I am a little worried that Hogan will move to Virginia and run against Kaine in 2024 and be able to win.
There’s an outside shot of a Hogan win in MD-SEN in 2022 if (big if) he remains extremely popular (he’ll need his approval ratings to stay above 60% and maybe even 65%)
and 2022 is a massive GOP wave because the Democratic trifecta completely overplayed its hand, but even then it would be an uphill battle. He would absolutely
not win a Senate race in VA, however (he wouldn’t make it through the R primary + the carpetbagger ads would write themselves [I realize it’s VA, but still, it wouldn’t help] + VA/MD are very different states politically anyway).
And I am also worried that suburban Richmond or Virginia Beach GOP moderates will be able to defeat Justin Fairfax if he is the 2021 gubernatorial nominee.
Those areas are arguably even less "elastic" than many parts of Northern Virginia, so no, not going to happen. I don’t expect Fairfax to win the Democratic nomination, but even if he somehow does, there’s no chance he loses statewide, even if the margin
might be a little underwhelming (6-7 points or so). The path "just isn’t there" for Republicans in VA anymore, no matter how fiercely some insist that it is.
There seems to be this misconception that VA is a GA-type situation where it’s only one giant metropolitan area which has caused the Republican Party's collapse while the rest of the state has gotten more R or stayed as R as before but that’s not actually the case, especially when you look at the leftward shift in other urban areas (especially Hampton Roads and Richmond) since the Bush years — this is actually an underrated reason why Republicans have sometimes gotten close but not across the finish line during the Obama years.