"I’d say it’s been something of a feeding frenzy,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said of people talking to him about a potential primary challenge to President Donald Trump. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo 2020 Elections Larry Hogan rips RNC for shielding Trump from primary challenge The Maryland governor, weighing a White House bid, said he expects to visit New Hampshire in the next few months.

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday he expects to make a springtime trip to New Hampshire as he weighs a 2020 challenge to Donald Trump — and accused the Republican National Committee of going to extraordinary lengths to shield the president from a potentially draining primary.

“Typically they try to be fair arbiters of a process and I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve been involved in the Republican Party for most of my life. It’s unprecedented. And in my opinion it’s not the way we should be going about our politics,” Hogan, a popular two-term Maryland governor, said in an interview with POLITICO. “It’s very undemocratic and to say, ‘We’re in some cases not going to allow a debate, we may not have a primary…’”


“And the question is, what are they afraid of?” he added. “Because on the one hand you look at polls, 70 percent of Republicans support the president in a primary. Why are they so concerned? Why the puffing out the chest — ‘We’ve put together the greatest team ever assembled, we’re going to raise all this money early, we’re going to hire all these people early, we’re going to take over the RNC…’”

During its annual winter meeting earlier this year, the RNC passed a resolution giving the president its “undivided support” ahead of the 2020 election. Trump has also rolled out a 2020 campaign organization that incorporates the RNC and his campaign into a single entity, with the reelection campaign and committee merging their field and fundraising programs into a joint entity known as Trump Victory. Traditionally, a presidential reelection committee has worked side-by-side with the national party committee but not overtaken it.

The arrangement, Hogan suggested, stemmed from worry on the part of senior Republicans that the president could be vulnerable to a primary challenge.

“I’m not a pundit and I can’t put myself inside the heads of the people making the decisions, but perhaps the way things look today are not the way they think things look a few months from now or next week or six months from now,” he added. “Maybe they’re concerned that they will drop in the polls and that they could be at some point down the road be subject to a threat in a primary.”

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The RNC pushed back on Hogan in a statement released Friday morning.

“President Trump doesn’t need any assistance to protect him from primary challengers. He has an unprecedented level of support among Republican voters. The unanimous resolution in support of the president’s reelection at our winter meeting showed just that," said Cassie Smedile, a committee spokeswoman. "Any effort to challenge President Trump in a primary is bound to go absolutely nowhere, as Governor Hogan acknowledges.”

Party officials have noted that it isn’t out of the ordinary for the RNC to support an incumbent president, and point out that the committee passed a similar resolution backing then-President George W. Bush during his first term.

The 62-year-old Hogan, who won reelection in liberal Maryland last year, has openly flirted with a primary challenge in recent weeks. The governor used his January inauguration speech to implicitly go after the president and to raise the specter of impeachment. He later met with conservative columnist and prominent Trump critic Bill Kristol, who has been seeking out a 2020 Republican primary challenger.

Hogan’s team has been in talks to appear at Politics & Eggs at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, which has long drawn presidential hopefuls. He said he expected to make a trip to the first-in-the-nation primary state sometime this spring. Aside from participating in Politics & Eggs, he also raised the prospect of meeting with the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu. The two recently sat together at the Gridiron dinner.

The Maryland governor is slated to appear in Iowa early next month at an event sponsored by the National Governors Association, of which he serves as vice chairman. He said he would also set aside time to meet some people in the state before returning home.

Hogan, who in recent weeks has begun expressing interest in a potential primary bid, said he's heard from several Republican donors and elected officials. He's told them that he hasn't decided whether he'll run.

“I’d say it’s been something of a feeding frenzy,” Hogan said.

Hogan made the remarks ahead of an NGA meeting in Washington this weekend, an appearance that could bring him face-to-face with Trump. Hogan and governors from across the country are slated to visit the White House on Sunday for dinner. Governors will return on Monday for a meeting with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and other senior administration officials.

The president is also expected to appear at a Republican Governors Association dinner on Friday evening, an event Hogan is also expected to attend.

Hogan, who frequently mentions that his late father was the first Republican member of Congress to call for Richard Nixon's impeachment, said he was in no rush to make a decision. A successful campaign, he argued, could start later on.

“At this point in time, I don’t see any path to winning a Republican primary against this president, or anybody doing it. But things have a way of changing,” he said. “I don’t know what the lay of the land is going to look like this summer, or in the fall.”

