Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says several Southern statewide races are competitive for Democrats nine days from the midterms, and concedes his party made a generational mistake by starving the region of early investment.
Appearing Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” the Democratic governor told co-anchor Jonathan Karl that contests once treated as unreachable are now live, and that Democrats own the failure to build there sooner.
Karl asked about movement in Florida, Mississippi, and South Carolina and whether Democrats erred by holding back cash and organization. Moore did not hedge.
“They are,” Moore told Karl. “They are in play, and we have made mistakes in not investing earlier. And I don't even think just earlier in this cycle -- I think earlier in this generation.”
That is a blunt admission from a rising Democratic governor: for years the party largely wrote off large stretches of the South, then discovered competitiveness late in a cycle when the calendar is nearly closed.
Moore tied the underinvestment to his own biography and to candidates he is boosting. He noted he is the third African American ever elected governor in U.S. history and argued that outcome reflected chronic neglect, not a shortage of qualified contenders.
“I am the third African American ever elected governor in the history of the United States of America. That's not because I'm the third African American ever qualified. That's because oftentimes there's been chronic underinvestment.”
He pointed to Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, and Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina as figures who “would be history-making candidates.” Then he drew a harder line.
“The wonderful thing that I feel about Gina or Keisha [Lance Bottoms in Georgia] or, or Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina is that they would be history-making candidates, but making history is not the assignment. The assignment is to win.”
Moore said the real job is delivering health care, ending child poverty, and raising wages, and that only winners can do that for people in their states. He also said his own campaign “personally invested” in Hinojosa’s race. The ABC report did not detail the amount or form of that support.
ABC reported that polls for top-of-the-ticket races in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and Alaska have shown Democratic candidates tied with or leading Republican contenders, and that more recent polling has found statewide races in Florida, South Carolina, and Mississippi closer than expected. The piece did not name pollsters, dates, or margins.
Those same battlegrounds have already drawn late energy from both parties, including tight Senate polling marks in Texas and Alaska that left control of the chamber unresolved heading into the final stretch.
Moore cast Democratic voters as larger than a fired-up base. “I think it's not just that the base is, is energized. I think right now the base is [enlarged], and that is, that is important,” he said, citing what he is seeing while campaigning for re-election in Maryland and for other candidates elsewhere.
He framed the moment as a search for leaders who will “push back against this corruption from [President] Donald Trump” and “push forward for a new direction.” That is Moore’s language, offered on national television with early voting underway and Election Day nine days out.
Republicans have not been idle in the same map. Trump has stayed on the trail to firm up GOP incumbents, including a push into Alaska to boost Sen. Dan Sullivan before voters finalize the midterm picture.
Florida has seen its own late Democratic scramble, with party leaders enlisting Bill Clinton for a closing drive in the governor’s race, the kind of end-of-cycle surge that follows years of thinner investment, exactly the pattern Moore criticized.
Karl pressed Moore on the presidential speculation already surrounding 2028. He noted Moore had been clear for the past year that he was not running, then asked whether that had changed.
Moore said no. “Yeah, I wouldn't be running for re-election if I was thinking about anything else, to be clear.” He added: “My entire focus right now is on the people of Maryland.”
Asked for quick takes on other Democrats whose names surface for 2028, Moore offered one-line praise: Sen. Mark Kelly as a “remarkable veteran,” former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as “remarkably competent,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a “really solid advocate,” former Vice President Kamala Harris as a “really decent person and great vice president,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom as a “strong leader,” and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a “passionate advocate.”
None of that changes the immediate math. Moore’s own admission is that Democrats underinvested across a generation in states they now call “in play,” and that history-making biographies are not a substitute for winning and governing.
The political reality beneath the interview is simple. Democrats spent years treating much of the South as unwinnable terrain, then discovered tighter polls when the race was nearly over. Moore said the quiet part out loud: the neglect was a choice, and it cost them.
That choice has coincided with a broader erosion of Democratic support among the voters who decide close elections. Even progressive leaders have had to acknowledge the party lost working-class voters to Trump on jobs and trade, a collapse that no last-minute Southern spending spree fully repairs.
Moore wants credit for naming the assignment as winning and delivering. Fair enough. Voters still judge the product, borders, prices, schools, safety, and whether leaders fix problems or narrate them.
Nine days out, a Democratic governor is left arguing that races in Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, and beyond might finally be competitive because his party waited too long to show up. That is not a strategy triumph. It is a repair bill arriving after the damage.
Parties that abandon whole regions do not get to act surprised when the map turns cold, or when a late scramble cannot buy back the time they wasted.