A Tale of Two Weeks

It was a good week for Maryland. 

Last week we learned that for the third month in a row the State of Maryland has posted positive job gains.  In May, Maryland employers created 11,200 jobs - bringing the total number of jobs created in our state to more than 38,000 jobs created since February.  While there is still more work to do, this positive job creation trend is encouraging and another sign that we are turning the corner and starting to come out of this national recession. 

The State of Maryland has retained jobs better than all but four other states, our unemployment rate remains almost 25% below the national average, and because of the difficult decisions made by Governor O'Malley, Maryland is one of only eight states to maintain its Triple A bond rating.  

A Very Bad Week for Bob Ehrlich:

It was a very bad week for Bob Ehrlich, as a new radio ad released by the O'Malley-Brown campaign exposed Bob Ehrlich's lobbying efforts on behalf of Big Oil.  Bob Ehrlich may not like the ad, but the facts are clear and Bob Ehrlich has a long record of putting the interests of Big Oil ahead of Maryland families.

The ad uses Bob Ehrlich's own words when he bragged to Dan Rodricks on WYPR radio about peddling influence and making a lot of money.  In his own words, Bob Ehrlich said it, "Life is good. We made money. For us, a lot of money."

After being voted out of office in 2006, Bob Ehrlich went to work for Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, a law & lobbying firm that represents Big Oil interests including the American Petroleum Institute, CITGO, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil.  And after 80,000 gallons of heating oil spilled into the ground in South Baltimore, Bob Ehrlich's office represented the oil company, not Maryland families impacted by the spill. 

Bob Ehrlich takes issue with the ad, but his own Womble Carlyle website states that their government affairs division is "led by Governor Ehrlich" and that its "Maryland team has the access to ensure that our clients' interests are represented in legislative debates at the state, local and federal levels."

Bob Ehrlich may not like the radio ad exposing his record standing with Big Oil and special interests, but it's his record, not ours. 

Speaking of the Radio, a Very Bad Week for Bob Ehrlich:

As the new ad began to air exposing Bob Ehrlich's long-record supporting Big Oil and the Baltimore Sun exposed Bob Ehrlich's non-transit plan as a job and economic development killer, Bob Ehrlich seemed to come unhinged during his weekly radio show on Saturday.

We're not sure exactly what happened, but the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik described it this way "they [callers] certainly were effective in getting under Ehrlich's skin and seriously disrupting the usual pro-Ehrlich, propagandist flow of the program. In fact, a clearly agitated Ehrlich ordered the show's producer at one point Saturday to cut one of the callers off altogether -- a no-no in the world of responsible talk radio."