Wes Moore, Maryland’s first black governor, is the real deal for Democrats

BALTIMORE — Wes Moore has a resume that even George Santos, on his best day, couldn’t have concocted. A single mother raised him in the Bronx. He is a military veteran. He is a Rhodes Scholar and New York Times bestselling author. The list goes on: broadcaster, non-profit CEO, banker, entrepreneur, Baltimore resident and promoter, husband, father and friend of Oprah.

Moore, 44, had perhaps his greatest achievement this week when he became Maryland’s first black governor and the third black governor elected nationally since Reconstruction. Still, it’s hard not to interpret Moore’s trajectory as a calculated career in the service of this moment, and maybe, finally, one day… but not for another four or eight years, of course – he is running for president.

But Moore says his only goal right now is to govern Maryland. And it means

Still, Moore has a way of denying that he has larger ambitions that reinforce the very thing he’s trying to downplay. “I don’t know how anyone could look at what I did and think it was planned. You don’t plan the journey,” Moore told HuffPost in his purple-hued transition office overlooking a hazy downtown Baltimore last weekend. “When I was leading soldiers in Afghanistan, I certainly wasn’t making them think, ‘Man, it’s going to be great when I run a big non-profit someday.’ Or when I was running a business helping first-generation college students, I wasn’t there to say, “It’s going to be great when I run for governor one day.” That’s not how I work.”

Moore’s double-digit victory last year against a GOP party that isn’t even popular The retiring Republican governor endorsed Moore for a seat on the Democratic national bench along with a number of other gubernatorial hopefuls: Jared Polis of Colorado, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

I asked Moore if he had reached out to any of his colleagues at the state level. He paused to think about it, then mentioned his well-known relationship with Deval Patrick, who, as two-term governor of Massachusetts, was the second black governor elected in the United States. Between Patrick and Moore was New York’s David Patterson, who took over. for the disgraced Eliot Spitzer in 2008. Patterson was also the first blind person to be sworn in as governor, but was never subsequently elected to a full term.

Moore said he spoke with Patrick twice a week, mostly to organize his office and transition team. The advice that most impressed Moore: “You have to move quickly, but don’t move so fast that you don’t have a chance to look around.”

Even after polling the most votes in Maryland history, Moore faces a challenging term that will require appeasing legislative Democrats who have spent the past eight years chafing under Republican leadership. “The challenge is that he really doesn’t have a focus for the opposition,” said former Maryland GOP chairman Bruce Poole. “He has a legislature full of Democrats who have been bottled up with all kinds of ideas for the last eight years and a lot of money on the table. So unfortunately, no matter how much money you have, you’re probably not going to live up to people’s expectations.”

Moore — who has previously described himself as a social and fiscal conservative — has pledged to create ambitious programs to raise wages, train workers and alleviate child poverty by harnessing the resources of a state he calls “strategically property-rich and poor in goods’. On Thursday, the governor’s first day in office, he released $69 million in earmarked spending that disappeared under his predecessor, Larry Hogan.

“It’s been a pretty unlikely journey,” Moore said, looking out toward downtown Baltimore from a window in Purple Transition’s office, the cord controlling the shade wrapped tightly in his fist. Moore was talking about his education and the discouragement of the first primary poll, which showed him in the single digits with a middling means. “I have a really remarkable opportunity right now in front of me to do something that I’ve been working toward for my entire adult life,” Moore said.

The best way to understand Moore’s adult life is to understand his childhood. His book “The Other Wes Moore” traces Moore’s upbringing alongside that of another black man named Wes Moore, a Baltimore native who is serving a life sentence for his role in killing a police officer in a robbery in a jewelry store. The relationship blossomed after the politician read about the murders of the other Wes Moores in the newspaper. Moore received some pushback for apparently falsely implying in his opening copy that he too was born and raised in Baltimore. Moore’s mother only moved there when Moore was in school, but Moore spent most of her adulthood in Charm City.

Moore’s story begins in Takoma Park, Maryland. His father, Westley Moore Sr., was a radio news anchor who met his mother, Joy, at work. When Moore was 3, his father died suddenly of a rare viral infection that caused his windpipe to swell and close. Moore’s mother later moved her family to the Bronx, New York to live with her parents. Moore’s grandfather, a Jamaican immigrant on his mother’s side, was the first black minister of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Joy struggled to raise Moore and her two sisters in a neighborhood plagued by drugs and violence. “Even the name of the street we walked on, Gun Hill Road, suggests a blood sport,” Moore wrote. His mother was able to enroll Moore in a prestigious private school in the Bronx, but Moore’s behavior was so bad that she eventually sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Moore credits the school with unleashing his leadership ability, an experience seemingly denied to the other Wes Moore.

“I’m decades away from being an 11-year-old in handcuffs,” Moore said, a phrase he repeated during his inauguration Wednesday. “And now I have a few days left to become governor. I’m playing the house a bit now, you know what I mean?

Moore attended college in Valley Forge before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University. He went on to study at Oxford University, winning a White House scholarship, became an investment banker, deployed overseas as a captain in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and wrote several books. “The Other Wes Moore” put Moore on Oprah’s radar. Winfrey promoted the book and approached Moore about hosting a show, “Beyond Belief,” on her OWN network. “I trust you,” Winfrey told Moore in front of thousands of people on Wednesday. “I trust your vision. I trust your leadership.

Moore also ran the Robinhood Foundation, New York’s largest anti-poverty organization, from Baltimore, where five years ago Moore and his wife, Dawn, who worked for previous Democratic administrations in Annapolis, bought an 8,000-square-foot home up to 2, 3. a million dollars. .

The presidential vote has followed Moore since he was at Valley Forge. Former classmates told the Washington Post they expected to see Moore in the White House one day. Additionally, former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, an early mentor, indirectly encouraged this path by urging Moore to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship and enter public service.

“Here’s someone who got involved in some way in the world’s struggle, whether it was running for office or running a big company that would employ a lot of people and make life better for others,” Schmoke, now the University’s president. from Baltimore. , he told HuffPost. “I wasn’t sure if he was interested in elected office. I really thought he would get involved in public service at some point. But I strongly encouraged him to spend some time in the private sector as well.”

Schmoke described Moore as a “pragmatic optimist” from an early age. “Some of the things he talked about early in his career depressed him. But he couldn’t stay depressed,” Schmoke said. “You know, losing his dad, initially not doing too well in school, having to live with his grandparents — for some people, those negative factors just don’t get over it.”

If there’s a criticism of The Other Wes Moore, it’s that Moore doesn’t draw his own conclusions about why one Wes Moore thrived while the other didn’t. However, observers of Moore’s life point to her college-educated, hard-working mother with a strong support system after her husband’s death. Moore credits his mother with inspiring him to enter public service.

“I saw my mom go through this spiral of struggle that was really unfair for years, so I knew those were the issues I wanted to work on in my life,” Moore said. “Where the military really helped me is that they taught me to be a leader. In the military, they aim to put you in charge of something small and then you have this graduated sense of responsibility, which I think we really needed because you realize there’s a dependency on it. I wanted this. I wanted to be the person who, at the end of the day, has to make the hard decision and then wake up the next morning and make another one.

Moore’s inauguration in Annapolis drew thousands to witness the historic inauguration of Maryland’s first black governor. “I’ve lived in Maryland most of my life, and it’s wonderful to see the diversity and change and progress that Maryland has made,” said Edward Martin, a retired educator who told me he’s his father’s cousin.

“It’s historic,” said Lorna Forde, a 64-year-old businesswoman. “The first black person to be elected governor is fantastic. Black people are put through so much and it’s not always a good thing. To have an event like this, where you have someone who looks like you in the highest office in the state, there’s just no feeling to describe it.”