What Does Chris Van Hollen Actually Want?
In 1960, a 34-year-old Republican businessman from Norristown, Pennsylvania, named Dick Schweiker, did something you are not supposed to do. He ran in a primary against a sitting Republican congressman, John Lafore, and he beat him. Six years later he thought about running for governor, and the state party talked him out of it, in favor of the sitting lieutenant governor, Raymond Shafer. Schweiker never became governor. He never became lieutenant governor either. He became a United States senator, Ronald Reagan’s running mate in 1976, and Reagan’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. All of it started because he had the nerve to threaten a popular incumbent, and the party learned it had to deal with him.
I tell you that story because Chris Van Hollen is doing the same thing right now, in the open, and everybody in Maryland can watch it happen. He is telling the country he is “very actively kicking the tires” on a run for president in 2028. He is telling the Senate he is not after Chuck Schumer’s job. And he is telling Schumer he does not have his vote. So what does Chris Van Hollen actually want?
