They said all those same things in Wisconsin. You never know until you try.
The media says a lot of things. Wisconsin is not Maryland. They’ve not had a state GOP in a perpetual minority. These are two completely different states with different mindsets. If Maryland didn’t have the federal government “cancer” eating into it, it would be a vastly different state today. The same thing is happening in NoVA, enough to tip the state balance there. If the Northern VA counties and PG, Montgomery & Charles on the MD side were merged with DC into their own state, both VA & MD would become securely GOP.