trajectory of our nation — and made us better as a people and as a country.”
The statement did not say anything about who Moore might support going forward, but a source familiar with the governor’s thinking said he’d endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, potentially as soon as Monday.
Biden already offered a full endorsement of Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee, and other high-profile Democrats — including several in Maryland — began circling the wagons for Harris.
Even if Harris does sail to the nomination, that leaves open a spot for a vice presidential candidate. Could Moore be in the mix?
Moore’s name has been circulated for weeks as a potential presidential or vice presidential nominee, along with a host of others: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, among others.
As pundits and prognosticators have floated names in recent weeks, Moore typically has come pretty far down the list. Polls have rarely included Moore’s name, though Politico reported on one poll that focused on Moore among four who tested well in battleground states, along with Shapiro, Whitmer and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Moore’s team gave no indication on Sunday whether he hoped to be in the conversation for a slot on the ticket as vice president.
The matter of picking new Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees will be settled in the coming weeks, no later than the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that opens on Aug. 19. As of Sunday, it remained unclear whether Democrats might find a way to settle on a nominee before the convention, or whether it would be open to debates and votes in Chicago.
Even if Moore doesn’t play a role on the 2024 ticket, he’s also been floated as a possible contender in 2028 or 2032.
If Republican Donald Trump wins back the presidency in 2024, that would leave a wide open path for multiple Democrats like Moore to vie for their party’s nomination in 2028. If Harris becomes the nominee in 2024 and wins, she’d be the likely nominee in 2028, pushing other Democratic hopefuls off to 2032. Though 2032 is eight years off, Moore could be coming off a recent second term and would still be young — at least in presidential terms — turning 54 that year.
If Harris becomes the nominee, would Moore play the same role for her that he has been for Biden? Would shoving aside his own ambitions now help him later on? Those questions will start to be answered in the coming days.
Moore’s name is being bandied about in national political circles even as he remains a relative newcomer to politics. And the talk started even before he became governor.
Back in 2022, before he became governor, Moore brushed off suggestions that he could have a meteoric rise like former President Barack Obama.
“I’m very excited about being Maryland’s next governor,” Moore told The Baltimore Banner in 2022. “I’m very excited about what I think this next decade is going to hold for the state of Maryland. I think the the whole country is going to watch Maryland move fast. And that’s very, very exciting to me.”
Governor of Maryland is Moore’s first position in politics, after he handily defeated Republican Dan Cox, a Donald Trump-supporting election denier, in 2022.
On his first full day in office, Moore released state funds for training medical providers in abortion care that had been frozen by his Republican predecessor, Larry Hogan, winning praise from his Democratic colleagues.
More recently, he gained national attention for pardoning more than 175,000 convictions of cannabis possession and paraphernalia possession.
Moore had success with a modest legislative agenda during his first two General Assembly sessions, winning approval for a paid service program for young adults, some reforms to housing laws and an acceleration of a planned increase to the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Moore pledged to refill the ranks of state government workers following the tenure of Hogan, who left many positions unfilled. But Moore acknowledged his initial promise to fill half of the estimated 10,000 vacancies in his first 12 months was too ambitious.
Following the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge in March, Moore has been on a campaign to get full federal funding for a replacement — a promise Biden made that Congress has yet to fulfill.
In the months ahead, Moore and lawmakers will face tough decisions about the state’s budget, with forecasts showing the state’s revenue isn’t keeping up with its planned expenses. The governor has said he has a “high bar” for new taxes, but agreed to some modest fee and tax increases that lawmakers put forward this year.
Just this past week, Moore led the way in slicing nearly $150 million out of the $63 billion state budget, in order to move the money to cover rising enrollments in the Medicaid health insurance program and a child care assistance program.
Immediately before launching his campaign for governor, Moore served as executive director of the Robin Hood Foundation, a New York-based anti-poverty nonprofit organization. He also founded BridgEdU, a Baltimore-based company that guided first-generation college students, that closed after five years. His experience also includes several years in investment banking and a year in the U.S. Department of State as a White House fellow. He’s a Rhodes Scholar and served as a U.S. Army captain in Afghanistan.
Baltimore Banner reporter Lee O. Sanderlin contributed to this report.
