In 1986, Bob Ehrlich launched his first political campaign for office. Just 28 years old and barely out of Wake Forest Law School, he ran for and won a seat as a delegate from Baltimore County to the Maryland General Assembly.
I have some campaign literature from Ehrlich’s first campaign two decades ago. The Arbutus native and former Princeton football star already had that familiar, bangs-combed-across mop top, albeit a bit fuller. There’s a picture of him, a few pounds lighter than he is now, smiling with then-President Ronald Reagan.
Borrowing Reagan’s famed “morning in America” 1984 re-election theme, Ehrlich called for a new dawn in Maryland politics and a revitalization of the Maryland Republican Party. Whatever might be said of his four years as governor, nobody can say Ehrlich failed to deliver on his promise 20 years ago to rescue his party.
After winning that 1986 state legislative race and re-election in 1990, Ehrlich followed his state legislative stint with four terms in Congress representing parts of Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Harford County. Then, in 2002, Ehrlich became the first Republican governor since Spiro Agnew — and the first to complete a full termsince Theodore McKeldin served two terms in the 1950s.
Between Agnew and Ehrlich, however, state Republicans were mostly a lost cause. Sure, they managed to control half the state’s eight seats in the U.S. House delegation as recently as 2002. But the GOP hadn’t held either Senate seat since Charles “Mac” Mathias retired in 1986, and have been in the minority in both chambers of the state legislature for an eternity.
When Agnew bolted Annapolis to become Richard Nixon’s vice president, he left little behind for state Republicans. Ehrlich leaves a legacy. And the most notable legacy Ehrlich bequeaths to state Republicans is, well, himself.
Not yet 50, Ehrlich may yet have a long political career ahead of him. He might try to knock Gov. Martin O’Malley, the Democrat who unseated him in 2006, out of the State House in 2010.
That year, Democrat Barbara Mikulski’s Senate seat is also on the ballot again. Though she’d be tough to beat, should Mikulski decide to retire, Ehrlich would be both the most obvious nominee for the Republicans and very competitive candidate at that. In 2012, Mikulski’s junior colleague, Ben Cardin, will have to defend his newly-won seat.
To punch his ticket, Cardin defeated Ehrlich’s next biggest legacy, Michael Steele. Cardin’s 8-point victory may seem like a wide margin. But Steele, like Ehrlich, was running in a Democratic state in the best Democratic midterm cycle since 1974.
In fact, Steele gave the diffident, poorly-managed Cardin campaign so much trouble that Cardin’s margin was 5 points short of John Kerry’s 13-point win over George W. Bush in Maryland in 2004. (By comparison, with her 3-point win, Democrat Claire McCaskill ran a full 10 points ahead of Kerry’s 2004 performance in Missouri — against an incumbent, no less.)
So will Ehrlich, still the state’s most prominent Republican, make another electoral bid?
At a rally withsupporters three days before he turned the statehouse keys over to O’Malley, Ehrlich spoke of “thank yous” rather than “goodbyes.” He hinted cryptically that “there’s a really big difference in life between losing and being defeated.” Wife Kendel promised that her husband’s public service was not over.
Efforts to reach Ehrlich this week to talk about his future were unsuccessful, but this much is certain: Maryland Democrats had better not relax. They’re living in a post-Ehrlich, not post-Agnew state partisan environment, and 2006 was a “perfect storm” midterm cycle that comes around very rarely.
Watch for Ehrlich to come around again, too.
Thomas F. Schaller is an associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.”
