Transcripts For CSPAN2 Gov. Larry Hogan R-MD Still Standing

And chairman of the National Governors Association Larry hogan. Governor hogan was sworn in as the 62nd governor of the state state of maryland on january 21, 2015. In 2018 he was overwhelming reelected to a second term receiving the most votes of any maryland gubernatorial candidate and becoming only the second republican governor to be reelected in the 242 year history of the state. During the conversation Governor Hogan discusses his brandnew book launches on the date of this Virtual Event entitled Still Standing surviving cancer, riots, a Global Pandemic, and the toxic politics that divide america. Governor hogan originally submitted the book is published on february 1 just before the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States. They delay the publication for two months so he could add five chapters about combating the coronavirus, the economic crisis and dealing with the white house which he said made for more timely and interesting book. We now invite you to enjoy our Virtual Program coming to you from our air force academy oval office with the governor larry hogan and Reagan Foundation Institute Executive director john heubusch. Governor hogan, just absolutely great to have you this afternoon. Great to be with you, thank you. And you conjunction with what a great book. Probably your first but its going to turn out to be your best because theres just some fantastic stores in. Thank you very much. Such an honor to be with today and thank you for saying that. It probably would be my best and may be my worst because will. My only one. Thank you. Im glad you enjoyed it. I hope other people will as well. When i read it right there in the first couple of chapters, the reader is reminded of the fact that you come from a political family. Your father larry hogan, in congress in the 70s, and ran for the senate. I think was, had another major job in maryland. You just come from a pedigree in maryland that was truly important, your background, right . Yeah, thank you for mentioning my dad. Im very proud of him. He served in congress for three terms back in the 70s and gave up a safe seat to run for governor but i learned a lot about Public Service and integrity from my dad. I spent most of my career in the private sector but probably had something to do with my early interest in politics and the reason why i took an interest in getting involved. Your dad is famous for, as you will know, one incredible moment of fame. Him being the first republican member of the house, the first republican i think of the House Judiciary Committee to support the impeachment of president nixon, right . I was in high school at the time and my dad was sitting on that House Judiciary Committee. He was a strong supporter of president nixon, and i got a chance to meet the president and they campaigned together and i think my dad was fond of nixon and thought he did a good job on Foreign Policy, especially with respect to china. He was one of the folks on the Judiciary Committee fighting to make sure that the process was fair, pushing back when he thought the democrats were being too partisan. He fought to make sure that the president could present his own witnesses and present evidence. But he was a former fbi agent and a georgetown lawyer who, after seeing all the evidence, it pained him but he really believed the president had committed impeachable offenses. He was the first republican on the committee to come out and say so. At the time a lot of republicans were awfully mad at him in the white house and his friends in congress and folks, voters in the district, but its the thing he is probably most remembered for, and the thing im most proud of him about because at the courage to stand up and put aside his own political career and put aside Party Loyalty and personal affection to get that he what he thought was right for the country. Runs in the family. Thats a courageous act. Speaking of your dad, one other point i just want to make because i just had to smile about it. I know he ran for the senate in 1982, two years into the reagan presidency. Within some research i found, we have a lot of scripts here that president reagan used to support members and senators running during their campaigns during his white house years. Theres a great script, weve got, governor, well present reagan speaking about your dad. I brought it with me your president reagan said for an advertisement form, we dont need rubberstamps in the senate. What we need are hardworking people with ability and integrity, like larry hogan who are willing to contribute their brains and hard work to building the american future you and i believe in so deeply. I think after the first time i heard that, i dont remember it from back then and the truly incredible. Thanks for digging that up and sharing it with me. I will send you a copy, governor. Now, a lot of people admire Ronald Reagan. You are truly an authentic reagan republican, has to be the case because you have some history that few free to talk about with respect to the president. My dad first got involved in politics in the late 60s when i became interested. I was involved in teenager republicans and college republicans. But when i was coming out of, when i was in college, it was 1976, my dad who was in the house with president gerald ford and who i got a chance to meet come he and his family, my dad was cheering fords campaign for election. My dad had a big part in for becoming the Vice President and then the president because of his role. He was a great man and a great leader but, and i like him, butt i was so enamored with reagan that i in 76 i was at the convention as an alternate delegate. I was just a young kid, and youngest member of the delegation and may be the youngest at the convention on the floor but i was marching around with my reagan signed and my reagan have because i just thought he was such, his positive vision for the future and the way he spoke just reached me in a way that frankly gerald ford didnt. My dad got so angry with me because hes a friend of fords and chairing the campaign and like and what are you doing out there supporting reagan . But i said i really like him. I was a true believer in 76 when he was unsuccessful and then i got involved, i was a chairman of youth for reagan come work in the campaign, was a delegate in 198080 and in 84, and nobody had more of an impact on me or nobodys philosophy was a more interested in then Ronald Reagan. I was comingofage right out of college when he became president , i served on the inaugural committee and was just made him he was the guy who i still look back to end quote all the time and think about this is the kind of leader that i aspire to be. And this is your first book i believe. Some who finished their first book look back on it as a moment of like exhilaration and joy, and some have found the process miserable. Where do you fit in . I enjoyed it. It was a little bit cathartic i guess. I wrote most of the book i won in 2014 as governor of maryland which is not an impossible thing to do. We had the highest percentage of democratic voters of any state in america. I had very little money. No one expected us to win. I was a second republican in 50 years to be elected. And when we pulled that off peoples that you should write a book about how you did that. I said i havent really accomplish anything. I cant write about. Then they went through, after 90 days of being governor arrives in baltimore that we got credited with doing a good job of handling. They said you should write about that experience. And i found this lifethreatening cancer while i was going after five win team. They said you have to talk about this. And then one huge reelection and begin the second governor and 2142 years republican in maryland. You have to write about this. Eventually i got around to it. I finished the book and turn it in february 1 fight for this coronavirus crisis. It took a long time as you know to write the book but i enjoy the process and help people enjoy reading it. I asked the published put on hold. It was supposed to be out almost two months earlier, and they could only delayed until the end of july but the asked me to add, make it more current, some the things going on today with my leadership of the National Governors association and with what is going on with fighting the Global Pandemic and the economic crisis we did with. It makes for more interesting book but it was difficult to get all this done and, of course, were having, we had planned a big book tour around the country now and now were doing all of it virtually as were still dealing with the crisis and because its just impossible to have an in person events these days. Thank you for giving us this opportunity with you for our first event. Happy to. Governor, first congratulations on winning a a tough fight on cancer. Unfortunately ive had the same experience, diagnosed with stage three, different kind of cancer, but just a magnificent accomplishment for you to have been able to fight in the that disease just a few months into your first term as maryland governor. How is it possible for you to fought the fight and run the state at the same time . God bless you. Im glad you made it successfully through your battle. It changed me as a person. It made me realize the things that are important. I met so many incredible people that went through tougher battles than my own. Got to meet their families and see what they go through, and its something im going to be involved in forever, trying to raise awareness and money for organizations and try to fight into a fight cures for these diseases. I had only been governor for five months. We had just won this huge overwhelming upset victory, te biggest one in the country, and then i had my first legislative session after putting together an entire government in an overwhelmingly democratic monopoly state. And we cut taxes for the first time. We balance the budget. We got rid of 5. 1 billion deficit all within the first 90 days and then battled the riots and in 60 days later got hit with this news. I was on my first trade mission to asia and i wasnt feeling really all that well. I had aches and pains and i was a little tired but i didnt think theres anything serious, went to the doctor ended up having doctors come into tonight advance, and aggressive cancer all over my body from my neck to my growing, and it ended up being almost an 18 month total battle 24 hour day chemotherapy. I was dealing with all of that while being governor, a brandnew governor in a very tough state with a lot of things going on. I talk about this experience in my book. I got to meet so many people. I tells time of the some of the stories but my first worry was how do i tell my family. It was fathers day weekend when i i got this diagnosis on a friday. I first thought, ive got to tell my wife and daughters, and my dad who was eating at the time, he was coming over for fathers day dinner at the Governors Mansion and he actually took it harder than anybody. It doesnt matter how old you get. I was to instill his old boy that he couldnt keep out of trouble and protect so he cried the whole time. Then came out come had to announce it to the whole state of maryland. I tried to be very transparent and share it with them. They had just six main people are just put their trust in me, and i had to link to them i was going to continue to try to keep working, and i worked from the hospital bed can continue to try to run the state and came out of it, thank god, stronger than ever. Aside from find the best doctors you can advise, governor, for people going through a similar experience as you did, if you dig deep is there one really important piece of advice that you might give . Well, im a big believer in the power of prayer. I had an awful lot of people praying for me. I think having a positive attitude, i think the mental part of, besides the physical ravages of these diseases, trying to stay positive and focused on getting healthy is important, having a support network. Not just you, but people that care about you. I was lucky enough to have thousands of people across the state that were pulling for me. Not everybody has that. And have an incredible, to try to get the best medical care and attention you can and listen to your doctors. I was lucky because in maryland we have an amazing medical facilities and had great doctors and nurses who were taking care of me. I think people need a support network and they have to stay positive and they will get through it. Yes. Lets talk about another terrible illness for a few minutes that you covered. Some of the final chapters in your book, and obviously thats coronavirus. Out here at the Reagan Library in california, governor, we are still in the state facing a tremendous crisis, the number of cases continues to grow, the number of deaths grow, et cetera. But you all seem to have gotten a good, a better handle on it in maryland. I know its been one heck of a struggle. How have you been able to do that . I dont want to get too overconfident because we do have a pretty good hand of the numbers right now we are not being complacent. This virus is by no means behind us, and i believe we have the potential for this to continue to get worse going into the fall. We are seeing alarming spikes and increases across the country. The virus doesnt recognize state borders, and some people are taking different actions and its affected were the art in the curve and how successful they have been in flattening the curve. Right now our metrics that we are following are trending pretty good. A number of cases is, we have increased testing dramatically. If you test a lot more people, cases are going to go up a little bit that we look at to rates. We look at hospitalization, how many people are filling hospital beds in icu beds and her death rates which are all trending down, but we have got to stay vigilant and on top of this. You saw some states that were relatively in good shape that are just out of control now. We have got to listen to the advice of the Public Health professionals, the epidemiologists and the smart scientists. Weve got to wear masks and social distance and to all those kinds of things. We successfully and safely reopened about 98 of our economy. We reached the peak of the virus about 90 days ago and we now have downward trending numbers but we watch it every single day and if we have to take actions to stop it, we are going to not hesitate to make those decisions. We had to make some very difficult decisions when we had some difficult times back in the early part of this, as did every state in the nation, and i never imagined being in this kind of a position or making the kinds of decisions we had to. Almost every day we were taking decisions, making decisions that had to be made to keep people safe. Sure, sure. This is not inexpensive feet, is it . Meaning, im sure the virus and all 50 50 states has caused rel traffic in the states financial system. How is it going in maryland . The states Financial Systems are really being impacted but it should impacting the economy. Im most concerned about what its doing to all those Small Businesses out there, the unemployment that is skyrocketed in the loss of revenue, all those additional people that we have to help. But because of that, because people are not working and because businesses are suffering and people are not out spending money because it dont feel safe, the revenues to the states are down and in many states revenues are projected to be down as much as 25 for 30 . We are not as bad as some other state but we are going to be really impacted and have to make very tough just fiscal decision in the state about how do we provide more services to more people are really in need with a lot less revenue . Its going to be tough for governors across america. Is it still a sticking point, governor, between the white house and the states governors on whether the will be in federal assistance to help manage impact at the state level . We have differences of opinion sometimes between the governors and the white house. Look, i chair the National Governors association and i work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and have throughout this entire pandemic. Weve had a 40, 41 or 42 calls with all of the nations governors. Many of them with the president and or Vice President and the cabinet. The communication both with the administration and with governors on their own and has been good. The governors have been really good about sharing best practices about whats going on in your state, how have you dealt with this . How is this working . And the federal government has stepped up with respect to the cares act and some funding thats desperately needed to help the people who are unempld and help some of the Small Businesses and help us with certain issues. We are also a little frustrated sometimes were not getting all of the assistance and help that we need. We couldve had a National Testing synergy early on in this process that wouldve been helpful. It was a bit of a 50 states scramble with everybody making things up on their own. I dont want to monday morning quarterback because were still in the middle of this and it will take the federal, state and local government to Work Together to continue to fight this battle but the good news is were all communicating and trying to work through these differences of opinion. I know, governor, the media often times tends to overplay it theres any criticisms or dispute between the governors and the president. You know how that works. You have a long conversation and most of which is fairly productive, and one sentence will get pulled out of their thats blown into the headline. It seems more hostile or negative that it is intended to be, but i would say there has been some friction and has been disagreement but we have also been appreciative for the help that weve gotten. When the president is doing a good job, when the governors agree we certainly recognize that, and when we feel that they are falling short or when the