Baltimore crisis thrusts Maryland’s governor into national spotlight

By Ovetta Wiggins April 29 at 8:51 PM Follow @OvettaWashPost

BALTIMORE — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) stood at the foul line of an outdoor basketball court in Sandtown, the blighted neighborhood that was home to Freddie Gray. Hogan shot, missed and shot again. The ball hit the rim.
“Try again, governor,” shouted Tessa Hill-Aston, president of the Baltimore City branch of the NAACP, who was accompanying Hogan on a one-block tour.
Another miss. “This is for the news: Governor sucks,” a chuckling Hogan said.
It was one of the few light moments in the last 48 hours for Hogan, who signed an executive order Monday declaring a state of emergency and deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to quell violence that erupted just hours after Gray’s funeral.
Gray’s death, a week after he was injured in police custody, placed Baltimore at the forefront of a national discussion about police conduct and the African American community. The response to the unrest — which destroyed businesses, homes and vehicles and injured several police officers — has catapulted Hogan, a political novice, into a national media spotlight.

The former real estate executive now faces the unforeseen challenge of helping Baltimore rebound, restoring calm and “healing the community.” How Hogan goes about assisting Baltimore and how successful he is could not only shape the rest of his first term but also his political future.
“This is a very important moment for the governor,” said James Shalleck, a Montgomery County Republican who lost to Democrat Isiah Leggett in the 2014 county executive’s race. “He’s on the national stage. He’s showing the people of Baltimore that, even though they weren’t supportive of him in the election, that he’s standing side by side with the mayor.”
Hogan has toggled between empathy and bravado in the days since Gray’s death, issuing heartfelt statements of sympathy and grief but also vowing grimly that state troopers, guardsmen and police will not tolerate additional violence.
He joined Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) in calling for calm on Saturday, when a large demonstration was scheduled and officials worried about the fallout. The protest ended in sporadic violence but not on the scale of Monday’s attacks.
Hogan sent 500 state troopers to help out before Saturday’s protest and drafted an executive order that would declare a state of emergency as soon as the mayor requested it. He has made clear that he thinks the mayor should have acted hours earlier but also appeared with her on the streets several times to praise her efforts in the city.
“When this is over, we can go back and Monday-morning quarterback what happened,” Hogan said Wednesday morning. “Once we got engaged Monday night, once we got here, everyone stopped. There was no violence.”
Hogan moved himself and much of his staff from Annapolis to state offices in Baltimore starting Tuesday morning, and he shuttled between those offices, the state emergency agency headquarters in Reisterstown and various public appearances in city neighborhoods. He returned to the governor’s mansion around 2 a.m. Wednesday and was back in Baltimore a few hours later.

Disagreements over the unrest in Baltimore may have far-reaching effects on the Democratic mayor, Republican governor, and even a potential presidential candidate. The Post's Paul Schwartzman explains. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

Moving his base of operation to Baltimore “showed that the governor was going to bring this under his direct control — that he wasn’t going to delegate, that he was going to be hands on,” said Russ Schreifer, a Republican political consultant who worked for Hogan’s campaign last year.
Democrats, including Sen. Joanne Benson (Prince George’s), bristled at Hogan’s suggestion that Rawlings-Blake should have acted earlier, saying his comments that he was waiting to hear from her rang false.
“When you’re at the top, you don’t wait for someone to ask for help,” Benson said. “When you’re the chief officer for the state of Maryland and something comes down the pike, you have a responsibility to step up to the plate right away.”
Hogan, who lives in Anne Arundel County, grew up in Prince George’s County. He frequently cited his roots there in courting African American voters on the campaign trail. Much more so than most Republican candidates, he told black Marylanders that he would do more to improve their lives than the Democrats who controlled all branches of state government under then-Gov. Martin O’Malley.
Although his underdog victory — one of the biggest GOP upsets of the midterm elections — came mostly from voters in majority-white counties, Hogan has taken action on some issues that are important to African Americans since entering office.
He hired an African American Democrat from Baltimore, Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., to serve as a top aide and his liaison to Rawlings-Blake. He introduced a charter school bill that he said would increase educational opportunities for residents who live far from high-performing public schools.
Following a meeting with the General Assembly’s legislative black caucus, Hogan announced his support for the Maryland Second Chance Act, a bill that will allow Marylanders to apply to have some nonviolent criminal offenses hidden from their public records, making it easier for them to get jobs.
Over Labor Day weekend, as he was gaining ground on Democratic nominee Anthony G. Brown, Hogan hosted a picnic in Baltimore. After eating hot dogs and playing cornhole, he walked past check-cashing places and boarded-up rowhouses and stopped to talk with workers at small businesses and residents sitting on front porches.
“The response we got was: ‘No one ever comes to visit us. We’ve never seen any politician here,’ ” Hogan said at the time. “What I heard over and over from them was jobs and taxes. . . . Our same message that resonates in the suburbs and in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore was reaching these folks in the toughest part of inner-city Baltimore.”
In the final days of the campaign, Hogan’s team released a television ad featuring K. Kandie Leach, an African American who said she had never voted for a Republican.
“Families are struggling right now, and I don’t feel that Brown can make the change,” Leach said in the commercial. “What makes things crazy is when you keep voting in the same party and there is no change. Actually, they call it insanity.”
On Wednesday, Hogan’s deputy made a similar argument at the NAACP offices in Sandtown, which he visited several hours after Hogan.
To combat poverty and unemployment, “we’ve got to fight the status quo. Larry and I fought the status quo to get here, so we’re willing to do it,” said Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, an African American who says he switched to the Republican Party years ago after growing disenchanted with the Democratic Party.
He recalled telling a woman who complained about vacant houses during the campaign that “ ‘nothing’s going to change if you keep voting for the same folks.’ Because they don’t have to change if you vote for them. You’re basically telling them everything is fine.”
Touring the neighborhood with Hill-Aston, who opened a satellite NAACP office there this week, Hogan talked about both short- and long-term needs of the community.
Hill-Aston said she envisions educational workshops for youngsters at the NAACP center that would focus on dealing with the police. Hogan told Hill-Aston to let him know how the state could assist her organization in its work.
But Candace Tisdale, 25, who lives in Sandtown just steps away from the NAACP office, said she doesn’t think the governor making a visit to her community is going to lead to police officers treating African Americans with respect.
“When the camera is turned off, then what?” Tisdale said. “No offense to him or her or whoever it is. Things won’t change. I swear I hope I’m wrong.”

Rachel Weiner in Baltimore and Bill Turque in Washington contributed to this report.