Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley broke out of a four-month deadlock with Republican former Gov. Bob Ehrlich by invoking President Obama’s star power in a state where his popularity remains high and using a cash advantage to constantly remind voters that Ehrlich, too, is an incumbent, analysts say.
O’Malley unseated Ehrlich with a six-point advantage in 2006 and he is now leading the rematch by roughly 10 points, according to the latest polls.
Ehrlich tapped into anti-incumbent momentum early on in the campaign, and promised to repeal some of O’Malley’s most unpopular measures — including a 20 percent increase in the sales tax in 2007.
Polls initially revealed Ehrlich’s strategy was working: From April to August, the candidates remained tied in polls.
But O’Malley used his campaign war chest — which more than doubled Ehrlich’s — to effectively smother his opponent’s hopes of riding the national wave of anti-incumbent sentiment all the way back to the Government House, said Todd Eberly, assistant politics professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
O’Malley spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on costly TV ads that began circulating in early July.
“O’Malley created a history of Ehrlich’s time in office that was none too flattering,” Eberly said, referring to the ads. “People have short memories, and that message stuck.”
Ehrlich released his first TV ad in September, which Eberly said came too late.
In Maryland, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 and Obama’s ratings remain among the highest in the country, “it takes a particularly inept Democrat to lose Maryland,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for the Study of American Government.
To win the election, then, “O’Malley just had to hold it together,” Eberly said.
O’Malley did so during the candidates’ three debates, said Matthew Crenson, professor emeritus of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, Ehrlich “just looked angry,” he said. “That turned people off,” Crenson said. “It might have worked in a strong Tea Party state where rage is the latest rage. But this isn’t a Tea Party state.”
Crenson said Obama rallying for O’Malley at Bowie State University in early October provided the final push the Democrat needed to break ahead before Nov. 2.
“Obama certainly helped,” Crenson said, emphasizing the president’s role in bringing black voters to the polls.
He said since the rally, signs have begun popping up all over Baltimore that read, “Obama, we’ve got your back.”
