Larry Hogan’s Won Tough Races Before. Never Like This.

Larry Hogan just sailed through a GOP primary. His next act: shedding that partisan identity.

As he pivots to a general election in deep-blue Maryland, the former governor will have to convince voters that he’s the local moderate they trusted enough to elect twice as governor — not the Republican who would likely deliver the Senate to the GOP.

And Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee, will be working to remind voters of exactly those national stakes.

Hogan’s math is daunting: He needs to peel away enough Democratic votes in a state that Trump lost by 33 points without alienating the Republicans that will form the core of his coalition. That will require bridging party divides in an age of deep polarization and defying the rapid nationalization of politics. The task is made even more challenging by the man he will share a ballot with: former President Donald Trump.

Hogan is a well-established Trump critic and Trump is known for lashing out at his perceived enemies. But the former president has been staying out of the race.

“I’ve talked to the president about it. He’s not going to attack Larry Hogan," said Rep. Andy Harris, the lone Republican in the delegation and the Trump campaign’s Maryland co-chair.

But Hogan won’t want to be seen cozying up to Trump, either. Democrats will be trying to tie the two men together and emphasizing the national importance of the race.

“It’s going to be hard for him to escape the Trump factor, because he’s running on the Republican ticket,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who supported Alsobrooks in the primary. “If he were elected, he would turn the keys over of the Senate to the MAGA Republicans.”

Hogan knows it, and is running on a message of independence. He immediately began steeling himself for the fusillade of Democratic attacks coming his way. His primary victory speech included a solemn vow to “the women of Maryland” that he would protect their abortion rights, seeking to defuse a powerful issue where Democrats have the advantage. He invoked his father, the first GOP congressman on the Judiciary Committee to support the impeachment of Richard Nixon, emphasizing his commitment to principles over party. And — without naming Trump once — he promised to "stand up to the current president, the former president, to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party."

“You can see the distance between himself and Joe Biden, the distance between himself and Donald Trump,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who leads the Senate GOP’s campaign arm and helped recruit Hogan. “Larry sees the brokenness of Washington. And is somebody who will bring the body together as more of an independent voice. And that is really needed.”

On Wednesday, Hogan rolled out a “Democrats for Hogan” coalition led by a former Democratic state senator. The announcement described Hogan as “bipartisan and independent” — and doesn’t mention he’s a Republican at all.

Hogan will need to keep the Maryland Senate race from boiling down to a referendum on Senate control, so he’s focusing on his track record as a popular anti-Trump governor with a history of working across the aisle. He has some advantages in that effort, with eight years of executive experience that is well-known to the state’s voters, high name ID, and the backing of national Republicans who can help support him financially. Mitch McConnell is retiring as leader, too, taking away an easy attack line.

Yet Hogan will still face major headwinds. His victory would almost certainly coincide with a Republican takeover of the Senate, and running alongside Trump is undoubtedly a lot more challenging than Hogan’s midterm wins in the state.

At his celebration Tuesday night in Annapolis, Hogan wasn’t eager to discuss the man with whom he would have to share a ballot.

“I'm, you know, running a different race and we're not running against one another," Hogan said when asked by POLITICO about how he’s navigating his relationship with Trump.

Were he to win the election, Hogan is positioning himself to join the small number of Republican senators willing to challenge Trump and party orthodoxy — potentially even filling the void left by the retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) gushed over Hogan and predicted that he would be in the Senate’s dwindling “governing group.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the most prominent Republican senators willing to break with her party, said the “parallels are very much in place” between Hogan’s race and the 2020 reelection bid she survived while sharing a ballot with Trump. (Maryland, though, is several degrees more Democratic than Maine, and would require even stronger ticket-splitting for Hogan to win.)

“I’m very high on him,” Collins said. “It will be a close, tough race. But in the end I think he prevails. I really do.”

Democrats will have to unite their party after a deeply divisive primary and do everything they can to nationalize the race. Their efforts will test whether any politics can remain local in the age of unprecedented partisanship.

“People in Maryland are not interested in having a Republican majority in the United States Senate. And that's what the race is about: holding the Democratic majority in the Senate,” said Sen. Gary Peters, chair of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm. “It's an impossible task for him.”

National Democrats mobilized on Wednesday in an attempt to saddle Hogan with the baggage that being a Republican in Maryland brings. The Senate Democratic campaign arm released a digital ad warning that Hogan could tip the balance of power in the Senate. Other Democrats circulated a tweet from Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake congratulating Hogan on his primary win, calling it an endorsement and tying him to her.

“This is not a branding problem, it's an agenda problem,” said Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILY’s List. “Larry Hogan is gonna have to answer: Is he going to vote for the Republican leadership? Is he going to vote to confirm Republican judges who were the ones that are tearing down reproductive freedom?”

On Tuesday night, Alsobrooks reminded supporters that one of Hogan’s final acts as governor was to veto a bill that would expand abortion access.

She also hurled his past comments back at him: “It isn't all that surprising that Larry Hogan called abortion rights an emotional issue for women.” By the end of the race, she promised, “Larry Hogan will understand that we do not need any help at all managing our emotions.”

And Democrats reveled in the fact that Hogan’s victory over perennial candidate and infamous sports heckler Robin Ficker wasn’t more decisive. Ficker had nominally run as the Trumpier candidate and picked up 30 percent of the GOP primary vote. That “speaks volumes of his weakness, given the fact he didn't really have a serious opponent in that primary,” Peters said.

But Hogan is used to pulling in large numbers of Democrats and independents. During the primary, he went on air in a joint ad buy with the National Republican Senatorial Committee taking aim at both “open border Democrats” and “status quo Republicans.”

And even those who oppose him refuse to malign his character.

“Hogan’s a good man,” said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.). “I like some of his principles. But I do think Democrats need to take charge and get this country working."

Peder Schaefer contributed to this report.