Moore and Maryland Democrats are trying to pick the Republican nominee — just like they did in 2022. The playbook is identical. The outcome isn’t guaranteed.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
With early voting now closed — it ended Thursday — Republican voters have three days until primary day to make a decision in a primary that is no longer just theirs to make.
Governor Wes Moore and the Maryland Democratic Party have spent recent weeks running ads and distributing mailers designed to shape the outcome of the GOP gubernatorial primary — elevating former state delegate Dan Cox and attacking businessman Ed Hale. The goal, by every available indicator, is the same one Democrats pursued with documented success four years ago: install the opponent they want, not the one voters might otherwise choose.
The playbook is not new. It is not subtle. And it has worked before.
2022: How It Started
In the summer of 2022, Kelly Schulz was the consensus choice of Maryland’s Republican establishment. A former two-term state cabinet official under Governor Larry Hogan, she was well-funded, institutionally supported, and broadly regarded as the GOP’s most viable general election candidate. Hogan himself backed her.
Dan Cox, by contrast, had spent just $20,000 on his campaign. He had one endorsement from the legislature in which he served. He had, however, something Schulz did not: the backing of Donald Trump, a hard-line MAGA profile, and — crucially — the attention of Maryland Democrats.
The Democratic Governors Association spent more than $1.2 million on ads labeling Cox “too conservative for Maryland” and highlighting his ties to Trump. The ads were framed as attacks. They functioned as amplification. In a Republican primary, being called “too conservative” and “too close to Trump” by a Democratic outside group is not a liability — it is a credential. Cox won the primary with 52% of the vote in a four-way field. In November, Moore beat him by 32 points.
The DGA later acknowledged spending nearly $2 million total on efforts related to the Maryland Republican primary that cycle. It was one of the most explicit and successful examples of cross-party primary manipulation in recent state political history. A Towson University political science professor called it at the time “insanely unethical” and “bad for politics in Maryland as a whole.” He was correct. It worked anyway.
2026: The Sequel
This June, with five days remaining until primary day, the architecture is nearly identical.
Ed Hale is the Schulz analog: a business-aligned moderate with private-sector credibility, the most campaign expenditures among Republican challengers, and a biography that suggests crossover appeal in the general election. He is a former Democrat who switched parties in August 2025 — a vulnerability his opponents have exploited — but also a former bank CEO, the owner of the Baltimore Blast, and someone who, on paper, represents the kind of Republican who could construct a competitive coalition against Moore in November.
Dan Cox is, again, Dan Cox: the Frederick County attorney and former state delegate who has run for statewide or federal office repeatedly without success, who lost to Moore by 32 points four years ago, and who carries the MAGA brand that plays in a Republican primary and collapses in a Maryland general election.
Moore’s campaign is running ads on Fox News and Facebook. The Maryland Democratic Party has distributed mailers. The content follows the same reverse-psychology architecture as 2022: attack Hale in terms that are damning to Democrats but appealing to Republican primary voters. One ad states flatly: “Ed Hale can’t be trusted. Hale was running for governor as a Democrat. Makes sense since he’s a lifelong Democrat.” It shows a photo of Hale alongside former Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley.
To a Republican primary voter, that framing is not neutral. It is a directive.
Hale held a press conference on Wednesday alongside Republican legislators and named the strategy for what it is. “Wes Moore is manipulating the election to get everybody out except for Dan Cox, whom he whipped badly by 32 points in the last election,” Hale said. His running mate, Tyrone Keys Jr., went further: “Wes Moore beat Dan Cox like a rented mule in 2022, and he’d do it again. He is afraid of Ed Hale. He doesn’t want to run against him.”
Republican State Senator Justin Ready, backing Hale, offered the clearest instruction to voters: “If Wes Moore and the Maryland Democratic Party are telling you you should vote a certain way, you should vote opposite.”
Cox, for his part, called the Democratic mailers a “dirty and disgusting tactic” — the same language Schulz used in 2022, from the same side of the same maneuver.
The Mechanics of the Play
What makes this tactic durable is that it is genuinely difficult to defend against. The ads are real attacks — they do contain accurate information that could damage Hale in a general election. Democrats can credibly claim they are simply “educating voters” about the Republican field or “starting the general election early.” The DGA used exactly that framing in 2022, and no court or ethics body found a remedy.
The deeper problem is structural. Maryland Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly two-to-one in registration. Moore holds a $6.3 million campaign war chest against a GOP field where the top Republican spenders are working with tens of thousands of dollars. In a state where no incumbent Democratic governor has lost re-election since 1950, Moore does not need to fear either Republican in November. What he can do — what he is doing — is choose his opponent.
The Republican primary electorate in Maryland is small and motivated. Approximately 295,000 votes were cast in the 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary. Cox won it with roughly 153,000 of them, boosted in part by $2 million in Democratic spending that made him feel like the insurgent the establishment feared. The strategy exploits the psychology of a minority-party voter who has spent years watching their preferred candidates lose: when the other side attacks you, it means you matter.
What’s Different This Time
Republicans are, at minimum, louder about it. The Hale campaign’s press conference on Wednesday was not a defensive crouch — it was an attempt to make the manipulation itself the closing argument of the primary. Whether that message reaches enough Republican voters before polls close on June 23 is the open question.
There is also no public polling to benchmark. In 2022, surveys showed a competitive race between Cox and Schulz before the DGA intervention. In 2026, the field is larger, more fragmented, and nearly invisible in terms of independent measurement. Prediction markets have placed Cox as the frontrunner, but with enough uncertainty that Hale remains a live challenger.
One figure from the 2022 cycle is notably absent this time. Larry Hogan — who campaigned vigorously for Schulz and denounced the DGA’s manipulation from rally stages — announced in January 2026 that he would not seek a third term, and has not taken a visible role in the current Republican primary. Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey, who briefly explored a run that might have consolidated the field, filed for reelection to his Senate seat instead. The Republican establishment has no Hogan-level surrogate this time to validate the manipulation narrative for a broader audience.
The Accountability Question
Maryland voters casting ballots in this primary — and the journalists and editors covering it — should be clear-eyed about what is happening. A sitting governor is spending campaign resources to shape the opposition party’s nomination. The Maryland Democratic Party is distributing mailers designed to look like opposition research but function as primary endorsements in reverse. These are not underhanded in the legally actionable sense — they are underhanded in the democratic accountability sense.
In 2022, this worked. The Republican primary produced the candidate Moore’s team wanted. The general election was never competitive. And the precedent was set.
Early voting closed Thursday. Primary day is June 23 — three days away.
Republicans who vote without knowing what is in those mailers — who paid for them, why, and what the 2022 precedent tells us about their intent — are voting with incomplete information. That is not an accident.
MDBayNews covers Maryland government and civic accountability. This piece draws on reporting from The Baltimore Banner, CBS Baltimore, Fox Baltimore, WYPR, and contemporaneous 2022 coverage from The Baltimore Sun, Maryland Matters, and NBC News.
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