Maryland’s governor has been everywhere. The question is whether he’s been here.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
ANNAPOLIS — Wes Moore has had a busy year.
In the spring of 2025, he delivered a commencement address at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and traveled to South Carolina — an early presidential primary state — where he headlined a dinner for the state Democratic Party and highlighted his family ties to the Palmetto State. That summer, he traveled to Japan and South Korea on a six-day trade mission that cost Maryland taxpayers approximately $322,000.
In June, he held a fundraising brunch in Aspen, Colorado, with a host committee his team informally dubbed “A Whole Lotta Skiers For Maryland Governor Wes Moore.” Over Labor Day weekend, photographs published by the Daily Mail showed him shirtless on a yacht at Lake Como — the Italian villa of actor George Clooney, who has openly called Moore his preferred presidential candidate. The trip was not listed on Moore’s public schedule.
In October, Moore went to New Jersey to stump for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill. Two weeks later, he made five campaign stops across Virginia in a single day for Abigail Spanberger — Harrisonburg, Blacksburg, Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Stafford, dawn to dusk — for a race in a state where he holds no office and answers to no voters. He appeared on The View, Meet the Press, and Fox News — repeatedly.
He attended the National Governors Association winter summit in Washington and the DNC’s winter meeting in Los Angeles, where he was named alongside Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer as a top-tier potential 2028 presidential contender. He raised $7 million for his reelection — a Maryland off-year record — much of it from out-of-state donors.
In March 2026, with the legislative session still running, he announced a spring commencement tour that would take him to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania and Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina — two presidential battleground states. CBS News noted the itinerary bore a structural resemblance to Barack Obama’s pre-campaign commencement circuit in 2006.
Then, on January 19, 2026 — as the Maryland General Assembly was convening for its 90-day session — a 72-inch sewer line collapsed near the Clara Barton Parkway in Montgomery County, Maryland. Between 243 and 300 million gallons of raw sewage poured into the Potomac River. The University of Maryland called it one of the largest sewage spills in U.S. history. E. coli levels at the spill site tested hundreds of times above EPA safety thresholds. Health advisories went out in Montgomery, Prince George’s, and Charles counties. Maryland’s shellfish harvesting areas were closed.
Moore’s primary response was to fight with Donald Trump on social media about whose fault it was.
On April 9, four days before Maryland’s General Assembly adjourned sine die, Moore flew to New York to appear at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention, where the crowd stood and chanted for him to run for president in 2028.
“I now have, because I keep a clock on my desk, 278 days left in my first term,” Moore told the audience.
Back in Annapolis, the 2026 session was closing on a structural deficit, a Moody’s credit downgrade, and a budget held together with fund swaps. Nearly six in ten Marylanders told a UMBC poll in late March that their state is moving in the wrong direction. Moore’s approval rating had fallen to 48% — the first time it had dropped below 50% since he took office.
The Potomac Response
The legal architecture around the Potomac Interceptor is genuinely complicated. The pipe is owned and operated by DC Water, a regional utility, regulated by the EPA, and sits within C&O Canal National Historical Park — National Park Service property. Moore’s office was not wrong to note that federal oversight of this infrastructure predates his tenure by decades, and that the EPA declined to even appear at a Maryland General Assembly hearing on the spill.
But the break occurred in Montgomery County, Maryland. The environmental damage flowed into Maryland waters. Three Maryland counties issued health advisories. Maryland’s Department of the Environment was on-site. Maryland requested a federal disaster declaration for its Chesapeake oyster fishery. The Potomac River runs through Maryland.
What Maryland’s governor provided in the critical weeks following the collapse was not a visible presence on the ground, not a press conference at the spill site, not a tour of affected communities. What he provided was a social media fight with the president. “I know this is breaking news to everyone, but the president is not telling the truth,” Moore said in mid-February — nearly a month after the pipe collapsed. Trump told the governors they needed to ask for help “politely.” Moore responded: “Please, Mr. President, do your job.”
This is the governing style Moore has developed: the national adversary, the national platform, the national frame. It plays well on cable news. It plays less well in Montgomery County, where residents were under health advisories for weeks and where the smell, according to one NBC correspondent who visited the site, was so strong “you can taste it, even when you’re talking.”
The Schedule vs. The State
This is not an argument that governors should stay in their state capitals and nowhere else. Executive travel is part of the job. The Asia trip had a defensible trade rationale. National coalitions matter, particularly with Maryland facing federal workforce exposure greater than any other state.
But there is a difference between a governor who builds national standing to serve his state and one whose schedule, as Maryland-based Democratic strategist Len Foxwell observed, “is at odds with his message.” Foxwell made that observation before the 2026 session began. It did not become less true as the session progressed.
During the 90-day session itself, Moore’s calendar reflected a man managing two parallel careers. In February alone — the same month the Potomac spill was dominating Maryland news — he attended the National Governors Association winter summit, spoke at the Economic Club of Washington, attended a White House meeting with President Trump, and appeared at Politico’s 2026 Governors Summit. His redistricting fight was dying in the Senate Rules Committee. His budget was being negotiated in committee. His state’s largest environmental disaster in recent memory was unfolding in Montgomery County.
The internal picture is not steadier. By October 2025, eight of Moore’s 27 cabinet secretaries had resigned — a turnover rate that state Del. Ryan Nawrocki described as “unprecedented” and that the Baltimore Sun said outpaced any previous Maryland governor. The departures included his chief of staff, the transportation secretary, the health secretary, and the state police superintendent.
One departing secretary, former Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi, wrote publicly that “history doesn’t smile on people who say they were only following orders as they operationalized human rights abuses” — a striking parting statement about his own department’s operations under Moore’s administration. The governor and Schiraldi publicly contradicted each other about whether the resignation was voluntary or ordered.
“History doesn’t smile on people who say they were only following orders as they operationalized human rights abuses.”
— former Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi
The Redistricting Tell
Nothing in the 2026 session illustrated Moore’s divided attention more sharply than redistricting — a fight he framed not as a Maryland priority but as a national one, in national language, for a national audience.
When Senate President Bill Ferguson refused to advance the redistricting bill, Moore did not negotiate quietly. He went to New York to speak at the National Action Network. He told Fox News, “Fighting for democracy is never risky.” He told his own Senate president, “Don’t play with me.”
The bill died in committee — not because Republicans killed it, but because Moore’s own party concluded the legal and political risks were too high. A governor focused primarily on Maryland might have read that resistance early and found a different path. Moore instead escalated publicly, drew national attention to an intra-party fight he was losing, and left for New York while the session wound down.
The Numbers at Home
The UMBC poll released April 1 found Moore’s approval at 48%, down from 54% in October 2024 and from the mid-60s early in his tenure. The top reasons for disapproval: taxes and fees, cited by 27% of respondents, and poor leadership, dishonesty, and personal dislikes, cited by 24%.
A week before the poll dropped, Moore was booed at Camden Yards during the Orioles home opener — the second consecutive year he faced a hostile reception at the ballpark. His response was to appear on a national media program alongside Jen Psaki to attack the Baltimore Sun. His approval rating in Maryland was below 50%. His audience for the rebuttal was national.
The Baltimore Sun’s own commentary pages published a column arguing that “Moore’s habit of fleeing to national stages is telling” and that his national ambitions had come at the expense of governing Maryland. That was not a conservative outlet. It was the state’s paper of record.
The 278-Day Clock
At the NAN convention, Moore told the crowd he had 278 days left in his first term. He said it to make a point about focus — that the moment required attention to 2026, not 2028.
The arithmetic is worth sitting with. By the time the General Assembly reconvenes in January 2027, Moore will be a governor in the final year of his first term, running for reelection, with every decision filtered through that lens. The structural deficit he deferred this session will be waiting. The Blueprint cost trajectory will be one year closer to exhausting its trust fund. The Moody’s downgrade will still be on the books. The Potomac Interceptor, repaired in March, will still be a 60-year-old pipe in a state whose governor spent the weeks after it failed fighting about it on social media rather than standing next to it. And Moore will be in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, giving commencement addresses.
He told the NAN crowd he is “hungry, but not thirsty.” Maryland does not need a governor who is hungry for what comes next. It needs one who is present for what is happening now.
The clock is counting down in Annapolis, too.
SOURCES: CBS News, “Wes Moore to give commencement addresses in 2028 battleground states,” March 9, 2026; Washington Examiner, “Wes Moore rolls out commencement tour in battleground territory,” March 9, 2026; NBC News / Wikipedia, “2026 Potomac River sewage spill,” January–March 2026; NBC News, “Potomac River E. coli levels skyrocket after 240 million gallons of sewage,” February 18, 2026; The Hill, “Politicians clash over Potomac River sewage spill,” February 18, 2026; Maryland Matters, “Maryland congressional delegation enters the fray over massive Potomac sewage spill,” February 19, 2026; Fox Baltimore / Baltimore Sun, “Maryland Gov. Wes Moore to stump for Spanberger in Virginia, make 5 stops across state,” October 31, 2025; Shore News Network, “What You Need to Know About Wes Moore Campaigning in New Jersey for Mikie Sherrill,” October 2025; Fox Baltimore, “Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s recent travels include Asia, Italy, and key 2028 states,” September 5, 2025; Maryland Matters, “Moore’s Italian weekend with George Clooney was paid out of pocket,” September 3, 2025; Maryland Matters, “As he ramps up political activities, Moore hires ex-Whitmer aide to helm campaign,” June 27, 2025; Baltimore Banner / Baltimore Sun / Fox Baltimore, cabinet departures coverage, October 2025; UMBC Institute of Politics poll, April 1, 2026, via Maryland Matters and CBS Baltimore; Washington Examiner, “Wes Moore urged to run for president in 2028,” April 9, 2026; Baltimore Sun, “Wes Moore booed during Orioles opening day,” March 27, 2026; Baltimore Sun / Torrey Snow column, “Wes Moore shows he’s losing control of the narrative,” April 9, 2026; WYPR, “Moore reflects on Maryland legislative session,” April 14, 2026.
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