Parties shift focus to Ehrlich, O'Malley race

By Andrew A. Green
Sun reporter

September 13, 2006

With the primaries over, both parties are now focused on a battle that has been brewing for four years to settle the question of whether Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s election was a fluke or the beginning of a permanent realignment in state government.

With millions to spend on the race and the nearly undivided attention of the electorate, he and Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley are now poised to battle day by day on every issue, whether it be the management of city schools or the administration of elections.

Ehrlich is Maryland’s first Republican governor in more than 30 years, and he has made it his mission this year not only to win re-election but also to boost his party’s numbers in the legislature and to help his lieutenant governor, Michael S. Steele, to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. He has hopes, too, for his party’s nominee for attorney general, Frederick County State’s Attorney Scott Rolle, and for the Republican’s prospects in the open race for the Baltimore-area 3rd Congressional District.

Maryland Republican Party Chairman John Kane said the results of this election will determine whether there is a legitimate contest for ideas in the state.

“It’s a continued pursuit by Republicans and independents and even some Democrats to try to establish a legitimate two-party state where debate and ideas are discussed rather than the backroom politics that have been the rule for the last 30 years,” Kane said.

But state Democratic Party Chairman Terry Lierman said the election is about education, health care and “helping working families in Maryland move forward.”

The Democratic candidates have proven records on education and support significant changes to the health care system, Lierman said, whereas Ehrlich and Steele have done nothing but import “right-wing tactics” from President Bush.

“It’s probably going to be one of the clearest-cut elections in recent history in Maryland,” he said.

With those stakes, Ehrlich said, the Democrat-vs.-Republican fighting that is all but sure to dominate the news for the next two months is nothing new.

“In our race, it started [four] years ago, the day Martin O’Malley decided not to run” for governor in 2002, Ehrlich said. “It’s been clear since then that he would be running this year. To me, there’s nothing different about my schedule, my campaign, anything.”

Ehrlich told supporters at a recent campaign event that his fate in this election will largely determine the fate of his party. If he wins big, he said, he’ll bring a bounty of new Republican legislators to Annapolis, possibly enough to sustain his vetoes in the General Assembly. If he earns a slim victory, he said, those gains would be minimal at best. He didn’t mention what would happen if he loses.

But O’Malley said that the end of the primaries means that Democrats across the state will be bent on making sure that Ehrlich is turned out of office.

“I think people are happy to have this primary behind us so we can come together as a united Democratic Party,” O’Malley said. “There is a bigger battle raging, and that is to restore leadership to our nation by restoring leadership to our state.”

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said that although the U.S. Senate race against Steele is a top-tier contest, it will pale next to the governor’s race in terms of attention and energy in the next two months.

Maryland governors have tremendous power over the direction of the state because of their ability to set the budget, which Miller called the “moral conscience of the government” because it displays the state’s commitment to education, health and social welfare. Recapturing that post means everything, he said.

“It’s important to have a U.S. Senate seat, but people don’t relate to that as much as they do to a governor,” Miller said.

Because Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin and former NAACP head Kweisi Mfume ran a gentlemanly campaign in the Senate primary – complimenting each other even when they disagreed – Democrats said they expect it will be relatively easy for the party to unify under one ticket.

The only major intraparty friction came in the comptroller’s race, in which the incumbent, William Donald Schaefer, leveled a series of insults at one of his competitors, Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens, in response to what he called her ageist campaign.

But Miller said that tension might not have much impact on the race because of Schaefer’s lukewarm relationship with his party. Schaefer has been an Ehrlich ally for the past four years, although he promised to support the Democratic ticket in the fall. But he has long feuded with O’Malley and has not endorsed him by name.

“It’s going to be hard to keep William Donald Schaefer in the fold,” Miller said. “But most of his key supporters … they’re not going to line up behind the Democrats anyway.”

Uniting as a party is less of an issue for the Republicans, who had little competition in primaries for the major races.

Steele and Ehrlich have been at odds on some issues in this campaign. Steele has recently come out in favor of a minimum wage increase as part of his campaign for economic empowerment, while Ehrlich vetoed one in Maryland and has criticized the minimum wage as a poor way to alleviate poverty.

But the two have disagreed on some issues – notably abortion and the death penalty – and Ehrlich said the differences in a federal and state campaign mean they will largely be on separate paths during the election.

“Somebody’s going to ask me about [education funding], and they’re going to ask him about six-way talks [with North Korea],” Ehrlich said.

Carol L. Hirschburg, a GOP strategist from Owings Mills, said the Democrats’ determination to recapture the governor’s mansion means Republicans are going to have to be prepared to weather what will be an unprecedented onslaught.

“I would have to say from the tenor of the past four years, the Democrats are going to use every nasty trick in the book,” Hirschburg said. “We haven’t been used to holding the reins for 36 years and having everything our way and controlling the flow of money and so forth. I think that’s what the Democrats are desperate to get back.”

But like just about any issue these days, Democrats see it the other way. It’s the Republicans who are going to get nasty, Miller said.

“They’re going to throw dirt, the same as the national Republicans,” Miller said. “The Republicans are hard-core partisans. They don’t want to make friends.”

andy.green@baltsun.com

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