Gov. Wes Moore, looking to head off a looming budget shortfall in Maryland, on Wednesday detailed nearly $149 million in proposed midyear spending cuts in a spending plan that calls for no new tax increases.
Mr. Moore, a first-term governor who is increasingly seen as a potential Democratic Party presidential contender in 2028 — or even sooner, under some circumstances — called the planned spending cuts “targeted and strategic” in a Wednesday op-ed for the Baltimore Sun and argued that the saved money will go toward funding child care and health care.
Cutting government programs in deep-blue Maryland probably won’t earn the governor any points with state Democrats but could help position Mr. Moore as the kind of party moderate who can win a national election, said one political analyst who has followed the 45-year-old Army veteran’s meteoric rise.
you’re Wes Moore, and you’re looking in the mirror — you think you see a future president looking back at you — you’ve got to think about these cuts in that perspective,” said John Dedie, a Maryland political commentator and the coordinator for Community College of Baltimore County’s political science program.
“How will people react, whether it’s weeks down the road or in 2027, if you’re looking to run for president?” Mr. Dedie continued.
Mr. Moore became the state’s first Black governor in 2023 after winning his initial bid for elected office — but he has been involved in politics for years as a volunteer and a political appointee.
He was thrust onto the national stage in March when a freighter malfunctioned and crashed into Baltimore’s Key Bridge, toppling the span and killing six members of a construction crew. Mr. Moore oversaw a massive clean-up operation that concluded three months later with the full reopening of the Port of Baltimore, one of the nation’s busiest.
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