Wes Moore

Western Maryland is arguably one of the more conservative areas in the state of Maryland.

I'd say probably about 77% in that area voted for Donald Trump in the last election.

And there was a summit that went out there in 2024.

And they have a summit every time there's a gubernatorial election, and they do a straw poll at the end.

And you go out there, you make your case, you talk about all the different things that you want to be able to do.

And it's kind of a bit of a bellwether as to where things are going to go, because this is not a traditional, really a democratic area.

And I ended up winning the straw poll and basically doubling the person who came in second.

And part of it was because we just show up.

We went everywhere.

And part of, you know, we went everywhere because people were like, there's not a lot of Democrats there.

But I was like, yeah, but there's a lot of Marylanders and I want to be your governor too.

But also it's like, I need to go places where I can get any votes I can find because I didn't have a machine.

I didn't have, I didn't come from that background.

And when we won the Western Maryland straw poll, I think people were like, hold on, something's going on here.

Yeah, well, after we won the primary, I think that's when everybody then kind of came home at that point.

We're like, well, listen, if he continues to run the race that he's running, he's probably going to be the next governor.

And so that's when people were like, you know, now we're going to come in and endorse his campaign.

But that really did not happen because a lot of the establishment –

Democrats in many ways, for the most part.

We had a couple here and there.