Republican field for open US Senate seat in Maryland starts to take shape

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3 p.m. Nov. 24, 2023, to correct the spelling of Republican U.S. Sen. J. Glenn Beall Jr.'s last name.

The latest entrant to the Republican field for Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat has no record running for elected office, but when asked what issues he has heard while campaigning across the state, he pointed to four topics with a precision that bespoke his background.

The issues “are the economy, public safety or crime, education and national security,” said retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. John Teichert, who announced his candidacy on Oct. 2. The military man has not before been on the ballot, but for a party which struggled last year statewide, some Republicans are hoping that the former fighter pilot can provide a lift.

“He has served us well,” said state Sen. Johnny Ray Salling, R-Baltimore County, also a veteran. “Having the leadership skills that he has, I believe he could be a great leader in the U.S. Senate.”

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With more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans in Maryland, Carin Robinson, associate professor of political science at Hood College in Frederick, called the campaign “an uphill climb” for a Republican candidate. “It would help to be named Larry Hogan,” she said, referring to the Republican governor who finished his two terms in January, and has since said that he did not have “any interest” in being in the U.S. Senate.

Two other Maryland Republicans so far with interest are: Lorie Friend, a Garrett County nurse, and Robin Ficker, a disbarred attorney. Both have filed with the Federal Elections Commission and were on Republican ballots last year. The nascent political candidate Teichert, a former senior U.S. defense official in Iraq during both the Biden and Trump administrations, sat for an interview in a Silver Spring café to discuss the state, his past, policies, experience and the path ahead.

‘Squinting with your ears’

Before he formally announced his candidacy last month, Teichert was on the road in Maryland. For two months, he was out to tell others why he was running, and the retired general said during a Nov. 10 interview that three years of what he called "American weakness" led to the “chaos in the world today.”

Citing a Wall Street Journal poll from earlier this year, Teichert said American citizens were showing “less allegiance to religion, community, family (and) patriotism.”

Meeting primarily with Republican Party county chairs in his preliminary travels, Teichert told the party leaders who he was, and says he reciprocated by doing something that a former boss once told him is called, “squinting with your ears,” just going around and listening.

“It really struck me that those issues, the four big ones, are the same for what people care about in Maryland,” said Teichert, citing the economy, public safety or crime, education and national security. “Everyone kept coming back to those.”

He said he has heard those four while talking to Marylanders since launching his campaign, too.

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‘You do not walk away’

To start to understand Teichert though, the road leads back to the oath he took joining the military as a teenager to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

“I fully believe that that oath that I took as a 17-year-old was for a lifetime,” said Teichert, sitting in the Silver Spring café after a campaign event in Bethesda. The decision he made, following in the footsteps of his father (a Coast Guard veteran), has shaped him personally and professionally.

He took the oath in Cambridge, Mass., through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at MIT next to a female cadet whom he later married, and who has been his wife of 25 years.

Fascinated by military aviation since a movie piqued his interest as a child in Port Angeles, Wash., Teichert has flown 38 different aircraft types, according to his military biography. Most of the last nine years, however, with military assignments in the D.C.-area, he, his wife, and three children have been grounded in Maryland, including two years (2016-2018) as commander at Joint Base Andrews, the Prince George’s County airfield often used by presidents.

A December 2021 comment from a mentee, another military pilot, changed Teichert’s military trajectory. At a change of command ceremony, Teichert said his mentee pointed to the American flag and said: “If that starts to falter, you do not walk away. You engage.”

Less than six months after leaving Baghdad to return to the Pentagon as the assistant deputy under secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs, Teichert heard the words that he says propelled him out of the military and into a run for public office.

“The best way that I could engage,” said Teichert, “was to get out of the military, and to pursue some other way to support and defend. And for this stage of my life, the best way that I could make an impact is to run for U.S. Senate.”

Tough road for Republican candidates in Maryland

His fellow Republican candidate, Lorie Friend, has run for this office before. She finished second in a field of 10 candidates in the Republican primary last year, trailing the top vote getter in the Senate primary by about 15,000 votes.

The winner of that contest went on to lose in the general election to Maryland Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the incumbent, by more than 30 points and over half a million votes.

Ficker, a former Montgomery County state delegate and military veteran, finished last year’s gubernatorial primary election with less than 3% of the vote. The winner of that contest also went on to lose in the general election, again by more than 30 points and over half a million votes, to Democrat Wes Moore.

Hood College’s Robinson said the state’s parties are not of equal strength right now, attributing that in part to national trends.

“This isn’t the ideal for a healthy democracy, and healthy statewide debate and deliberation,” she said. “Even if you are a diehard Democrat in the state, you really want to see a decent Republican Party (in the) hope that it will improve our society.”

Robinson cited then-Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the Republican candidate in 2006, who ran the last time the Senate seat was open with no incumbent.

“He had name recognition,” she said, “very active in the Republican Party nationally, and even with that name recognition, he struggled.”

Steele won 18 of Maryland’s 23 counties, but still lost by 10 points or around 178,000 votes to then-Maryland Congressman Ben Cardin, D-3, whose decision not to run for reelection earlier this year made next year’s U.S. Senate election an open contest.

Despite the anecdote of Teichert’s mentee and the December 2021 timeline, the close of Cardin’s nearly six-decade career in public service may have cracked the door for the first-time political candidate to think he could do something not seen in Maryland since Republican U.S. Sen. J. Glenn Beall Jr. completed his term in 1977.

“I’m not running against an incumbent,” Teichert said. “It is possible for a Republican, a collaborative conservative, to win in Maryland.”

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Military vets with no experience in elected office

Part of the discussion on the Democratic side is about experience. One Democratic U.S. Senate candidate has served in Congress, another as a county executive. Teichert, aiming for the highest legislative office in the state, has neither in his background, just his oath.

So too did the man who became Maryland’s governor earlier this year, Democrat Wes Moore.

Moore never served in elected office prior to his inauguration in January. He, like Teichert, joined the military at 17 years old.

One comparison, which Teichert made himself, was not to Moore, the man, but to Moore’s position. Speaking about his two years as commander at Joint Base Andrews, Teichert discussed interacting with local, state and federal officials before delineating his job’s various roles.

“You also have this entire milieu or environment that includes schools on base, homes on base, recreational facilities, stores on base, utilities,” he said, “so essentially you’re a governor and a mission commander, all at the same time.”

Teichert called the current governor a “charismatic individual,” but with projected structural state budget deficits, the test pilot and Anne Arundel County resident brought up a policy point.

The Republican said he is “curious to see how (Moore) ultimately deals with those (budgetary) challenges and whether he sides with the (legislative Democratic) supermajority or whether he sides with people of Maryland that are looking for more balance.”

Experience changing the culture

Jason Korman met Teichert in the context of changing a culture. He is the CEO of Gapingvoid Culture Design Group, a boutique-firm based in Miami that works with entities, including the U.S. Department of Defense, to change organizational culture.

Soon after leaving Andrews Air Force Base, Teichert was on assignment at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Korman and his company were brought on base to help Teichert turn things around. Both men say that happened in Teichert’s time there in late 2018 and 2019.

Korman called Teichert “probably the best military leader I’ve ever met in my life” and Teichert, who joined Korman’s organization earlier this year in an advisory role, said of the CEO: “He helped me turn around a bureaucracy.”

The Republican candidate pointed to other large organizations in need of turning around.

“Look at the state school report card and it’s abysmal, not just in Prince George’s County or Baltimore City, but in a lot of places throughout the state,” said Teichert, a public-school parent.

Statewide, only 25% of third- through eighth-grade students were proficient in math in 2022-23, up from just 22% the previous year.

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He pointed to parental involvement as a key to student success, calling for “high standards, accountability and local control.”

But Teichert is not running for school board, he’s running for Senate. And to get there, where his overseas experience could be an asset, he will first need to rise above treacherous national political waters and turn the tide away from the party’s results in the state’s recent past.

‘He could just reach out to the people …’

Candace Turitto, program director of the Applied Political Analytics program at the University of Maryland, College Park, said the state’s U.S. Senate campaign will be “likely mirroring national issues.”

One of the national issues is the legal cases involving the immediate past United States president.

“At this point in time, the Republican Party is associated with Donald Trump,” said Hood College’s Robinson, “and Donald Trump is not popular in our state.”

Statewide in Maryland, the Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate lost last year by 30 points and over 600,000 votes. In the state’s most populous county (Montgomery), the Republican candidate lost the general election last year by almost 60 points and more than 200,000 votes.

With the state’s recent results and voter registration rolls stacked against the Republican candidate, what can a single person do to have a different outcome?

“He could just reach out to the people, and not to party,” said state Sen. Johnny Ray Salling, R-Baltimore County. “Knowing their concerns and reasoning with them, I believe that’s how I did it in my district.”

Speaking from Montgomery County’s Silver Spring, Teichert spoke about launching his Senate campaign in Baltimore City and finishing his campaign’s first day in Prince George’s County.

“By being able to get to where the people are, I have a chance to communicate to them,” he said.

“They get to see me, a credible Republican candidate, and they get to understand that I have spent my entire life serving something greater than myself,” the military veteran said. “Leadership is selfless.”

Teichert did not specifically reference the former president, one of only two in the country’s 200-plus year history not to serve in either elected office or the military before becoming president. (The other, Herbert Hoover, worked as U.S. Secretary of Commerce before becoming president.)

Calling serving people the “core element of (his) leadership,” Teichert said: “I am going to where the people are to ‘squint with my ears’ and to share my vision.”

Maryland’s primary Election Day is scheduled for Tuesday, May 14, 2024. The General Election is scheduled for Nov. 5, 2024.

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 Salisbury Daily Times: US Senate race: Republican field in Maryland starts to take shape