Crab Cakes, Cooked

Departing two-term Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, still widely popular with voters in both parties on his way out and having endorsed state commerce secretary Kelly Schulz as his successor, could only watch in disbelief as the state's Republicans went RINO hunting last night in the state's primary and chose MAGA minion election-denier and January 6th insurrectionist Dan Cox instead.

Another Republican who has sowed false doubt about the 2020 election is a step closer to a governor's mansion and the power to certify results of the 2024 presidential race.

Dan Cox, a state delegate in Maryland, won his state’s GOP primary Tuesday, NBC News projects, beating Kelly Schulz, a former state secretary of commerce backed by the state party's establishment.

Cox — who was at the rally that preceded the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and scored former President Donald Trump's endorsement — likely owes his win at least in part to national Democrats who aired TV ads reinforcing his right-wing views. While the strategy could pay longer-term dividends in a state where voters lean more toward the center and left, efforts to elevate a presumably weaker opponent risk backfiring in the general election.

The Democratic Governors Association spent more than $1 million on largely Cox-centric messaging. Cox himself spent a fraction of that: $21,000 through Monday, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact.

Cox will face the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary, a contest that centered on three leading candidates: former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, state Comptroller Peter Franchot, and author Wes Moore. That contest was too early to call, according to NBC News.

Maryland isn’t ordinarily a battleground in election years, but outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan’s two terms — a rarity for Republicans in the state — set the stage for a competitive year. The outgoing governor’s staunch opposition to Trump and endorsement of Schulz, who served in his Cabinet, emboldened the former president to support Cox. In addition to attending and busing Trump supporters to the rally on Jan. 6, Cox also tweeted at the time that then-Vice President Mike Pence was a traitor for certifying Joe Biden’s victory.

"Cox worked with Trump trying to prove the last election was a fraud," a narrator says in a DGA ad that also played up Trump's endorsement and Cox's hardline positions on guns and abortion.

The Democratic strategy of meddling has become a staple of other races this year, with the party engineering outcomes it preferred in governor's races in Illinois and Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania effort was particularly notable for efforts by Josh Shapiro, the state's attorney general and unopposed Democratic candidate for governor, to emphasize the conservative credentials of state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who eventually won a crowded GOP primary. Mastriano, like Cox, has been vocal about the 2020 election and was in Washington, D.C., on the day of the Jan. 6 riot. He also pushed for an alternate slate of Trump electors, operating under the idea that Biden's Electoral College win could be reversed in Trump's favor.

 

Dems have bet heavily, in both campaign cash and in election clout, that Trumpian MAGA dipsticks like Cox, PA's Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz, and Ohio's JD Vance can't win general elections in November, even in this political atmosphere.

Whether it pays off or not, the risk is huge. If the GOP wins here, we're going to have disastrous consequences, just like six years ago.

Better vote.