Dan Cox has a steep path, from small-town official to Trump-backed governor's candidate

Before he became the party-splitting nominee to be Maryland’s next governor, and before he made his name trying to impeach the current one, Republican Dan Cox’s political imprint was on a welcome sign in the small Eastern Shore town of Secretary.

As the commission president there, Cox had the idea to add “For God and Freedom” on the bottom of the sign welcoming people to the Dorchester County town of about 500. It was a small, simple addition, but one that people who know Cox said represents who he is and perhaps how he might govern if elected.

With three years experience in the state legislature, and a short legislative record, his leadership position in Secretary is less scrutinized, but no less important for understanding the man who’s leaped to the top of the Republican ticket with the help of former President Donald Trump.

“Dan is someone who you can count on to uphold what he says he stands for,” said John McCullough Jr., a town commissioner in Secretary when Cox was president of the commission from 2007 to 2009.

Those who worked with Cox then and those who are in the state legislature with him now paint a picture of someone with strong convictions, unafraid to bring personal views to the public square, while leadership of the opposing party characterizes him as "not working from the same set of facts." His opponent in the general election, Democratic nominee Wes Moore, even went so far as to call him a "threat" during an Aug. 25 rally.

Those characterizations may prove difficult to surmount for someone with strong convictions, especially in a state where President Joe Biden received more than twice as many votes as then-President Trump during the 2020 election. The state's former Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich Jr., who had only one term, has backed Cox, but the two-term current Republican Gov. Larry Hogan has said he will not support Cox in the general.

“If he has any intention of winning this race, (Cox) has to pivot hard,” said Tim Magrath, executive director of the Beall Institute for Public Affairs at Frostburg State University, noting his connection to Trump plays well in parts of Western Maryland, but lacks a statewide appeal.

Cox’s convictions have not always contributed to political or policy victories either. He was not backed up by his party’s elected representatives when he tried to impeachHogan earlier this year for the governor’s pandemic policies. He was not backed up by the courts when he claimed in July that the 2020 election was “stolen.” With twice as many registered Democrats in the state as Republicans, Cox faces an uphill road in his pursuit of the governorship.

With the backing of Trump, the little-known lawyer and former collegiate track and field athlete catapulted to victory in the July gubernatorial primary election, defeating Kelly Schulz, a former secretary of commerce in the Hogan administration. Cox received 52 percent of the vote in a contest where less than 30 percent of registered Republicans voted.

The view from Secretary, Maryland

According to Cox’s biography, he worked as a high school teacher at Walkersville Christian Family Schools in Frederick County from 1995 to 2005. A subsequent law degree from the televangelist Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach and move to Maryland’s Eastern Shore brought him into politics in Dorchester County, home to both the abolitionist Harriet Tubman and many of Maryland’s crab houses.

Cox invited McCullough to join him in the county’s Republican Central Committee and the two would go on to serve on the town commission together in Secretary.

Susan Dukes, the town’s former mayor who worked with Cox when he served as president of the town commission from 2007 to 2009, described Cox as a “very honest person in what he believes in.”

“His beliefs never waver,” she said. “He’s always been like that.”

McCullough, a contractor who left politics in 2012 and the Republican Party altogether last year, recalled it was Cox’s idea to put “For God and Freedom” on the bottom of the town sign, an outgrowth of how Cox's convictions stepped into politics. Today, the top of his campaign website for governor reads: "Restore freedom for the free state."

“It doesn’t surprise me that he has gotten to the place where he has because that’s the way he feels he’s been called to make a difference,” McCullough said. “There’s always been that drive in him to get to more and more positions of influence.”Cox did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this article.

In 2016, Cox ran for Congress in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, which includes Walkersville where he taught. Jamie Raskin defeated Cox in the general election, receiving 60 percent of the vote.

In the next election, in 2018, Cox won a seat in Frederick County’s delegation to the State House, where he served on the House Judiciary Committee.

Some of his most high-profile actions as a delegate were tweets. In one, Cox used a hashtag associated with the conspiracy theory group QAnon, leading Hogan to call the one-term state delegate “a QAnon wackjob” the day after the former president endorsed Cox last November.

Another tweet from Cox called then-Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” on Jan. 6, 2021, for refusing to overturn the results of the election during Pence's ceremonial role in the Electoral College system.

Cox, who arranged for buses to and attended then-President Trump’s Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, said he “regrets” the tweet’s poor choice of words in a letter last year to legislative leadership and the ethics committee.

In August, as the Republican nominee, he told supporters in an email he would use state police and the Maryland Guard to "stand against all rogue actions of this out of control tyrannical Biden administration" after the FBI conducted a search on the premises of the former president's Florida property. He also has opposed a move by the State Board of Elections to allow for the early counting of mail-in ballots, and wavered when asked to commit to accepting election results.

The State House's view on Dan Cox

Fellow Republican Del. Trent Kittleman, who represents Carroll and Howard counties and backed Schulz in the primary, said she agrees with Cox on many issues, including crime policy and school choice.

“He spoke well on the floor, and he spoke from the heart,” Kittleman said. “People sometimes got upset by what he said but then, at times, that’s what the Republicans are there for.”

Kittleman, the deputy minority whip and delegate since 2015, said in a July interview she will support Cox in November.

Republican Del. Reid Novotny, representing Howard and Carroll counties, did not endorse in the primary and says he is focused on his race for state Senate, withholding any endorsement during a July 21 interview on election administration and security at the State House. Maryland Senate Minority Leader Bryan Simonaire, an Anne Arundel County Republican, took a similar stance this month, declining to endorse his party's candidate for governor. Novotny also clearly expressed his view on candidates who question the security of elections.

“If a candidate gets up there and continuously says, ‘We don’t have secure elections,’" Novotny said, “that erodes the trust in our system.”

House Democratic Majority Leader Eric Luedtke, who represents Montgomery County, said of Cox: “He’s just not working from the same set of facts.”

Baltimore County Republican Del. Ric Metzgar was upset with the governor’s characterization of Cox and was one of only two of the 188 state legislators to back Cox in the primary.

“I saw the same qualities in Dan Cox as I did in Gov. Hogan very early on,” said Metzgar, calling Cox straightforward. “He’ll bring some enthusiasm, much needed enthusiasm, into the Republican Party.”

Del. Susan Krebs, a Republican representing Carroll County, who’s retiring this year after nearly 20 years in the legislature, backed Schulz in the primary. Krebs said while she agrees with Cox on issues, including on addressing crime and on school policies, she did not appreciate his attempt to impeach Hogan, which failed in March of this year.

She saw the influence of the former president and the current governor on her constituents during the primary.

“I sent a letter out to thousands of people,” said Krebs, “saying here’s why I support Kelly Schulz. And some of the comments I got back in the last two weeks were because of (Schulz') affiliation with Hogan. They kept calling her a RINO.”

The term RINO — Republican in Name Only — was used multiple times in a July 12 statement released by the former president, using the derogatoryterm to describe Hogan and Schulz while endorsing Cox and calling him a "terrific guy." Krebs said she replied to each constituent stating Schulz is not a "RINO" and promoting her policies.

“I’m hoping (for the general election) that people focus on what (the candidates’) policy objectives are and not just who supports who,” she said.

The view from Frederick County

Rick Weldon, president and CEO of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce, shared a similar view about national endorsements as Krebs.

“It doesn’t matter what (Cox) thinks about Donald Trump,” said Weldon, a former state delegate who represented Frederick and Washington counties from 2003 to 2009. Of the Democratic nominee Wes Moore, Weldon said: “Who cares that Oprah (Winfrey) supported him? What’s he going to do to address the bottleneck on I-270?”

“How many kids are we going to jam into a classroom?” said Weldon, an unaffiliated voter who left the Republican Party in 2008 after being asked by party leadership to oppose a bill for purely political reasons. “Those are the issues that are pertinent to a voter, and frankly, reflective of either of those two men, Wes Moore or Dan Cox’s ability to govern our state.”

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Dan Cox, once a small town official, now aims for Maryland governor