Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, announced on Sunday that he would not run for president in 2024.
Mr. Hogan, a moderate Republican who has been a frequent critic of former President Donald J. Trump, said in a New York Times opinion essay and in an interview with CBS News’s Robert Costa that he had seriously considered a campaign but concluded that running would not be productive.
In 2016, Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination over a mass of primary competitors who splintered the support of voters who opposed him. No candidate was able to consolidate anti-Trump voters, and Mr. Hogan said he did not want to contribute to a similar situation in 2024.
“Right now, you have, you know, Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field — they’re soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention,” he told Mr. Costa in an interview for “Face the Nation,” referring to Mr. Trump, who has formally entered the race, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not but is widely expected to. “And then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits, and the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up.”
In his Times essay, he was explicit about the implications of such a large field.
“To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr. Trump,” he wrote. “There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. The stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
Mr. Hogan spent eight years as governor of Maryland, a blue state where he was popular despite his party. In weighing a presidential run, he said on multiple occasions that he thought his record could be an example for the Republican Party, which has moved sharply to the right and has lost or fallen short of expectations in all three election cycles since Mr. Trump was inaugurated.
Last year, Mr. Hogan backed a number of Republican candidates for governor and Congress who had stood up to the former president.
But while his brand of Republicanism appealed across the aisle in a liberal state like Maryland, and he argued it could have appealed in a general election for president, there has been little indication of an appetite for it in a Republican primary.
For now, the primary field remains small. Mr. Trump and Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served under him as United Nations ambassador, are the only two candidates with experience in state or federal elected office. But the field is likely to grow in the coming months, with Mr. DeSantis and several other nationally known Republicans considering campaigns.
