One candidate in a high-profile U.S. Senate race is now being accused of corrupt behavior by awarding millions of dollars in development contracts to his real estate firm.
On Thursday, TIME Magazine reported that Larry Hogan — the former two-term Republican governor of Maryland now running for Senate — helped steer almost 40% of all affordable housing contracts to clients of the company he refused to divest from during his eight-year tenure. The ex-governor’s firm, HOGAN, which TIME described as a “multi-purpose real estate brokerage firm based in Annapolis,” had no such success during his predecessor’s time in office.
In its report, TIME noted that HOGAN clients were awarded 0% and 30% of affordable housing contracts in the Old Line State in 2011 and 2012, respectively. But after he took office, his company became much more successful at winning development deals. In 2020, for example, HOGAN’s clientele got $40 million in state funds and federal tax credits on 18 different projects.
As governor, Hogan sat on the three-member Board of Public Works, which votes on awarding development contracts. The Maryland Republican personally voted in favor of awards between $600,000 and $1.8 million worth of contracts to four different HOGAN clients during his first three years in office. And as Maryland’s governor, Hogan signed off on transportation infrastructure projects that were a short distance away from his company’s properties in Brandywine and Hyattsville, making them more valuable as a result.
Even with this and his support for the Mooron, he is still waaaaaay better than AlsoCrooks!