Hogan rips RNC

'What are they afraid of?': Hogan rips RNC for shielding Trump from primary

The Maryland governor, weighing a White House bid, said he expects to visit New Hampshire in the next few months.

By ALEX ISENSTADT

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday he expects to make a springtime trip to New Hampshire as he weighs a 2020 challenge to Donald Trump — and accused the Republican National Committee of going to extraordinary lengths to shield the president from a potentially draining primary.

“Typically they try to be fair arbiters of a process and I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve been involved in the Republican Party for most of my life. It’s unprecedented. And in my opinion it’s not the way we should be going about our politics,” Hogan, a popular two-term Maryland governor, said in an interview with POLITICO. “It’s very undemocratic and to say, ‘We’re in some cases not going to allow a debate, we may not have a primary…’”

“And the question is, what are they afraid of?” he added. “Because on the one hand you look at polls, 70 percent of Republicans support the president in a primary. Why are they so concerned? Why the puffing out the chest — ‘We’ve put together the greatest team ever assembled, we’re going to raise all this money early, we’re going to hire all these people early, we’re going to take over the RNC…’”

Trump has rolled out a 2020 campaign organization that incorporates the RNC and his campaign into a single entity. Traditionally, a presidential reelection committee has worked side-by-side with the national party committee but not overtaken it.

“I’m not a pundit and I can’t put myself inside the heads of the people making the decisions, but perhaps the way things look today are not the way they think things look a few months from now or next week or six months from now,” he added. “Maybe they’re concerned that they will drop in the polls and that they could be at some point down the road be subject to a threat in a primary.”

The RNC declined to comment.

Hogan’s team has been in talks to appear at Politics & Eggs at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, which has long drawn presidential hopefuls. He said he expected to make a trip to the first-in-the-nation primary state sometime this spring.

The Maryland governor is slated to appear in Iowa early next month at an event sponsored by the National Governors Association. He said he would also set aside time to meet some people in the state before returning home.

Hogan, who in recent weeks has begun expressing interest in a potential primary bid, said he's heard from several Republican donors and elected officials. He's told them that he hasn't decided whether he'll run.

“I’d say it’s been something of a feeding frenzy,” Hogan said.