Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has said at every turn that he is not running for president in 2028. He says he’s focused on this fall’s election, seeking a second term as governor.
He is also 47 and charismatic, with a rising national profile that would position him for 2028 or some later election cycle if he should change his mind, which at least some people around the state capital in Annapolis, Maryland are waiting for him to do.
When I spoke with Moore just outside his office for the new NPR video series Newsmakers, it became clear that he has thought a lot about the presidency as it will stand in January 2029. He said the next president will have to review the institutions wrecked by President Trump and decide what is worth rebuilding and what is not.
He acknowledged that some parts of the government don’t deserve rebuilding: Trump was elected twice, Moore says, because government wasn’t working for people.
He talked of limiting the presidential power that Trump has asserted and expanded so aggressively. He said Trump has so abused his pardon power that Moore would like to abolish it.
Moore spoke with our team in the Maryland State House—an ancient and ornate building that was begun in colonial times, in 1772. It briefly served as the national capital in the 1780’s. Slavery was legal in Maryland then. Until Moore’s election in 2022, every Maryland governor was a white man. Portraits of his most recent predecessors lined the walls of the reception room where we positioned our cameras for the interview.
Click here for our talk with Wes Moore:
Our talk was the premiere of Newsmakers—big interviews for every NPR platform, from YouTube to Spotify to the radio—but that program builds on a series of earlier NPR video interviews, including several with Democratic leaders and presidential contenders.
It’s compelling to contrast Moore with other Democrats we have interviewed: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pete Buttigieg, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, Gretchen Whitmer, Rahm Emanuel, and Gavin Newsom.
Like several, Moore says the political system was broken before Trump, and he would not return every federal agency to the way it was, even if he could.
Moore is also critical of what you could call the “nonprofit industrial complex,” liberal charities that work on behalf of the poor. He once served as the CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, and says he pushed it to lobby the government for big policy changes, rather than doling out a little money to make donors feel good (“philanthropy for philanthropists,” as he called it).
Unlike Emanuel or Buttigeig, he did not say Democrats have leaned too hard into social issues, especially those involving transgender children. When asked, he said he wanted to make his state safe for everyone.
Like many Democrats, Moore insisted that voters expect practical results from their political leaders. This statement would seem to be self-evidently true. But is it entirely true? It will be tested again in 2028.
Trump prevailed in two elections by pushing policies that Republicans favored—but also by telling a story, a particular narrative of America. Before him, Barack Obama built a movement on his own narrative of what America was and could be.
What we don’t know yet is who has a story to tell that may resonate with the country in 2028.
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