Maryland Democrats have Hogan Derangement Syndrome

MARYLAND GOV. Larry Hogan, a Republican in a heavily Democratic state, won election as a pro-business moderate, took office with a limited agenda and has governed from the center. For this, plus the sunny disposition he projected through a bout with cancer, Mr. Hogan has been rewarded with sky-high public approval ratings, which appear to have unhinged Democrats.

The latest eruption of the Democrats’ Hogan Derangement Syndrome occurred last week, when African American legislators accused him of racially motivated “assaults” on black communities. The so-called evidence included the governor’s decisions, last year, to kill a light-rail line, trim extra education funding and fund a new jail in Baltimore, while initially withholding funds for a new hospital in Prince George’s County. Both Baltimore City and Prince George’s are majority-black.

We didn’t support Mr. Hogan in his 2014 campaign. Nonetheless, what has been striking since he took office is neither his ideology (faint), nor his agenda (small-ball), nor his governing style (laid-back), nor his partisanship (run-of-the-mill) but the disproportionate attacks by Democrats on a governor whose record so far qualifies him as a moderate.

Last year they pilloried him for trying to divert money for the state’s underfunded pension system, a cause Democrats themselves embraced just four years earlier, before legislative amnesia set in. This year they derided his anodyne State of the State address, heavy on pledges to work collaboratively with Democrats, with initiatives — some targeted tax cuts and fee reductions;nonpartisan redistricting; efforts to combat heroin addiction — that could easily have been issued by a reform-minded Democrat.

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