Gov. Wes Moore, 45, earned a coveted speaking slot on the third night of the Democratic Convention speaking right after iconic media personality Oprah Winfrey.
It comes just two years after running and winning his first-ever race for public office when Moore became Maryland’s governor in 2023 with the endorsement of former President Barack Obama.
Moore started his remarks by remembering the call he got from Vice President Kamala Harris after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore earlier this year that killed six workers.
He talked about how he was on the wrong track as a kid and found handcuffs on his wrists at the age of 11 and is now the first black governor of Maryland.
Despite being relatively new to public office, the speech on Wednesday isn’t Moore’s first time making remarks on the Democratic National Convention stage.
Moore delivered remarks at the DNC in the summer of 2007 supporting Barack Obama for the party’s nomination for what ultimately became the former president’s first term starting in 2008.
Just over a year into his term as governor, Moore was faced with a major test when a ship collided with a major support beam of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore and led to its collapse.
‘Six Marylanders who had been on the bridge in the middle of the night fixing potholes lost their lives. And one of the first phone calls I got that morning, started with these three words: ‘Gov., it’s Kamala,’ Moore recalled on stage in Chicago on Wednesday night.
‘Making America great doesn’t mean telling people, ‘you’re not wanted,’ Moore continued.
‘Making America great means saying the ambitions of this country wouldn’t be complete without your help,’ he said. ‘It’s the legacy of those workers who fixed potholes on a bridge while we slept. Who were born in a different country but knew that America was big enough for them too.’
While he did serve as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s White House fellow starting in February 2006 during President George W. Bush’s administration, Moore’s background is primarily in business and media and his foray into politics is relatively new.
In 2013, More insisted he had ‘no interest’ in running for public office and wanted to instead focus on his business and volunteer work.
He served in the United States Army starting in 1998 and ended his service in 2014. During his service, Moore was activated after the September 11 terrorist attacks and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006.
Moore attained the rank of Captain while serving in the 82nd Airborne Division.
Speaking on the DNC stage, Moore took a shot at Trump dodging the draft with claims of bone spurs.
‘Now, I joined the Army when I was 17. In fact, I was too young to sign the paperwork. I had to ask my mom to sign the paperwork for me because I don’t have bone spurs,’ the governor quipped.
‘I led soldiers in combat in Afghanistan,’ he continued. ‘And my training taught me that you never learn anything about anyone when times are easy. You learn everything you need to know about somebody when times are hard and when the temperature gets turned up.’
‘And America, I saw that Kamala Harris is the right one to lead in this moment first hand.’
Moore served as CEO of the charitable Robin Hood Foundation from 2017 to 2021, during which time he moved his family to New York City as he worked to address problems related to poverty in the largest U.S. city.
Moore founded television production company Omari Productions in 2010 and created content for networks like PBS, HBO, NBC and the Oprah Winfrey Network.
In the 2023 gubernatorial election in Maryland, Moore, a Democrat, replaced term-limited Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican.
Moore is the son of a broadcast journalist and media professional.
His mother was the daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Jamaica. His father died when Moore was only three-years-old, leading his mom to uproot him and his two sisters from Maryland to move to the New York City borough of The Bronx to live with her parents.
When his grades declined and he became involved in petty theft, Moore’s mother enrolled him in Valley Forge Military Academy and College.
And in 1998, he graduated with an associate degree and completed the requirements needed to enter the U.S. Army’s early commissioning program. He was appointed a second lieutenant of Military Intelligence in the Army Reserve.
Moore graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2001 with a bachelors in international relations and economics. He was also a wide receiver for the college’s football team for two seasons.
And he got his masters degree in international relations as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. His thesis was on the Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere.
Showing an early interest in political life, Moore interned in 1998 and 1999 for Baltimore’s then-Mayor Kurt Schmoke and interned at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Tom Ridge in the Bush Jr. administration.
Moore married Dawn Flythe in 2007 and the couple share two children – Mia, 13, and James, 10 – and a dog appropriately named, Tucker Balti.
As part of his career in television, Moore pulled from his own history in the U.S. service and produced a three-part series called Coming Back with Wes Moore for PBS, which followed the lives and experiences of veterans integrating back into civilian society.
He also produced All the Difference, a PBS documentary released in September 2016 that followed the lives and experiences of two black men from the South Side of Chicago from high school, through college and after.
That same month, Moore launched Future City, an interview-based talk show with Baltimore’s WYPR station.
In 2013, the same year Moore said he didn’t intend to run for public office, Attorney General Doug Gansler claimed he considered the Maryland businessman as a running mate in the 2014 gubernatorial election.
Moore appeared to open up more to the prospects of a political career in 2015, following the Baltimore protests in the wake of the police killing of Freddie Gray.
Moore said in April 2015 that the riots in the wake of Gray’s death were a ‘long time coming.’
He called on Baltimore to ‘seize this moment to address systemic problems and grow’ amidst increasing focus on law enforcement’s unequal treatment against American minorities and following the onset of the national Black Lives Matter movement.
Moore attended the funeral for Gray and on the eighth anniversary of his death in April posted a tweet calling his death a ‘turning point not just those who knew Gray personally, but the entire city.’
In February 2017, then-Gov. Hogan nominated Moore to serve on the University System of Maryland Board of Regents.
Moore was named to serve on the transition team of Baltimore mayor-elect Brandon Scott in October 2020.
And in January 2021, Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates Adrienne Jones consulted with Moore to craft her ‘Black agenda.’