It isn’t clear who he’ll be up against come November 2026, but Gov. Wes Moore (D), who formally announced his reelection bid on Tuesday, already has a message for the eventual challenger.
“Whoever it is, they should come ready, because we have a very real record to run on — and a record that we’re very proud of,” said Moore, adding that he intends to make any GOP challenger’s ties to President Donald Trump (R) a campaign issue in deep-blue Maryland.
“Whether it’s Republican Ed Hale or Republican Steve Hershey or Republican Larry Hogan or Republican Andy Harris or Republican John Myrick — there’s a lot of people who are making a similar type of noise,” Moore said.
Only one of the people he named, Myrick, has officially entered the race. Hershey, the Senate minority leader who represents the Upper Shore, announced last week that he had formed a gubernatorial exploratory committee — partly in response to Hale, a businessman and lifelong Democrat who recently switched parties after acknowledging he was unlikely to beat Moore in a Democratic primary.
Hogan, the state’s first two-term Republican governor in decades, who served from 2014 to 2022, has been coy about his 2026 plans. Harris, the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, has not indicated that he plans to run for governor.
During Tuesday’s news conference outside the State House, Moore touted the economic side of his record, pointing to job growth since he took office, and arguing that his administration has slowed “out-of-control spending” in Maryland. It comes after a uniquely tough budget year, during which the General Assembly had to cut spending and raise fees to overcome a $3.3 billion deficit projected for fiscal 2026.
But Moore also pointed to historic reductions in violent crime, even as he continues to feud with Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to deploy National Guard troops to Baltimore to crack down on criminal activity. With the city experiencing a dramatic decline in homicides, Moore and others say federal troops are not needed, although the governor did announce a heightened deployment of state police in the city Friday.
Whichever Republican Moore faces in the 2026 general election in 2026, it’s clear that Trump will loom large. Moore said Tuesday that Republican candidates should also come prepared to “explain why they have been so dead silent, when we’re watching the ravages of Donald Trump coming to the state.”
On Tuesday, Moore was quick to attack the president on everything from tax policy to federal job cuts — including in a video announcement that officially kicked off his candidacy. There, he argued that Trump is “bending over backwards for billionaires and big corporations.”
The video garnered a social media response from at least one Moore opponent in Myrick, who finished a distant fifth to Hogan in a seven-candidate Republican primary field for U.S. Senate in 2024.
“What a crock,” Myrick wrote of Moore’s announcement. “Maryland deserves better.”
Myrick, a Prince George’s County resident who chose former state Del. Brenda Thiam as his running mate, has targeted Moore on economic and tax issues in particular, and argued that steep cuts to Maryland’s federal workforce are a result of Moore’s refusal to “work with” the Trump administration.
In addition to Myrick, the only other Republican to officially file for governor is Carl A. Brunner Jr., a Carroll County firearms instructor. Moore does have one Democratic challenger, Ralph Jaffe, who has run unsuccessfully for governor or U.S. senators in eight previous elections going back to 1992.
Moore’s campaign kickoff also drew a response Tuesday from the conservative Maryland Freedom Caucus, which pointed to the fact that Moore signed a budget with $1.6 billion in taxes and fees. It also said some of the spending cuts claimed by Moore were merely “gimmicks,” that included declining to fill vacant government jobs, transferring funds from special accounts and shifting some costs to local governments.
“Governor Moore has presided over the largest tax hike in Maryland history and a relentless barrage of new fees on working families,” read the caucus statement. “No speech can spin those facts away.”
On Tuesday, Moore held up the taxes, fees and spending cuts as an example of “fiscal discipline,” though it came out of necessity in his third year in office. The General Assembly convened in January — less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration — with the knowledge that it would need to resolve the $3.3 billion gap between spending and revenue before it could adjourn 90 days later.
“We were able to make those smart, strategic cuts while also giving the middle class a tax cut — and yes, asking those who have done very well to invest a little bit more so we could actually have the best public schools and have safe streets,” Moore said of tax increases on higher-income earners.
Moore’s reelection announcement comes amid persistent rumors that he plans to run for president in 2028 — a rumor that Moore has repeatedly dismissed, including on a Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press.”
“I have never once said that I am interested,” Moore said Tuesday of the presidency. “So when people say ‘Are you ruling it out?’ my point is I’ve never ruled it in. I’ve been focused on this job. And I appreciate the fact that people in Maryland and that people around the country are paying attention to the progress we’ve made.”
