John Delaney, the first Democrat to announce his candidacy for 2020, greets a voter. (Photo by Edward Kimmel)

Politicos in Maryland thought that Congressman John Delaney was eying the governor’s race in 2018 and looking to unseat popular Governor Larry Hogan.

But Delaney has a different executive office in mind. He announced today in a Washington Post editorial that he’s running for president in 2020. The moderate Democrat writes that he has “an original approach to governing and economic policy that can put us on a different course.”

Before joining Congress in 2012, Delaney cofounded two publicly traded companies: Health Care Financial Partners and CapitalSource. “I was raised in a blue-collar family; my dad was a union electrician, and my parents didn’t attend college. Because of a great education and a helping hand from others, I was fortunate enough to become a successful entrepreneur,” he writes.

He says his experience makes him uniquely qualified to bridge the gap. “Our government is hamstrung by excessive partisanship. We are letting critical opportunities to improve the country pass us by. And we are not even talking about the most important thing: the future,” Delaney writes.

But you can be forgiven for hearing the name John Delaney and thinking, “Who?” Compilations of potential 2020 candidates generally haven’t included the man who turned out to be the first person to throw his hat in the ring.

Even so, there have been hints that Delaney was looking at the Oval Office. MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on air in May that Delaney was opening an office in Iowa, which the congressman’s aides denied at the time.

“I know what I’m getting into,” Delaney told The Baltimore Sun. “I want to do all the hard work to earn people’s trust, to listen to them and I feel like as I run this campaign over the next couple of years people will get to know me.”

He will not run for reelection for Congress in 2018.