Mary­land ‘not in play’ after Hogan-Also­brooks Sen­ate race set, Cardin claims

Sen. Ben Cardin (D‑MD) is leav­ing zero doubt a Demo­c­rat will suc­ceed him in the Sen­ate when he retires in Jan­u­ary.
“I think in Novem­ber, Mary­land will not be in play,” he told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er after Angela Also­brooks, the Prince George’s Coun­ty exec­u­tive, clinched the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion on Tues­day night.
That would have been an uncon­tro­ver­sial state­ment three months ago. No Repub­li­can has won a Sen­ate seat in Mary­land since 1980.
But Lar­ry Hogan, the pop­u­lar, two-term GOP gov­er­nor, upend­ed the Sen­ate map in Feb­ru­ary with his late entrance into the race. He pre­vi­ous­ly shrugged off the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a run despite being heav­i­ly recruit­ed by nation­al Repub­li­cans.
Cardin acknowl­edges the GOP land­ed a high-pro­file recruit. Hogan won the nom­i­na­tion hand­i­ly on Tues­day promis­ing to be the same inde­pen­dent voice who led the state for eight years.
“Obvi­ous­ly, Lar­ry Hogan has a pop­u­lar­i­ty in our state. We rec­og­nize that,” he said.
How­ev­er, Cardin pre­dict­ed Mary­land vot­ers would not elect a man who could tilt con­trol of the Sen­ate to Repub­li­cans. Presid …