Is bipartisanship a lost art, or have we simply grown too disillusioned with establishment leaders to recognize a bridge-builder when we see one?
Near sacred ground in Oklahoma City — blocks from the site of the deadliest act of domestic terrorism on American soil, perpetrated by an American veteran radicalized by white supremacist ideology and antigovernment extremism — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) was selected by his peers to become the first Black governor to lead the 118-year-old National Governors Association.
The same week, federal regulators voted to gut protections safeguarding historic sites like Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, and a sitting congresswoman introduced a resolution to eliminate the Congressional Black Caucus. Outgoing Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) handed the gavel to 47-year-old Moore — a moment 118 years in the making, arriving in a week that made clear how much is still unmade.
For over an hour, The Root sat down with Governor Moore, unconditionally, to talk about a year spent trying to elect three more Black governors; the real story behind being publicly disinvited — then re-invited — to a White House dinner by a President Trump who called him “not worthy,” which turns out to be more complicated than the headlines suggested and his reaction to a Johns Hopkins researcher, from his own alma mater, detained by ICE and recently released.
The Weight of the Gavel, Earned Not Given
“This is something where the other governors decide,” Governor Moore told The Root. “Who do we want to lead us in this moment? And in many ways it was like when I ran for governor, where there was not a person or a party boss or a political party that said, you know what, Wes Moore! The dude who had never run for office before in his life, the person who did not come from a political background, the person who had never spent time doing this politics thing.”
To his ardent supporters, becoming the first Black chair of this 118-year-old bipartisan institution — chosen by Democratic and Republican governors alike, in the most hyperpartisan era most of us have lived through — is no small thing. Still, you have to wonder what bipartisanship costs a Democratic standard-bearer right now, at a moment when the demand to lead the opposition to what a growing number of Americans see as the Trump administration’s lawlessness has never been higher.
The country agrees on very little these days, but Americans are converging on this: politics itself has become dangerous. The latest Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll found that 1 in 10 Americans now name politics as the greatest risk to their daily safety — up from 6% in both 2021 and 2023, and ten times the global average across 140 countries. When the political climate itself registers as a threat, the standard for what opposition leadership owes people gets higher, not lower. Will Moore’s brand of bipartisanship meet that standard in the way a fresh wave of democratic socialist primary winners have pledged to?
The Mullin Paradox
Moore’s first interview as NGA chair, exclusively with The Root, revealed a man more careful than his critics assume and more combative than his viral question and answer with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested. He didn’t attend Trump’s White House dinner with the nation’s governors, as widely assumed — he went for business, not the “Kiki,” in his words. He takes the president’s private calls and still calls his policies “unforgivable.” He praised Mullin for showing up, in the same breath he called ICE’s tactics “barbaric.” The question isn’t whether Moore is compromised. It’s whether that kind of careful, compartmentalized bipartisanship is even legible to a Black electorate — and an increasingly organized opposition — that’s watching for capitulation, not nuance, in a moment that doesn’t reward the distinction.
Moore was not supposed to have a good week with a Trump administration Cabinet secretary. And yet here he was, hours after taking the gavel, telling reporters he was “glad” Mullin had shown up to face the nation’s governors — both Democrats and Republicans — in person.
“You cannot have conversations with people who don’t show up,” Moore said, “and so the fact that he’s willing to come out and spend time with the governors is important, and it’s very, very meaningful.”
Asked directly about ICE’s conduct a few hours after his exchange with Mullin at the NGA summer meeting, Moore said: “My opposition to ICE is very well known… ICE is now our nation’s largest law enforcement agency. ICE is bigger than the FBI. ICE is bigger than the ATF. ICE is bigger than the DEA. And what are they doing? They’re using their resources to arrest 5-year-olds. They’re using their resources to arrest mothers in pickup lines, picking their kids up from school.”
Pressed on Dr. Fatima Ameaka — the Johns Hopkins researcher detained by ICE at BWI Airport days before this interview, despite a valid work authorization through 2029 and a pending asylum case — Moore didn’t hedge. “I think it’s barbaric,” he said, “and they know that. Tell me how that made us safer.”
Respect the person who shows up. Hold no respect for what the agency does once they leave the room. It’s coherent on its own terms. Whether it survives contact with an electorate that has stopped extending the benefit of the doubt is a different question.
The White House Dinner That Wasn’t, and the Calls Nobody Knew About
“Well, actually, I did not go to the dinner,” Moore said, when asked to walk through the White Houses disinvitation-reinvitation saga plainly. He went to the White House on separate business — meetings, he said, meant to “advance the issues of the people of my state.” Then, the line that will likely outlive the rest of the interview: “I will always work with anyone. I’m very clear. I will work with anyone, but I will bow to no one. But I’m not there to Kiki. You know what I mean? I’m not there because, you know, I heard you have a new chef.”
What complicates that line is what he volunteered next: he and the president talk. Not staff-to-staff. Him and Trump, directly, more than once.
“The president will occasionally call or reach out,” Moore said, “and oftentimes when he does, it actually turns out to be a very nice conversation, where he’s very complimentary… and then, you know, days later, he’ll turn around and tweet about you about how you’re the worst thing on planet Earth.”
That’s not a contradiction Moore is hiding from — it’s the whole strategy. Back-channel access could be a real asset for a governor trying to run a fifty-state, bipartisan institution. It could also be worth nothing at all, if his “warmth with power” approach never turns into anything Moore’s base or the people he says he’s fighting for can actually feel.
Voter Protection
Asked what NGA will actually do on ballot access under his chairmanship, Moore reached for the Constitution before he reached for a policy rollout. “The federal government’s not in charge of elections, contrary to what the President of the United States thinks,” he said. “That’s not just my opinion, that’s the Constitution. Oklahoma is in charge of Oklahoma’s elections. Georgia’s in charge of Georgia’s elections. Maryland’s in charge of Maryland’s elections.” In his own state, he noted, not even the governor controls outcomes — an independent election commission does.
It is a careful, constitutionally sound answer. Then, The Root asked the question that actually tests it: is NGA prepared to act, in any capacity, if a president attempts to suspend or delay U.S. elections?
Moore didn’t deflect. “This conversation has definitely come up amongst governors,” he said. “I think that the NGA can and must be prepared to act if we are watching the Constitution of the United States being violated… simply because the President of the United States wants to try to rig an election.”
This may be the clearest definition in this entire interview of what bipartisanship is actually for.
Building the Bench: Results as the Only Ideology
Moore has spent this cycle campaigning for Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Aaron Ford in Nevada, and Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina — two of those three races genuine uphill fights. Ask him whether he’s building a bench of governors or a bench of future national candidates, and he corrects the premise before he answers: “I’m building a bench of partners who believe in good governance.”
The “long shot” framing doesn’t bother him. He treats it as a credential. “My race was an uphill battle,” he said. “I was polling at 1% when I first got in this race… I don’t look for sure bets… My criteria is not, are you up in polling by 15%? Because I don’t think that’s courageous. I want people who are going to be courageous in their work.”
Notably, he doesn’t reach for ideology or Black political representation as his primary argument. He reaches for receipts: from $63 million in SNAP funding backfilled from Maryland’s own reserves when the administration tried to disrupt it, to a “Feds to Eds” program that absorbed some of the more than 31,000 federal workers laid off in Maryland — more than in any other state, and legislation banning book bans. Every data point argues the same thing: that competent execution, not partisan identity, is the actual product he’s selling — to voters now, and implicitly, beyond 2026.
“He said it, he meant it.” That’s how Moore wants his peers, his supporters, and the next National Governor’s Association chair to remember his tenure. Easier said than done in a political environment where the base wants less nuance and more of a street fighter than the job requires. Sporting cowboy boots that he compared to Black Panther’s self-molding suit, Governor Moore seems — for now — willing to take that bet.
