I'm Jonathan K. Parton, welcome to K-PART. On November 8th, the people of Maryland made history.

The Democratic candidate for governor roared to victory with more than 64 percent of the vote,

twice that of his Republican opponent. Thus, making my guest today the first African-American

elected governor of Maryland, only the third in U.S. history, his name, Governor Wes Moore.

In this conversation, first recorded for Washington Post Live on November 30th,

before his inauguration on January 18th, Moore and I talked about a lot of things,

the state of national politics, his plan for his first 100 days, the most particularly his victory

and how that weighs on him. I'm honored and humbled by the fact that I am the first black governor

in the history of this state, only the third in this country, but I also know that's not the

assignment, and I also know that's not why they voted for me. They didn't vote for me because they

wanted me to make history. They voted for me because they wanted me to address the issues that

were impacting their lives. So, how'd you do it? How'd you win? Why did you win?

I think we won because we win everywhere, and it was interesting because there are people who

would tell us, well, you need to go to this part of the state or to go to that part of the state,

you need X percentage of votes out of Baltimore City. My answer was always simple when they

said, who do you need to win? I said everyone, and that's exactly how we, not just how we planned

on winning. That's how we won. If you look at the vote margin, we won by the largest vote margin

that we've seen in Maryland gubernatory elections in 40 years. We ended up winning not only in Baltimore

City in Prince George's County, but we ended up winning in Western Maryland. We ended up winning

in the Eastern Shore. We won not just winning with Democrats, but also Independents, and taking

a huge swath of Republicans. So, I think we were able to show that this was not just a campaign

philosophy. The whole idea of leave no one behind, which I learned when I was in the army,

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