Wes Moore, Maryland’s First Black Governor, Is The Real Deal For Democrats

BALTIMORE – Wes Moore has a resume that George Santos on his best day couldn’t come up with. A single mother raised him in the Bronx. He’s an army vet. He is a Rhodes scholar and a New York Times best-selling author. The list goes on: TV host, nonprofit CEO, banker, entrepreneur, Baltimore resident and booster, husband, father, and friend of Oprah.

Moore, 44, achieved his biggest achievement this week when he became Maryland’s first Black governor and the third Black governor elected statewide since Reconstruction. However, it’s hard not to interpret Moore’s trajectory as a calculated career climb at this point and perhaps, one day – but not for another four or eight years, of course – running for president.

But Moore said his only focus right now is managing Maryland. And he means it.

Still, Moore has a way of denying that he has higher ambitions that underpin what he’s trying to do. “I don’t know how people can look at what I’ve done and think it’s planned. You don’t plan that trip,” Moore told HuffPost in his mauve transition office overlooking foggy downtown Baltimore last weekend. “When I lead soldiers in Afghanistan, I certainly don’t lead them thinking, ‘Man, this is going to be big when one day I open a big nonprofit.’ Or when I opened a business helping first-generation students, I wasn’t there saying, ‘This is going to be awesome when I run for governor one day.’ I’m not like that.”

Moore’s second victory last year was against an unpopular GOP hardliner in the state retired Republican governor endorsed cleared space for Moore on the Democrats’ national bench alongside a crop of other ambitious governors: Colorado Jared Polis, Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro.

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

Moore spoke to Patrick twice a week, mainly about the nuts and bolts of setting up the office and the transition team. The advice that stuck with Moore the most: “You have to move fast, but don’t be so fast that you don’t have a chance to see.”

Even after winning the most votes in Maryland history, Moore has a challenging term that will require legislative Democrats to pacify the past eight years under a Republican governor. “The challenge is really not having an opposition target,” said former Maryland GOP Chairman Bruce Poole. “They’ve got a legislature packed with Democrats who’ve been throwing around ideas for the last eight years and a lot of money on the table. Unfortunately, no matter how much money you have, you’re probably not going to get what people want.

Moore – who has previously described himself as socially and fiscally conservative – has promised to create an ambitious program to raise wages, train workers and reduce child poverty, tapping the resources of a country he calls “asset-rich and strategy-poor.” On Thursday, the governor’s first day in office, he released $69 million in appropriated spending that had been in place for a long time under his predecessor, Larry Hogan.

“It’s been a pretty improbable journey,” said Moore, gazing out onto downtown Baltimore from the window in the purple transition office, the shade control cord wrapped tightly around his fist. Moore talked about education and encouraged early primary polls that showed him in the single digits with middle name ID. “I have a great opportunity right now in front of me to do what I’ve been doing all along,” Moore said.

The best way to understand Moore’s adult life is to understand his childhood. His book “The Other Wes Moore” presents Moore’s upbringing apart from another Black man named Wes Moore, a Baltimore native serving a life sentence for his role in the murder of a police officer in a jewelry store robbery. The relationship blossomed after the politician read about another Wes Moore crime in the newspaper. Moore has received some pushback for apparently falsely suggesting in the open copy that he, too, was born and raised in Baltimore. Moore’s mother only moved there while Moore was away at school, but Moore has spent much of his adulthood in the Charm City.

Moore’s story begins in Takoma Park, Maryland. Her father, Westley Moore Sr., is a radio news anchor who met her mother, Joy, while at work. When Moore was 3 years old, his father died suddenly of a rare viral infection that caused his throat to swell and close. After that, Moore’s mother moved the 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 in the Dutch Reformed Church.

Joy struggles to raise Moore and her two sisters in a neighborhood swept up in drugs and violence. “Even the name of the road we walked down – Gun Hill Road – suggested blood sport,” Moore wrote. His mother was able to enroll Moore in a prestigious Bronx private school, but Moore’s behavior became so bad that he was eventually sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Moore credits the school with unleashing his leadership capacity – an experience seemingly denied to another Wes Moore.

“I spent decades as an 11-year-old kid with handcuffs on my wrist,” Moore said, a line he reopened at Wednesday’s inauguration. “And now I have a few more days left as governor. I’m playing with the house money right now, you know what I mean?”

Moore attended junior high school in Valley Forge before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University. He went on to study at Oxford University, earned a White House scholarship, became an investment banker, deployed overseas as captain of 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 tapped Moore to host her show, “Beyond Belief,” on the Own Network. “I believe in you,” Winfrey told Moore in front of thousands on Wednesday. “I believe in your vision. I believe in your leadership.”

Moore also runs the Robinhood Foundation, New York’s largest anti-poverty organization, from Baltimore, where five years ago, Moore and his wife, Dawn, who worked for the previous Democratic administration in Annapolis, bought an 8,000-square-foot house for $2.3 million. .

Presidential buzz has followed Moore since Valley Forge. A former classmate told the Washington Post that he hopes to see Moore in the White House one day. In addition, the former Mayor of Baltimore Kurt Schmoke, an early mentor, did not immediately encourage this path, urging Moore to apply for a Rhodes scholarship and enter public service.

“These are people who have committed to fighting the world in some aspect, whether they run for office or own a large company that will employ many people and make life better for others,” Schmoke, now the president of the University. of Baltimore, told HuffPost. “I’m not sure he’s interested in elected office. I really thought he would, at some point, be involved in public service. But I strongly encourage 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 said at the beginning of his career were depressing. But he couldn’t stay depressed,” Schmoke said. “You know, losing your father, not doing well in school, having to live with your grandparents – for some people, those negative factors can’t be overcome.”

If there is a criticism for “Another Wes Moore,” it is that Moore does not draw his own conclusions about why one Wes Moore thrived while the other did not. However, observers of Moore’s life point to her college-educated mother, who worked tirelessly with a strong support system after her husband’s death. Moore credits his mother with inspiring him to enter public service.

“I just saw how my mother went through all the spiraling of this struggle that for years was just really unfair, so I knew this was a problem that I wanted to work on in my life,” said Moore. “Where the military really helped me was teaching me to be a leader. In the military, they deliberately put you in charge of small things and then you have a sense of responsibility that you’ve graduated from, which I really needed because you know it’s an addiction. I wanted that. I wanted to be someone who, at the end of the day, had to make a difficult decision and then wake up in the morning and make another decision.

Moore’s inauguration in Annapolis drew thousands of people who wanted to witness the historic swearing in of Maryland’s first Black governor. “We have lived in Maryland the majority of my life, and it is good to see the diversity, change, and progress Maryland has made,” said Edward Martin, a retired educator who told me he is Moore’s father’s cousin.

“This is historic,” said Lorna Forde, a 64-year-old businesswoman. “The first black person to be elected governor is amazing. There are so many people of color, and it’s not always positive. To do an event like this, where you have someone who looks like you in the highest office in the land – no feeling can describe it.