By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
OCEAN CITY — Dan Cox stood before Maryland’s county officials Saturday and made a simple pitch: four years of Wes Moore have left the state more expensive, more indebted, and less prepared for the basics, and voters don’t have to guess what a second term looks like.
The Republican nominee for governor spoke at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference, an event built around the practical grind of county government, budgets, permitting, infrastructure, not national politics. Moore addressed the same forum earlier. Because the candidates for governor, comptroller, and attorney general appeared one at a time, Moore never had the chance to answer Cox from the same stage.
Cox, who is making a second run after losing to Moore in 2022, used his remarks to tie together several threads of Moore’s record that have drawn scrutiny well beyond his own campaign.
“Four years of Wes Moore have left the state more expensive, more indebted, and less prepared for the basics.”
The TeraWulf donation
Cox’s most pointed material concerned TeraWulf, the Easton-based company seeking to convert the retired Morgantown coal plant in Charles County into a large-scale data center. He said Moore accepted a $12,000 donation connected to the company’s founder before the administration moved to support the project.
“The figure holds up.”
The figure holds up. Maryland Matters reported Cox highlighted a pair of $6,000 donations Moore received in 2025 from TeraWulf’s founder and his wife, according to state campaign finance records, matching Cox’s combined total. Baltimore Banner reporting has separately documented that TeraWulf’s CEO pushed the governor’s office for months to put its support for the project in writing, and that state environmental regulators offered to expedite the permits TeraWulf needed. The project itself required federal approval, which came through earlier this month over objections from environmental and consumer groups. Cox’s broader point, that a governor accepting donations from a company he’s simultaneously helping usher through the permitting process raises real conflict-of-interest questions, is grounded in documented facts, not speculation.
Property taxes climbing on his watch
Cox told the room Maryland homeowners are getting hit with assessment increases north of 20 percent, and warned more is coming if voters don’t change course. That number reflects last year’s statewide reassessment cycle, which came in at 20.1 percent. The most recent cycle, released in December, slowed to 12.7 percent, still a substantial increase, just not the same figure Cox cited. Either way, Maryland homeowners have absorbed three straight years of double-digit reassessment growth under Moore’s watch, a trend Cox’s campaign has made a central affordability argument.
“Maryland homeowners have absorbed three straight years of double-digit reassessment growth under Moore’s watch.”
The Key Bridge, still not rebuilt
Cox raised the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and the underlying facts favor his critique. The state canceled its construction contract with Kiewit Infrastructure this spring after the company’s cost proposals came in far above state estimates. The rebuild’s price tag has climbed from an original estimate near $1.8 billion to a range of $4.3 to $5.2 billion, and the completion target has already slipped from 2028 to 2030. The Maryland Transportation Authority issued a request for qualifications for the bridge’s main span in July, but under its own published schedule, the field won’t be narrowed to a shortlist until this fall, with a notice to proceed for the winning contractor not expected until summer 2027, nearly a year after the contract cancellation. Cox argued the state may not hit even the revised 2030 deadline. That specific prediction is his own, sourced to people he says he’s spoken with, and MDBayNews could not independently confirm it. But the documented procurement timeline leaves little room for error if the state wants to hold that date.
“The documented procurement timeline leaves little room for error if the state wants to hold that 2030 date.”
Education funding shifted to counties
Cox also renewed his argument that the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s education funding law commonly known by its earlier nickname, the Kirwan plan, has pushed costs onto counties in a way he says conflicts with the state constitution’s requirement that the state fund public education. That’s a live legal and policy argument in Annapolis, not something MDBayNews can adjudicate here, but it’s the same argument county officials in the room have been raising in their own budget fights with the state for the past two years.
What Cox is offering instead
Speaking to an audience that has to balance county budgets regardless of who wins in November, Cox laid out a specific list of changes he says he’d make on day one:
- Cap property tax growth and move toward basing bills on original purchase price rather than reassessed market value
- Offer tax credits to builders to encourage more single-family housing construction in the state
- Repeal the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and replace it with a model built around phonics instruction, math tutoring, and teacher pay, citing Mississippi’s results
- Halt new data center permitting with an immediate moratorium pending further study
- Reopen access to Maryland’s Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves, which he estimated could generate roughly $5 billion in state revenue
- Support small modular nuclear reactors as a long-term power source
- Direct new tools, training, and accountability measures to law enforcement
He also renewed his call for a head-to-head debate before November. Moore said in June, after clinching his own primary, that he looks forward to debating Cox and pointed to his record on crime, business growth, and education as what he’d defend on stage. No debate has been scheduled as of this writing.
Cox’s specific migration figure, that 107,931 residents have left under Moore, doesn’t match any published state or federal report MDBayNews could locate. The state’s own data tells a related but different story: Comptroller Brooke Lierman’s office has reported that Maryland lost a net average of roughly 40,000 residents a year to lower-cost states in recent years, and that about 127,000 residents left the state between 2021 and 2023 alone, with another 18,000 departing between mid-2023 and mid-2024. Those numbers support Cox’s broader argument about sustained outmigration even though they don’t match the specific figure he cited from the podium.
“Those numbers support Cox’s broader argument about sustained outmigration even though they don’t match the specific figure he cited from the podium.”
A separate claim, that roughly 40,000 tax lien sales have occurred this year with about half concentrated in majority-minority areas or among seniors, has no public statewide source MDBayNews could find. Maryland does not conduct a single unified tax sale; each county and Baltimore City runs its own on its own schedule, and no state agency appears to publish a combined annual total or a demographic breakdown. That claim is presented here only as one made by the candidate.
Sources
This article draws on a transcript of Dan Cox’s remarks at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference candidate forum, held Saturday, August 15, 2026, in Ocean City, along with Maryland Matters’ coverage of the same event, Baltimore Banner reporting on TeraWulf’s Morgantown power plant proposal and its campaign contributions to Governor Moore, the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation’s 2025 and 2026 reassessment announcements, Maryland Transportation Authority procurement announcements and WTOP/Maryland Matters reporting on the Key Bridge contractor search timeline, the Comptroller of Maryland’s reporting on statewide migration trends, and the Maryland Daily Record’s coverage of Governor Moore’s June remarks on debating Cox.
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