Before announcing his U.S. Senate run in February, Larry Hogan helped lead “No Labels,” a centrist group that flirted with the idea of nominating a third-party presidential candidate for the 2024 election.

The former two-term governor resigned from his post with the organization in late 2023 and now is hoping voters in heavily Democratic Maryland won’t be turned off by the label appearing next to his own name on election ballots: “Republican.”

According to analysts, Hogan’s race against Democratic Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks for an open Senate seat largely rests on whether voters regard him as “independent” — the label he gives himself in campaign ads and uses to harken back to his time governing in office — or partisan.

Since partisan Republicans typically don’t perform well in statewide Maryland elections — the last time a Republican won a Senate seat in Maryland was Charles Mathias in 1980 — Hogan, 68, must rely on his record as governor.

He seeks to remind voters of his popularity as an anti-tax, pro-business chief executive who espoused a bipartisan, “common sense” philosophy that is essentially the Hogan brand. Because the race is partly a referendum on his eight years as governor, the rival campaigns have exchanged sharp blows over his past positions on abortion, transit and other statewide issues.

On his campaign website, Hogan touts his record of cutting taxes by “$4.7 billion, including the largest tax cuts in state history,” and has asked Maryland voters to remember the cost-cutting style of governance he employed during his eight years in office.

Since Democrats hold a more than 2-1 voter registration advantage in the state, Hogan must capture a significant number of Democrats and unaffiliated voters to win the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin’s retirement.

But while his campaigns for governor took place in off years, Maryland’s Senate race coincides with a consequential U.S. presidential election.

In recent months, the airwaves have been filled with Hogan’s image. He has run ads saying he “stands up to both parties.” An Alsobrooks commercial cuts between archival Hogan television interviews in which he calls himself a “lifelong Republican.”

Democrats view his terms as chief executive differently than the GOP, citing his frequent vetoes — on such issues as abortion access, paid family leave, a minimum wage boost and expanded background checks on rifle and shotgun sales — as evidence that he was no consensus builder.

On Friday, Democratic allies of Alsobrooks — including Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Reps. Jamie Raskin and Glenn Ivey — held a media call about “Larry Hogan’s real record of putting the GOP before Marylanders.” Among their targets were Hogan’s past positions on abortion and his refusal to sign a 2022 bill banning the possession and sale of untraceable “ghost guns.” Hogan didn’t sign sign the measure, saying it didn’t do enough to hold criminals accountable, but it went into effect anyway because he didn’t veto it.

Alsobrooks has specifically criticized Hogan’s 2022 veto of legislation allowing nurse practitioners, midwives and other non-physician medical professionals to perform abortions in Maryland. The Democratic supermajority in the General Assembly overrode his veto.

Hogan said following the May 14 primary that he supports codifying abortion access in federal law, amending a previous position that Alsobrooks had sought to use against him.

Democrats also have condemned Hogan for not supporting the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a public school reform plan, and scrapping the Red Line — a proposed east-west Baltimore transit route — in 2015. Hogan called the Red Line a “boondoggle.”

Last April, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and close Alsobrooks ally, used the same term — boondoggle — to describe the Hogan-approved Purple Line addition to the Washington Metro that has seen large cost overruns.

Hogan’s critics “will say he governed to the right of his promises as governor, but he certainly isn’t as conservative as many of his fellow governors were from the Republican Governors Association, and he certainly has distanced himself from the [Donald] Trump MAGA coalition,” said political science professor Thomas Schaller of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Hogan, going back to his time as governor, has positioned himself as a political adversary of Trump — the former president who is again seeking the White House — even though Trump offered an endorsement, albeit a tepid one, of Hogan in June.

“There is, I think, truth to the fact that Larry Hogan is not a typical Republican of the Trump era. But, you know, he’s not a pure centrist in the way that he would like to depict himself,” said Schaller, author of a 2024 book about the politics of “white rural rage.”

Russ Schriefer, a senior Hogan strategist, said Democrats are engaged in election year “spin” if they try to attack Hogan’s claims of bipartisanship.

Hogan, Schriefer said, has proved his mettle by frequently challenging Trump. Hogan has long counseled the party to move away from the former president, saying he is too partisan.

Schriefer noted that Hogan, while governor, sent Maryland National Guard soldiers to defend the U.S. Capitol after Trump supporters stormed the grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, trying to stop the official presidential vote count declaring Democratic President Joe Biden the winner.

Schriefer said that Hogan has “probably done more than any other Republican, to stand up to the Trump administration.”

Brian Frosh, a Democratic former state attorney general, said in an interview that Hogan could have done more prior to Jan. 6 to oppose Trump policies on the environment and other issues potentially damaging to Maryland.

In 2017, Maryland lawmakers promised Frosh $1 million and five new lawyers to file lawsuits against the Trump administration, but Hogan left the money out of his budget. Instead, the Hogan administration suggested Frosh divert money from his office’s Consumer Protection Division to finance litigation against the federal government.

While Hogan is relying on Marylanders to remember his time as governor, Alsobrooks frames the race more broadly, emphasizing its significance in the fight for Senate control. Democrats, who hold a 51-49 majority, must defend a handful of seats in states that Biden narrowly won in 2020, plus three others — West Virginia, Ohio and Montana — won by Trump.

Hogan had been encouraged to enter the race by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who is leaving his leadership post in November. According to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP had done polling before Hogan entered the campaign in February and determined that he remained popular in the state.

In 2018, Hogan became the first Republican to be reelected Maryland governor since Theodore McKeldin in 1954.

“Sometimes the media and politicians try to make it personal,” said University of Baltimore professor John Willis, who was secretary of state in the administration of Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening. “And that’s what Larry is saying: ‘It’s about me.’ He would like it to be a reelection campaign for governor. And Angela is saying it’s about the Senate.”