Hogan says he won’t vote for Trump amid GOP Senate bid

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Thursday that he would not vote for former President Trump in the upcoming presidential election this November.

At an Axios event, Hogan said he would vote for neither Trump nor President Biden and would instead seek out a third-party candidate.

“Look, I’m like 70 percent of the rest of the people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president, and I’m hoping that there potentially is another alternative,” said Hogan, who recently launched his own bid for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

He added that “I don’t know yet” who that candidate will be.

Hogan, a frequent Trump critic, backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s bid for president, but she announced Wednesday that she was ending her campaign.

As former chair of No Labels, the centrist political group focused on launching a third-party run, Hogan was seen as a possibility to lead the group’s ticket. No Labels has been trying to secure ballot access in states ahead of the 2024 election but has not said which candidates would be leading the split-party ticket.

Hogan noted Thursday that No Labels had encouraged him to join the presidential ticket, but, he said, “I made that decision not to do it.”

“I just didn’t want to be a spoiler, and I didn’t know if you could really get to 270,” he said of his reasoning, referencing the delegate threshold required to secure a presidential victory in the Electoral College. “I do believe that there’s more of a demand for this than ever before, but I don’t know if it’s enough to win the election.”

Hogan said he hopes a third-party option will emerge so people can have “some ability to vote for someone that people will actually want to vote for, rather than just voting against.”

“I’ve said I wouldn’t vote for Trump or Biden. And I’m hoping that there’s another alternative, but I don’t know who that’s going to be at this point,” he reiterated.

Hogan last year said he would support the Republican nominee for president, but he said at the time he did not think Trump would be that candidate.

“Yeah, I just don’t think [Trump will] be the nominee, but I’ll support the nominee,” Hogan said at the time.

Hogan soon after walked back the comments in a social media post, writing, “To be clear, my position on Trump hasn’t changed. Trump won’t commit to supporting the Republican nominee, and I won’t commit to supporting him.”

At the event Thursday, Hogan also sharply criticized Trump for saying immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and touted his own state’s diversity.

“It’s a terrible, outrageous statement,” Hogan said when asked about the comment.

“Maryland is the most diverse state in America,” he said. “I was proud to have spent a lot of time in all of the communities and listening to everyone and trying to be a governor that represented everybody. I think that’s why I was rewarded by the voters and why they wanted to keep me there.”

“Trump’s rhetoric is terrible for the people in our state, and that’s why he lost by more than 30 points twice and why I won by, you know, a lot more,” he added.

Updated at 11:22 a.m. ET