Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said the GOP needs a different kind of leader after being wiped out in the midterm elections, and the outspoken anti-Trump Republican wants to help find that person.
Whoever emerges, Mr. Hogan said, the Republican Party needs a course correction.
“There’s no way you could say, ‘Hey, we’ve been doing great,’” he told The Washington Examiner.
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“I used to be like the lone voice in the wilderness. But in the past two days, there have been 100 Republicans going, ‘Yeah, I’m not part of that mess. Let me talk about how we’re going to be different,’” he said.
The former governor, a multimillionaire from his commercial real estate business, said he does not plan to seek office again.
Mr. Hogan served two terms as governor of deep-blue Maryland but clashed with President Trump and became alienated from his party. He lost a 2024 bid for U.S. Senate to Democrat Angela Alsobrooks by double digits.
“We have to find, I think, a different kind of a leader. And I don’t know who that is,” he said. “But I want to be part of the discussion to try to help find that person that I think is going to take us in a different direction from the failed group that’s now in charge.”
Mr. Hogan has also said Mr. Trump’s inner circle will struggle in the 2028 presidential race.
People associated with the president will have a hard time making the case that more of the same wins back the White House, he said, calling that the “definition of insanity,” he said on CNN.
He used that same phrase in 2022 to describe Mr. Trump’s grip on the GOP.
He said the GOP’s path back requires listening to voters, not going further down the same road. He said voters are “completely fed up” with leaders who were not focused on gas and grocery prices or on ending the war in Iran.
The White House kept shrinking its base and had no message for independents, he said.
A record 45% of U.S. adults identified as independents in 2025, though only about 10% of U.S. adults are independents who lean toward neither party, according to Gallup.
“If [voters] send a loud and clear message that maybe you’ve gone too far, the answer is not to double down,” Mr. Hogan said.
He criticized the president’s decision to name hard-line adviser Stephen Miller as chief of staff, calling it a step in the wrong direction. Mr. Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, replaces Susie Wiles today.
Mr. Hogan also had a warning for Democrats.
At a Thursday event with former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Mr. Hogan said voters’ anger was as much about Washington dysfunction as about the president, and that Democrats risk overreading their mandate, according to CBS Baltimore.
On CNN, he said voters will oust whoever is in power if life does not get more affordable.
He has made similar points before. After the 2022 midterms, he blamed Mr. Trump, then a former president, for GOP losses, but Mr. Trump won the 2024 nomination and the presidency.
Mr. Hogan still admires some of his party’s leaders. He praised Senate Majority Leader John Thune, though he said he hoped the South Dakota Republican would now speak out more against Mr. Trump’s policies that he disagrees with.
“It’s like so many other members of the Senate and the House and governors, who just wouldn’t say it. And now, I think they all have the ability to speak out,” he told the newspaper.
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