O'Malley, Cardin Hope To Link Rivals to BushBy Matthew Mosk and John Wagner The campaigns are for high political office in Maryland, but the Democratic candidates’ toughest attacks are focused on a man from Texas: George W. Bush. Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who is challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., calls his opponent “the George Bush Mini-Me of Maryland,” and he has plastered the same photo on three recent campaign mailers. It shows Ehrlich and the president arm in arm. Benjamin L. Cardin (D), the 10-term congressman from Baltimore who is taking on Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in the race for an open U.S. Senate seat, mentions his opponent on the stump. But he saves a battery of attacks for Bush and urges voters to elect Cardin because “George Bush is leading this nation in the wrong direction.” The Democratic effort to nationalize the two high-profile Maryland campaigns is unmistakable, the latest sign that party leaders believe anger at the president might be the decisive emotion that drives voters to the polls in November. Republicans, however, say it won’t sell. “They don’t seem to realize that George Bush isn’t running for Senate or governor in Maryland,” said state GOP Chairman John Kane. “I think they’re so lost for something to grab onto to move this state forward that this is all they can talk about.” Republicans aren’t countering by embracing Bush, though—Steele and Ehrlich skipped the president’s recent Labor Day visit to Maryland. Instead, they have been running campaigns that never mention their party affiliation, casting themselves as party-neutral moderates. In his ubiquitous first campaign ad, Steele tells viewers he’ll “talk straight about what’s wrong in both parties.” Ehrlich’s campaign is more issue-oriented, but he also has used advertising to try to convey a centrist, party-neutral image. In his first commercial, supporters tell viewers: “He doesn’t govern from the right. Or the left. But the center, where most of us are.” Parris N. Glendening (D), a former two-term Maryland governor, said the Steele and Ehrlich campaigns offer the best evidence that the Democrats are onto something. “To me, the strongest sign that this strategy is going to work is in the way the Republicans are responding,” Glendening said. “Look at them. They’re running as fast as they can from their party.” Glendening said Maryland Democrats are following a road map that is being used in contests throughout the country. It’s a strategy that mirrors the 1994 Republican plan, in which GOP candidates across the country sought to tar opponents by linking them to a then-unpopular President Bill Clinton, said Jim Jordan, a national Democratic strategist. “Especially in a Democrat-dominated state like Maryland, where there’s a thirst for change, it’s smart politics to try to tap into that kind of passion,” Jordan said. Democrats received the same advice in a March strategy memo that advised linking Steele to Bush. The party followed suit, going so far as launching a Web site to highlight those ties. A Washington Post poll in June found that the president had a 33 percent approval rating in the state and that 56 percent of voters would be less likely to support a candidate who they knew had Bush’s support. Two months before Ehrlich was elected in November 2002, Bush was seen favorably by 56 percent and unfavorably by 29 percent of Maryland voters, according to a Gonzales/Arscott Research and Communications poll. In appearances since winning the Democratic nomination Tuesday, Cardin has repeatedly linked Bush to Steele. At a Democratic rally Friday in Annapolis, Cardin said Bush should be held accountable for “blocking” stem cell research and shortchanging education funding. Yesterday, at a rally in Baltimore, Cardin said Steele sounded like a Democrat when he made his acceptance speech as the Republican nominee. “Isn’t this the same Michael Steele that George Bush recruited to run for the United States Senate?” Cardin asked the crowd. Bush has not been as central a focus of O’Malley’s effort to unseat Ehrlich, but references to Bush have been sprinkled throughout his speeches, mailings and campaign commercials. O’Malley speeches include a section about the federal government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina, widely considered a low point in Bush’s presidency. At a recent forum on disability issues, O’Malley invoked Bush’s name more than a dozen times as Ehrlich stood on stage looking befuddled by the line of attack. O’Malley said that federal spending cuts were hampering state programs to aid the disabled. “We need a governor who can stand up against the wrongheaded, mean-spirited . . . cuts being shoved down on the state . . . by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress,” O’Malley said. O’Malley has repeatedly said Bush and Ehrlich are “in lock step” and in an interview Friday gave several examples, including Ehrlich’s refusal this year to fight a Bush administration plan to allow a company owned by the government of Dubai to manage the Port of Baltimore. O’Malley said Ehrlich and Bush oppose raising the minimum wage, oppose allowing reimportation of drugs from Canada and support tax cuts that have disproportionately benefited the wealthy. “I think he tries to emulate George Bush in every way,” O’Malley said. Anthony G. Brown, the Prince George’s County delegate who is O’Malley’s running mate, repeated that line—“in lock step”—five times during an interview Friday. The campaign is trying to reinforce that idea, Brown said, because the governor is “trying to portray this image that he’s in the center.” For the most part, Ehrlich shrugged off O’Malley’s efforts to link him to Bush, as he did when asked about it by reporters last week. “I can’t wait for the next person he wants to demonize,” said Ehrlich, suggesting that the focus of the race should be on their respective records. “Obviously, I agree with the president on a lot of issues,” Ehrlich said. “I disagree on some.” The most notable differences are stem cell research and abortion rights, both of which Ehrlich supports. Hans Kaiser, head of the Annapolis office of the GOP polling firm Moore Information, said Ehrlich is right to shrug off efforts to nationalize the campaign. “The problem with it is, governors are very different than the national figures,” said Kaiser, who is not working on any Maryland races. “It may work to generate enthusiasm with the Democratic base, but the people in the middle, those are the folks who don’t respond to that argument. And they’re the ones who will determine the outcome of the race.” Ehrlich, Kaiser said, should continue running on his record. Ads the governor is airing in the Washington market target voters from both parties by focusing on issues with broad appeal in Maryland—boosting funding for education, providing state money for stem cell research and cleaning up Chesapeake Bay. Ehrlich’s television spots in Baltimore, meanwhile, have for weeks focused narrowly on the performance of Baltimore schools—an issue as local as they come. In recent candidate forums, Ehrlich stressed how successful his administration has been in getting “waivers” to allow the state additional discretion on how it spends federal dollars on state programs. But in making his case, Ehrlich never mentioned the president by name. © 2006 The Washington Post Company |
