Andy Ellis says Republicans set the stage by renominating Dan Cox — and the 2022 numbers back him up
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
BALTIMORE — With Democratic and Republican nominees now set for Maryland’s November gubernatorial race, the Green Party’s candidate for governor is wasting no time framing his own path to relevance — and he’s leaning on an unusual data point to do it.
Andy Ellis, who is seeking the Green Party’s nomination for governor, reacted to Tuesday’s primary results by pointing directly at the Republican Party’s decision to renominate Dan Cox, the Frederick County Republican who lost to Gov. Wes Moore by more than 32 percentage points in 2022.
“The Republican Party seems hell-bent on repeating the mistakes from the 2022 election,” Ellis said in a statement. “Dan Cox did so badly in 2022 that the Green candidate was closer to Cox than Cox was to Moore.”
The arithmetic supports him. According to certified results from the Maryland State Board of Elections, Moore defeated Cox 64.5% to 32.1% — a margin of 32.4 percentage points, the largest winning margin for a gubernatorial candidate in Maryland since William Donald Schaefer in 1986. Green Party nominee Nancy Wallace finished at 0.7%, placing her 31.4 points behind Cox — a smaller gap than the 32.4 points separating Cox from Moore.
“The Republican Party seems hell-bent on repeating the mistakes from the 2022 election.”
It’s a narrow but technically accurate framing, and Ellis is using it deliberately: to defuse the spoiler narrative before it takes hold.
“No one needs to worry that a vote for me helps Cox win,” Ellis said. “If we are redoing the last election again, I think we will do very well.”
Whether 2026 is a replay of 2022 remains to be seen. Moore enters the general election as the incumbent after a mixed first term that has drawn criticism from both the left and the right. Ellis argues that dissatisfaction cuts his direction. “Wes Moore has disappointed a lot of people who supported him in 2022, and Dan Cox still has politics most Marylanders reject,” he said. “Voters across the state are angry with business-as-usual politics and are looking for something better.”
“Voters across the state are angry with business-as-usual politics and are looking for something better.”
A Party That Runs Its Own Primary
One structural detail shapes the Green Party’s position in ways most voters may not realize: Maryland does not run a taxpayer-funded primary for third parties. Under state law, publicly financed primary elections are reserved for the two “principal” parties — Democratic and Republican. The Green Party will conduct its own internal nominating process July 8–22 to select its candidates for governor and lieutenant governor.
Ellis and his running mate, Owen Silverman Andrews, are the candidates seeking that nomination. More information is available at GoGreen2026.com.
Ellis on the Primary Results: “Voters Are Not Excited”
In a post to X on Wednesday morning, Ellis offered a blunter read of Tuesday’s results than his formal statement conveyed.
“Turnout was bad. Really bad. Voters are not excited,” he wrote, listing four takeaways from the primary. He noted that incumbents and established figures largely held their positions, that data center-related ballot questions had localized rather than statewide impact, and that the race was marked by heavy spending. “There was so much money flying around,” he wrote.
The observation about enthusiasm — or the lack of it — is the thread Ellis is pulling on most aggressively. Low primary turnout is a structural argument for third-party viability: a disengaged electorate is theoretically more persuadable than an activated one locked into party identification. Whether that logic holds in a general election, where turnout is higher, and party cues dominate, is a harder case to make.
What It Means for the General
“Wes Moore has disappointed a lot of people who supported him in 2022, and Dan Cox still has politics most Marylanders reject.”
The presence of a Green candidate on the November ballot typically prompts questions about vote-splitting, particularly in a race where Republicans are hoping Moore’s vulnerabilities translate into a competitive contest. Ellis’s preemptive spoiler argument is a signal that his campaign has thought through that dynamic and intends to run toward it rather than away from it.
Cox’s renomination removes one variable that might have complicated that argument: a more moderate Republican nominee would have posed a harder test for Ellis’s contention that the Green-Cox gap is functionally irrelevant. With Cox as the GOP standard-bearer again, Ellis can credibly argue his voters were never Cox voters to begin with.
Whether Maryland’s electorate is actually more open to a third-party candidacy in 2026 than it was in 2022 — when Wallace drew fewer than 15,000 votes statewide — is a separate question. But the Green Party is entering the general election race with a sharper message than it had four years ago, and with at least one statistical talking point that holds up to scrutiny.
MDBayNews does not endorse candidates for elected office. This article reports on statements made by the Ellis campaign following the June 23 primary election.
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