Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is expected to be one of the leading Democratic candidates for president in the upcoming 2028 election. Here’s a look at everything you need to know about the first term governor, who was elected as Maryland’s governor in 2022.
Life Background: Moore was born in Tacoma Park, Maryland, which is a planned commuter suburb in Montgomery County, but he spent his first few years in a low-income family in West Baltimore.
His father was a radio and TV journalist who tragically passed away from acute epiglottis when Moore was only 3 years old.
That left Moore’s family in a difficult situation, and his mother decided to move her three children to New York City to live with the three children’s grandparents in the Bronx.
In his New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book, One Name, Two Fates, Moore said he “struggled” to stay on a positive course in life until he enrolled in Valley Forge Military School for high school and junior college, which he credits for help instilling a sense of discipline and purpose. He thrived and graduated Phi Theta Kappa, soon becoming a second lieutenant of Military Intelligence in the Army Reserve.
While serving in the Amy Reserve’s military intelligence unit, he attended Johns Hopkins University where he played wide receiver for the football team (don’t sleep on that for electability, because his familiarity and comfort with football culture and a diverse set of fans is something that the Democratic party could use, electorally).
While at Hopkins, he also served an internship at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Tom Ridge during George W. Bush’s administration, ultimately graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in international relations and economics.
University Upshot: Moore graduated from a world-class institution with a 3.8 GPA or higher, an academic degree in fairly brainy coursework, and was selected for a prestigious extracurricular activity as an intern under the purview of a Republican presidential administration.
Oh, and played football. Of course Hopkins’ football program isn’t in the SEC, but if you’re a sports fan and curious, he averaged 25.2 yards per catch with two touchdowns as a senior and would have played for the Hopkins basketball program, as well, if not for an injury before he joined the football team.
He told PressBox that he learned a lot of lessons from his wide receiver’s coach, who was also a trader for Deutsche Bank (keep that in mind for later), and told him that, despite Moore’s relative lack of football experience, Moore could “spend more time in the film room… and just outwork” everyone else.
Why do I mention the thing about football?
Well, the Democratic party is increasingly seen as culturally elitist (read Andrew Marantz on this in The New Yorker), and even though football is ubiquitous in America, it’s hard to imagine too many elite Democratic contenders who can talk about film rooms, running slants, and the finer things of football culture that are electorally useful when you’re trying to appeal to a broad coalition of voters.
Plenty of candidates have elite resumes, but it’s important to highlight the more unique things that can shape them into a political force.
After college, Moore was selected to be a Rhodes Scholar at Wolfson College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford — notable for its accomplished alumni which include Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, and a number of accomplished physicists and mathematicians.
His thesis was Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere.
It’s not a fait accompli that graduate theses would become a campaign issue, but in this day and age, quite possibly. Describing a certain strain of Islam as “radical” might be used against Moore by a more leftist opponent in a Democratic primary, but it’s hard to see the Democratic party shifting farther to the left in the event of Kamala Harris’ loss — in part, from her difficulty backpedaling her more progressive positions in the 2020 campaign for president.
Back to Moore’s bio.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he was activated and deployed to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in parachute assault into hostile areas. The 82nd has a storied history, and famously participated in Operation Market Garden, Battle of the Bulge, and Operation Overlord in World War 2.
Moore became a captain while serving with the division, and spearheaded the American strategic support plan for the Afghan Reconciliation Program which aimed to unite former insurgents with the new government.
Two years later, he once again served in George W. Bush’s administration – this time as White House Fellow and Special Assistant of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while just 27 years old, where he focused on structuring and procuring complex transactions in emerging markets across the globe. During this time, he also worked as an investment banker with Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets Division in New York.
In a 2006 interview with CSPAN, Moore said he used his knowledge from his time at Oxford to help Tom Ridge and the then-named Office of Homeland Security, researching Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda.
In the same interview, he gave a hint as to his earliest political views, via a quote from The Baltimore Sun, in which Moore said, “I have a little bit of Democrat in me, I have a little bit of Republican in me, but fundamentally I’m me.”
Moore expanded further in his interview with CSPAN, explaining, “I’ve never liked being put in a box…I’ve been able to walk many different paths and see life through many different lenses…. I’m a social moderate, I’m a strong fiscal conservative, I’m a military officer, I’m an investment banker, and I just happen to also be a registered Democrat.” (The 6:30 mark).
He then talked about how the United States needed to get rid of the “partisan divide” in the country, and pointed to Colin Powell as one of his heroes, and the one who encouraged him to seek a life in public service and not just investment banking.
After leaving his fellowship at the White House, he worked as an investment banker for Deutsche Bank, then at Citibank, and started picking up recognition in regional and national papers as someone to watch, making Crain’s New York Business’ “40 under 40 Rising Stars.”
But it was the aforementioned best-selling book, The Other Wes Moore, that really put him on the national map, and he started showing up everywhere, with appearances on “Meet the Press,” “Oprah,” “Tavis Smiley,” “The View,” etc.,
Moore then branched out into other initiatives, including founding a company providing services to support students as they transitioned to college, producing documentaries, and spending four years as CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, which raised over $650 million to help fight poverty in New York City and elsewhere through food pantries, disaster relief, schools, and other things.
And long before his personal political career began, he gave a speech at Barack Obama’s 2008 DNC convention, which didn’t lead to an immediate foray into politics, but served as an example of just how much attention his story and work was getting.
Here’s video of the speech. Notice that he was introduced as “Captain Wes Moore,” and spoke of his grandparents giving him a Bible. Keep both things in mind as you think about his 2028 general election prospects and how he might be positioned to help Democrats in desperate need of stopping the bleed with young men, minorities, and the working class.
But 2008 still didn’t represent Moore’s personal entry into politics; instead, he focused on business and charitable endeavors, while keeping an eye on a potential future in politics.
His pseudo-foray into the political realm came in 2020 when Baltimore’s incoming mayor tapped him to serve on his transition team, and he soon began consulting with elected political figures on various issues.
His formal foray came in 2021 when he decided to run for governor of Maryland as a Democrat, after popular two-term Republican Larry Hogan was termed out.
If that seems like a rather big jump (private industry to governor), well, it was and it wasn’t.
Moore already had national exposure, thanks to his book. And he was a significant figure in the Maryland scene, both through his work in business and various apolitical causes.
Thus, he entered as one of the three leading candidates for the Democratic nomination, as facing off against the much more politically-polished Tom Perez, who had long-time national political presence. Perez began his career with Sen. Teddy Kennedy, then served as a member of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s administrations. In other words, he was no pushover.
Moore also faced long-time state of Maryland political heavy, Peter Franchot, who was actually the favorite, coming in.
In other words, this wasn’t a gimme primary.
Perez won the endorsements of numerous labor groups in Maryland, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and finally, the biggest of them all — Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, while Franchot picked up scores of endorsements from political groups and Maryland congressional members.
For his part, Moore ran as a relative political outsider, on the slogan, “Leave no one behind,” and picked up a few high-profile endorsements of his own with Oprah Winfrey and two-time national Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, supporting his bid.
During the hotly contested race, he was described as “center-left” by the Washington Post.
The Democratic primary was the closest since 1966 (you can see the New York Times county-by-county breakdown here), and Moore squeaked out a narrow 2% margin over Perez and 11% margin over Peter Franchot.
Perez did well in the DC suburb of Montgomery County (biggest county in MD), but Moore’s strength in the Baltimore-area counties, along with running up a big margin in Prince George County (which borders the eastern area of DC) was enough to give him the win.
With the Democratic nomination in-hand, Moore wrested control of the governor’s mansion back for the Democrats by defeating Donald Trump-endorsed Dan Cox in the general election 64%-32%, which was the biggest landslide in a Maryland gubernatorial election in 36 years.
Moore did it by flipping six Hogan counties from red to blue, and improving on Democratic margins by a significant amount in the largest counties.
TERM AS GOVERNOR: I wish I could be more in-depth here (that will come as his term progresses, as well as his possible national campaign), but if you stop by Moore’s Wikipedia page, it’ll give you a good sense of his record on the biggies: crime, policing, development, education, the environment, guns, health care, immigration, social issues and local concerns over transportation.
However, I’ll give you a brief look at some notable things that will inevitably crop up in a national electoral race.
First, as far as I’m aware, he wasn’t part of the “defund the police” movement, and in fact, worked on aggressively hiring policing officers, while at the same time recognizing the need for a more balanced, community approach to policing. A complementary thing.
In a 2024 voter’s guide, he also voiced support for giving convicted felons the right to vote, implementing “restorative justice programs as an alternative to incarceration,” and opposing private companies running prisons and qualified immunity for police officers.
He has also supported longer sentences for repeat violent offenders, and if I could reductively describe his policy on crime it would be centrist with some left thrown in there.
As for education, he has supported universal pre-K, opposed the expansion of charter schools, the national rightwing effort to ban books, and the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to reverse affirmative action.
Along with some of those more hot-topic issues, he’s introduced and signed into law a number of efforts to encourage educational opportunities of all kinds in the state including a “service year option” in school.
His record on the environment is liberal – at least in theory – but as recently as July 2024, progressives in the state were complaining that he hadn’t followed through sufficiently on his agenda, and it’s also worth noting that while he doesn’t have the kind of national, newsy soundbites on fracking that plagued Kamala Harris in 2024, Maryland’s Republican governor Larry Hogan said in 2017 that he would support a ban on fracking in Maryland. So it’s quite possible something of the kind exists for Moore.
Having said that, in a national primary campaign, he’ll certainly be given the opportunity to answer the question head-on, and it will be revealing to see what he says, especially in light of Democrats’ need to retake the Blue Wall.
His record on gun policy is liberal and he notably supported a bill seeking to ban the sale and possession of privately made firearms in the state. In 2023, he signed a slew of gun control measures.
In a 2023 interview with Johns Hopkins Magazine, Moore pushed for a moderate approach to the issue of immigration, saying, “Yes, you have to secure the borders, and at the same time, you’ve got to make sure you’re creating pathways for individuals who are here,” lamenting the “binary” that national politics has often devolved into.
Put it this way, there’s not much (yet) in his record or rhetoric that either the left could complain about in a primary election or Republicans in a general election.
But a national campaign would offer some of the binary moments that’s often demanded of candidates.
His record on the Middle East has also struck a fairly moderate tone, having voiced support for a two-state solution in 2022 and making it clear, following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks, that he stands with Israel, its right to exist, to defend itself, while “unequivocally” condemning Hamas.
At the same time, he later supported a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but continued striking his centrist tone by condemning a “vigil for Gaza” event on October 7, 2024, noting that it was an “inappropriate date.”
Moore noted:
“Terrorists target civilians, and that’s what Hamas did a year ago on Oct. 7. And that’s what that day should be remembered as — a heinous terrorist attack on Israel that took innocent lives.”
As on other issues, Moore has avoided taking a position that might make him a tough swallow in a presidential general election, while also opening the door to potential criticism by the most left-wing factions of the Democratic party.
Again, that’s the interesting trade-off and question for Democrats in the 2028 presidential primary.
To that score, he’s taken a number of positions on social issues that are pleasing to the Democratic base but something he’ll be further quizzed on in a national Democratic primary: his support for the Trans Health Equality Act, which would require state Medicaid to cover sex-change operations, hormone therapy, and a number of other gender-affirming measures. The law passed in 2024, and was signed by Moore.
He’s also supported a number of measures to protect the right to abortion in Maryland, particularly following Dobbs.
On fiscal matters, he’s had to confront a Maryland economy which is slow-growth and high deficit. In a 2023 interview with the Washington Post, he called his state’s economy “lazy” and that, “our commitment to being bold and our commitment to being fiscally responsible do not have to be at odds with one another.”
To that end, he’s called task forces to address the state’s stagnant growth, but if he’s going to run for president on something other than his personality, background, and position on social issues, it would seem he’s got to deliver some kind of record of strong economic growth.
After all, that’s the talking point a governor can bring that a member of Congress can’t. The opportunity and burden is on Moore.
As for taxes, he opposed hikes during his first year as governor, and has stated that, “any conversation about taxes, for me, is going to have a very high bar” and emphasized the need for “fiscal discipline.”
A recent move, however, suggested he’s moved to the Left on tax policy, and even drew national attention from a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2025, titled “The Californication of Maryland.”
Moore’s tax plan would raise capital gains taxes, and others taxes, on wealthy residents, and there’s legitimate worry that some of Maryland’s highest income residents might flee the state for more tax-friendly havens.
It’s risky because headlines about residents leaving blue states for red states don’t help win general elections. It’s something that other top Democratic contenders like CA Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are going to have to contend with.
Further, according to the conservative Cato Institute, there’s a risk that small businesses in Maryland will be penalized, and it’s more difficult to explain away a withering of small businesses than it is some wealthy residents jumping state lines.
Of course, the proposal isn’t law yet, and who knows whether it will prove effective or not in resolving the budget deficit, but again, a governor’s record is absolutely vital once he or she steps onto the national stage.
If you’ve overseen job growth, you’ve got a talking point. No matter how you got there, ideologically. If you’ve overseen a falling economy, you’ve got a headache.
So Moore has to be careful there.
ELECTABILITY:
This is where Moore really enters the top tier. Watch the BET video below and you can see the charisma, likability, sense of optimism, and energy he brings to the table.
Democrats’ 2024 “joy” campaign seemed somewhat manufactured as the ticket front-runner Kamala Harris struggled to express much joy in interviews and townhalls.
But Moore exudes joy and optimism.
Never underestimate likability. No matter record.
Further, Moore has a dream background for Democrats trying to be competitive again in key groups. He has an illustrious military career, success in the private sector, and a tough childhood that certainly helps his ability to connect with the working class.
And don’t underestimate the football experience. Seriously. That kind of common touch is exactly what the Democratic party needs right now, and it’s what gives Moore and AOC such potential.
Nevertheless, Moore remains a 2028 darkhorse. He won’t be the first name on the mind of Democratic donors and activists.
But if he runs, he’s got a shot to be a candidate who can win back the working class, stop the bleed with minority voters, and reel in business-minded Democrats like hedge fund titan Bill Ackman who fled the party in 2024.
As of now, Wes Moore might be on tier two of 2028 presidential lists. But it’s easy to see how he could wind up being in a tier of his own, atop a Democratic ticket.
Again, watch the video below.
