Gov. Wes Moore’s advisors once cautioned him against championing housing, the first-term Democrat told a crowd in October, warning him that the politics were far too complicated to tangle with.

But last year the administration bet big and it paid off. They would often boast of the ambitious, three-pronged housing package that cut through gridlock and became law following the 2024 legislative session.

National Democrats took notice, and in the lead-up to last year’s presidential election, they leaned hard on the Moore administration to talk up their housing policy wins at fundraisers.

“We really built a collection and a coalition that was big enough for everyone to feel involved,” Moore said at Impact Maryland, a conference at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore hosted by The Baltimore Banner. And, he said, they did it with bipartisan support.

Now, coming out of another 90-day General Assembly session marked by very different vibes, Maryland’s pro-housing lobby has struck another tone.

“It was a challenging session,” state housing Secretary Jake Day said last week.

Facing “dual twin storms” from Maryland’s internal budget woes and the uncertainty coming out of President Donald Trump’s Washington, Day said housing and other priorities “fell victim to that turbulence.”

While some pieces of the administration’s agenda made it over the finish line, the governor’s pet housing bill sputtered and stalled as the clock ticked down.

Called the Housing for Jobs Act, the bill would have made it more difficult for local jurisdictions to arbitrarily dismantle housing and development projects. Resistance to more homebuilding, Day and other pro-housing advocates say, helps keep costs impenetrably high.

“I can’t emphasize enough how critical it is for the Maryland economy,” said Claudia Wilson Randall, the executive director of the Community Development Network of Maryland, who testified in favor of the measure. “We lack economic mobility and have not done enough to invest in the areas we have control in.”

But state lawmakers held reservations about the bill and feared stripping too much veto power away from local governments. With just days left in the session, the bill underwent a dramatic overhaul, giving way to a significantly slimmed-down proposal called the Housing Development Act. The new proposal sought to assign housing production targets to each jurisdiction and lock in a project’s development rights for five years.

But even the diet version of the bill failed to rally enough support, and the Moore administration — seeing the development rights clause amended out — ultimately let it die.

Day, in an interview, took aim at the “opposition” — including the influential Maryland Association of Counties, a lobbying organization that represents local governments — for prioritizing personal politics over housing affordability.

“Power seems to be the only thing that matters instead of affecting, positively, the thing that is troubling most of us,” Day said.

He called the amended bill “meaningless.”

Michael Sanderson, MACo’s executive director, said the administration’s proposal failed to do enough proper vetting in advance.

In an early April email, Sanderson also accused the bill’s supporters of choosing to invent “talking points” instead of passing a compromise.

Polling shows widespread support among Marylanders for lowering home and rent costs, and voters have told pollsters that they want to see state and local government get more involved in finding solutions.

Day said removing barriers and adding to the housing supply would continue to be a focus next session, when Moore has said he will be seeking reelection.

“We don’t have the luxury to leave off the table anything that will make a difference in Maryland families’ lives,” Day said. “But it’s hard to have a big conversation when you’re watching a tsunami.”