I know that, but the base alone in MD can’t get it done. Reach out and find common ground with those Dems from areas where you won and drive a wedge between them and the Dem leadership. Hogan obviously doesn’t want to be another one-termer like Ehrlich.
In hostile areas, you have to drive different plays from those where you have a majority favorable to you. It’s why you can’t apply Texas or Wisconsin or Ohio to Maryland. This is only the 3rd Republican elected Governor there in 56 years (in fact, there has only been 7 GOP Governors there in the state’s history, and only 1 has ever been reelected, Ted McKeldin, and he was a left-winger).
They said all those same things in Wisconsin. You never know until you try.