When the Governor Shotguns a Beer (or Maybe a Spiked Iced Tea)

It is an adage in politics that voters want to elect politicians they can see themselves sharing a beer with.

If the politician in question is Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, it turns out, voters can even shotgun one with him.

Mr. Moore showed up on Sunday at a Baltimore Ravens tailgate, surrounded by exuberant football fans, and quickly demonstrated the sort of skills that are often picked up in college, but not in class.

“We do this for the best team this planet has ever created, the Baltimore Ravens,” one man shouted, emphasizing his point with an expletive.

The group of men punctured their cans — the governor’s actually appeared to be spiked iced tea, rather than beer — and drained them in unison. Mr. Moore flattened his empty, barehanded, and high-fived the others. And a video capturing the moment ricocheted, approvingly, across the online sports world.

It didn’t help the Ravens, who lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s A.F.C. championship game.

But it did bolster Mr. Moore’s reputation as a Ravens superfan, and underscored the type of likability that helped pull Mr. Moore, a political newcomer, ahead in a close 2022 Democratic primary for governor in Maryland and earned him a wide lead in the general election.

It’s not the first time a politician has indulged on camera in so-called shotgunning — drinking from a hole cut in the side of the can and then popping the top so the contents rush out. Representative Jared Goldman, Democrat of Maine, shotgunned a Bud Light at a homecoming football game at the University of Maine in October. And in 2015, then-Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, posted photos of her shotgunning a beer on Twitter after mentioning that she had done so in her memoir “Plenty Ladylike.”

Results can vary: In 2009, then-Representative Dan Maffei, Democrat of New York, was urged during an interview with Stephen Colbert to shotgun a beer with the comedian to demonstrate that he could be “cool.” Mr. Maffei failed miserably, the contents of his can draining out before he could figure out what to do with it.