Former Gov. Robert Ehrlich tried to buck up the spirits of Republicans at a party fundraiser Wednesday, telling them that though they lost an election last year, they are not defeated.
“We will compete again,” Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich heads the new Maryland office of a North Carolina law firm and hosts a talk show on WBAL radio Saturday mornings with his wife, Kendel.
Of the hundreds of e-mails he receives weekly, Ehrlich said every 10th one is “really discouraging” with people telling him “we can?t win.”
“What we need to do is engage” in the political process by cutting checks, writing letters to the editor and lobbying in Annapolis, Ehrlich said. “Disengagement will cost us dearly at this time. This is a new and very extreme Democratic Party.”
When asked why he?s a Republican, party Chairman James Pelura, an Anne Arundel veterinarian, gave three reasons: “Martin O?Malley, Mike Miller and Mike Busch,” naming the Democratic governor, State Senate president and House of Delegates speaker.
Ehrlich and his party may not be defeated, but it is depleted, with the annual Red, White and Blue dinner Wednesday at Baltimore?s Hyatt Regency attracting 250 people at $200 a head, about half the number it did last year. Still, in a nonelection year, Pelura termed it a success.
At a straw poll conducted at the fundraiser for Republican presidential candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won 47 percent. But it cost $10 to vote.
“What is telling to me in the poll was that Fred Thompson came in second” at 23 percent, former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele said.
Ehrlich is mid-Atlantic chairman for the presidential campaign for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who came in third at 14 percent.
