If Wes Moore wants to run the country from the White House in four years, he will first have to sell Marylanders on tax increases and the Trump-style state employee buyouts he is leaning on to plug a hole in the state budget.
Mr. Moore, the first black governor of Maryland, insists he’s not running for president right now. Still, the 46-year-old undoubtedly has Washington firmly in his sights even as he prepares for a reelection bid next year.
“If he gets reelected, then he will say, ‘Well, times have changed, and people have spoken to me and called on me to run for president’ — blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and all of a sudden you become a candidate” said John Dedie, political science professor at Community College of Baltimore County.
Mr. Dedie said voters couldn’t care less about him playing coy about his presidential ambitions than they care deeply about his ability to fix the state’s budget woes.
“If he can’t solve this, he is not going to get reelected,” said Mr. Dedie.
He also has to worry about possibly taking on the popular Republican ex-Gov. Larry Hogan.
Mr. Moore has been billed as a rising star in the Democratic Party since he ran for governor as a political outsider with a resume that included being a Rhodes scholar, Afghanistan War veteran, Wall Street banker, and best-selling author.
Fresh-faced and charismatic, Mr. Moore has caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee and George Clooney, and is often compared to former President Obama.
“He is dynamic and young,” said Todd Eberly, political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “I think everybody knows that we’re dealing with the severe gerontocracy problem, really, in both parties, whether it’s the 80-plus-year-old president who just left or the 78-year-old president who’s currently there.”
“There is just this sense that we have reached so far beyond the point where the baby boom generation needs to move off the stage,” Mr. Eberly said. “I think people are looking for generational change in the Democratic Party.”
Mr. Moore was in the national spotlight last year after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed when it was hit by a container ship.
He also served as a loyal campaign surrogate for President Biden in 2024, even sticking with the aging president after the disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, which proved to be the death knell for Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign.
More recently, the buzz around his political future intensified after he told Democrats at a dinner in South Carolina, traditionally home to the first-in-the-South presidential primary election, “We must be the party of action.”
“Urgency is the instrument of change. And do you know who understands that really well? Donald Trump,” Mr. Moore said. “I want to be clear: We can — and we must — condemn Donald Trump’s reckless actions. But we would also be foolish not to learn from his impatience.”
Mr. Moore also blasted out a fundraising email this week celebrating the birthday of Rep. Jim Clyburn, a political kingmaker in South Carolina.
Back home in Maryland, Mr. Moore has tried to strike a balance between how much he embraces the Trump resistance and how much he hones an independent image.
Mr. Moore has shown flashes of both.
He says the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to “sever” the next-door-neighbor relationship between Maryland and the federal government.
He has criticized Mr. Trump’s “continued attacks on the federal workforce” that have left many Maryland voters — 260,000 of whom are federal workers — out of a job.
He has condemned the Medicaid cuts in Mr. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador because of the lack of due process.
While Mr. Trump extended tax cuts for the wealthy, Mr. Moore raised income taxes on individuals earning over $500,000 and also implemented a new capital gains tax surcharge for those earning over $350,000.
At the same time, he has rebuffed the party’s left wing by vetoing a reparations bill that would have created a panel to study the historic effects racism had on Black residents and offer recommendations regarding the “appropriate benefits to be made to individuals whose ancestors were enslaved in the State or were impacted by certain inequitable government policies.”
Mr. Moore has promoted a tough-on-crime agenda and taken a page out of the Trump cost-cutting playbook by announcing that the state is implementing a hiring freeze and offering state employees a $20,000 buyout.
Mr. Moore announced the “voluntary separation program” after signing a state budget in May that his administration said would transform the $3 trillion deficit into a surplus while maintaining a healthy rainy day fund, investing in programs, and making the tax code more progressive.
The budget tackles the deficit through a combination of $1.6 billion in increased taxes and fees and, according to the administration, $2 billion in spending cuts.
Mr. Moore has sold the package as a tax cut for most Marylanders.
“In the tax reform that we just passed, 94% of Marylanders either got a tax cut or saw no changes in their taxes at all,” he said. “And, yes, I did ask those Marylanders who are doing very, very well to pay a little bit more.”
Republicans counter that Mr. Moore is glossing over the fact that most Marylanders will pay more money to the state through other fees and tax increases, including those on car registration and new tires.
“I don’t think there is a single person in the state of Maryland who is going to save money from any kind of tax break when you apply all the provisions of the Democrats’ tax package to your life,” House Minority Leader Jason Cord Buckel said on WBAL radio.
Mr. Moore has heralded the state’s low unemployment rate, job growth and declining homicide rate as proof that the state is moving in the right direction.
But he has struggled to explain how he went from inheriting a $5 billion budget surplus from Mr. Hogan and touting the state’s “fortunate financial position” to suggesting the surplus was a mirage.
“That’s been debunked over and over,” Mr. Moore said of the surplus during a recent appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report.”
Mr. Moore pinned the blame on his predecessor, saying the state has faced a projected deficit since 2017.
Now, Mr. Moore says, he is left cleaning up the mess.
“Any surplus that we inherited was not a structural surplus, it was COVID money,” Mr. Moore said. “So to call that a structural surplus either shows that you are intentionally being factually incorrect or you just don’t understand math.”
Mr. Dedie said one of the challenges facing Mr. Moore is that the state’s structural deficit is primarily fueled by spending on Medicaid and Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a ten-year, multi-billion-dollar education improvement plan that the legislature passed in 2021 after Mr. Hogan, citing fiscal concerns, attempted to block it with a veto.
“He’s trying to rewrite history and not doing a very good job of it because of the fact that he is documented on paper and verbally, basically thanking Hogan for the wonderful shape he left the state,” Mr. Dedie said. “And he’s hoping that people have selective amnesia.”
