George Clooney picks ‘spectacular’ Democrat who could lead party
The Hollywood actor critical in persuading Joe Biden to drop out last year suggested there was one governor ‘levitating’ above his party colleagues.
With the Democratic Party’s favourability at a record low, the search is on for a game-changing leader - and Wes Moore, governor of Maryland, is “levitating” above the rest of the field, according to George Clooney.
Moore, 46, has a “spectacular” track record in the army, raising huge funds while running a charity that helps the poor and dealing with the Baltimore bridge disaster last year, the actor said.
Clooney has become something of a Democratic Party kingmaker after plunging a dagger into Joe Biden’s re-election campaign with a scathing article in July declaring the 82-year-old president was “not going to win”. Biden withdrew from the presidential race later that same month.
In contrast, Moore, a former Rhodes scholar who studied at Wolfson College, Oxford, can unite and reinvigorate the Democrats who are struggling to reconnect with voters after the 2024 election when they lost the White House and Congress.
The party’s favourability was put at 29 per cent by polling for CNN, a record low dating back to 1992.
“There’s one person in particular I think is spectacular,” Clooney told CNN when asked whom he was watching as a future leader during an interview about his Broadway role in Good Night, and Good Luck, where he plays the TV journalist Edward R Murrow. Clooney also praised Andy Beshear, the governor of his home state of Kentucky, and Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, but focused on Moore.
“I think he [Moore] is a guy that has handled this [bridge collapse] tragedy in Baltimore beautifully,” he said. “He does two tours of duty in Afghanistan - active duty. He speaks beautifully. He’s smart. He ran a hedge fund - the Robin Hood Foundation. He’s a proper leader. We say Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line ... I think he could be someone we could all join in behind. We have to find somebody rather soon.”
Moore became Maryland’s first black governor in 2023 and his immediate electoral decision will be whether to run for a second term in 2026.
He has long been heralded as potentially the next Barack Obama but has yet to make a bid for the national spotlight and regularly rebuffs questions about his presidential ambitions.
“No, I’ve got the best job around and I love the momentum we’re actually seeing in the state of Maryland,” he told Bloomberg in January. He made light of the speculation at a dinner in Washington this month, saying: “If I actually wanted to be president, I wouldn’t do any of this. Instead, I would take my case directly to the people who are in charge of our democracy: the Kremlin.”
Clooney, 63, said it was his “civic duty” to tell Biden to drop out of the election last year, saying that Democrats “not telling the truth” about the president’s health compelled him to write an article for The New York Times after Biden’s disastrous TV debate with Donald Trump.
The piece prompted criticism from both sides, with some on the left resisting calls for a new Democratic presidential candidate and others taking issue with Clooney intervening as a Hollywood celebrity.
“I don’t know if it was brave [to write the piece],” Clooney told CNN. “It was a civic duty because I found that people on my side of the street - you know, I’m a Democrat in Kentucky so I get it - when I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth I thought that it was time to.”
Biden dropped out 11 days later and nominated his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to stand in his place. Clooney praised Biden for stepping aside, saying he was “saving democracy once again” and the “most selfless” president since George Washington. But he told CNN he would have preferred a primary contest to choose the presidential candidate.
“I think we have some really good governors and I would have liked to have seen an expedited quick primary,” he said. “I think we would have sustained it and she [Harris] may have come out on top.”
The Times
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