(Baltimore) Wes Moore arrives with the confident step of a general returning to headquarters to prepare for the next operation. The ex-soldier’s gaze is intense. His biceps overflow from a polo shirt already stretched by muscle worked with a knife.
It’s Friday and the very charismatic governor of Maryland is at his second press conference of the week in the port of Baltimore to take stock of the situation.
Outside the Transport Police building, the catastrophic scene appears before us, as if frozen a month later. The huge ship is still loaded with thousands of containers, still stuck in the middle of the Patapsco River. Although 1,300 tons of steel were removed, the collapsed pillars of the Francis Scott Key bridge held the boat in place. A segment of the asphalt road is laid loosely on the front of the container ship, like a piece of plasticine.
“We pray for the victims and their families,” said the governor, accompanied by the military, the Coast Guard, the mayor of Baltimore and representatives of the business community.
Of the six workers presumed dead, two bodies have yet to be found, even though 380 people work at the site seven days a week.
A journalist asks him if there is one thing he would have liked to do differently. He’s taking a break. “I think about the families of the victims all the time,” he says, and it rings true. Then he praises the work of the soldiers responsible for this very complicated operation. “I’m so proud to be a Marylander, proud to be an American. »
For Wes Moore, elected governor of Maryland in 2022, the bridge accident is a first big test, in this state of six million people which is not short of challenges.
Moore succeeded the very popular Larry Hogan, an anti-Trump Republican governor (a rare breed!). Hogan had reached the two-term limit and is now trying to be his party’s nominee for Senate.
The 45-year-old is the only African-American governor in all 50 states. Only the third to be elected governor in the United States in the entire history of the country. After 15 months in power, he maintains an approval rate around 60%.
He does not have the notoriety of Gavin Newsom, governor of California, but he is nonetheless one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party. Some are even annoyed by his notoriety and the star effect that overshadows Biden – whom he obviously supports.
PHOTO JULIA NIKHINSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland and Joe Biden, President of the United States
“We said from day one that we were going to communicate, and we intend to overcommunicate,” he told reporters.
A little behind, Erykah St. Louis listens attentively. The Montreal native is the director of its digital communications. A key person in its “overcommunication” strategy on different platforms.
The six victims were Latin American, and it is no coincidence that the governor begins with a few sentences in Spanish. “I can say that I have something to do with it, coming from Montreal, it’s something that seemed obvious to me,” this native of Dollard-des-Ormeaux told me.
Before entering politics, Moore had already made a name for himself across the country by publishing an autobiography at the age of 31, The Other Wes Moore, where he compares his exceptional destiny to that of another African-American born like him in the Baltimore area, but fell into drug consumption and trafficking, and imprisoned for murder. Governor Moore, born in Maryland, was raised by a single mother in the Bronx after his father died when he was a young child. He was admitted to Johns Hopkins University, then was a Rhodes Scholar, studied at Oxford, joined the Army, fought in Afghanistan, and headed a New York philanthropic organization for several years – Robin Hood – of which he changed the mission and the social discourse.
His memoirs did not aim to show that with will we can accomplish anything, but rather that luck, chance, and race have an excessive influence on individual destiny in his country. Last year, in a long interview with the Vogue (where he was treated to portraits of Annie Leibovitz), he explained. “Luck should not be a prerequisite,” he said, “but unfortunately, as a society, we have become too comfortable with the idea of exceptions. This allows us to sleep well. I share a degree of complicity in this: my unique story is a kind of guarantee. »
Erykah St. Louis, trained in graphic communications and international studies, worked in Maryland for a religious humanitarian aid organization. She didn’t miss the opportunity to join Moore’s team when he took power.
“My parents, like his, are from the Caribbean and I recognize myself in his story, his social involvement resonates with me. He wants to transform society, to enhance everyone. » Lieutenant Governor Aruna Miller is a native of India, and the first immigrant to hold this position. “She’s an inspiration to all women,” she says enthusiastically.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Erykah St.Louis.
Many have drawn parallels between Moore and Obama and not only because he is on the list of “first blacks” in an important political position. His personal history, his studies, his eloquence, his charisma make the comparison (too) easy. But St. Louis is annoyed: “He has his own history, his own style, he is very different. »
Another subject of annoyance and distraction: in a Democratic Party in search of a successor and rejuvenation, with an 81-year-old presidential candidate, there is no shortage of supporters who want to accelerate the destiny of Governor Moore and send him onto the stage national.
“It might be tempting to think about that, but really, we have so much to do in Maryland, we have to stay the course, especially with what just happened. »
Because the governor has promised a lot: social housing, reduction in the incarceration rate of young African-American men, elimination of poverty among children…
PHOTO BRIAN WITTE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wes Moore
He is credited with getting Maryland the new FBI headquarters (even though the campaign had been in the works for a long time). But what was most important to him was creating a public service program for young people: a year of paid civic work for those 18 and over, to spark community engagement.
It released funds for businesses affected by the port closure and the unemployed. And after the large and complex cleaning of the river, which has been carried out without any injuries so far, the bridge will have to be rebuilt.
In this fairly centrist state, he promotes “transpartisanship”, a delicate exercise in these times. On Friday, he insisted on naming the Republican representatives in Congress who support funding the reconstruction of the bridge – including that of Oklahoma having experienced the 1995 attack on a federal building and basically “against democracy”.
He is part of the “Disagree Better” movement, which involves bringing political opponents into dialogue. In particular, he was seen having a civil exchange with Republican Governor Spencer Cox of Utah.
The reconstruction of the Key Bridge promises to be a long one. But I have the impression that when the first car crosses this bridge, the political future of this extraordinary governor will not be over…