In a close fought race for governor, it was unclear in the early morning hours Wednesday whether incumbent Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich had won re-election to a second term, or if Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley had beaten him to restore Democratic dominance to the State House.
But O?Malley was claiming victory shortly before midnight, and Ehrlich was refusing to come anywhere close to conceding defeat, predicting he would win when nearly 200,000 absentee ballots are counted Thursday and Friday.
Some networks and the Associated Press had already called the race for O?Malley. With 70 percent of the precincts reporting, O’Malley had 50 percent of the vote or 523,413 votes, and Ehrlich had 48 percent or 502,747 votes. Ehrlich was not faring as well in Carroll, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties as he had four years ago.
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but always we try, and that is what God demands of us,” O?Malley told a crowd of cheering supporters at Baltimore?s Hippodrome, recalling the words of his deceased father. “Dad, tonight we tried and tonight we won.”
Ehrlich told his own cheering crowd at Baltimore?s Hyatt Regency, “The bottom line to this raceis we?re not going to know for a lot of days. ? We just do not know, we just do not know. ? We?re going into overtime.”
“We?ve been around for 20 years,” the governor said. “We?ve got a decent shot to be around for four more.”
In dozens of election polls throughout the year, Ehrlich ran behind O?Malley, and only in recent weeks did the race show signs of narrowing, but the governor never ran ahead of the mayor in polling. It was also year unfavorable to Republicans, and O?Malley repeatedly tied Ehrlich to President Bush.
Exit polls done by the Associated Press found that Ehrlich and GOP U.S. Senate nominee Michael Steele were hurt by their ties to the Bush administration and Republican support for the war in Iraq.
Yet Ehrlich was confident throughout the year that he would prevail because he saw the contest as a referendum on his performance and opinion surveys showed more than half of voters approved of his job as governor.
But O?Malley was a much more formidable opponent than Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was four years ago. The mayor?s path to his party?s nomination was smoothed when Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan dropped out of the race June 22 to be treated for depression, saving the party from a bruising and expensive primary fight.
With no other opponents in the race, the general election fight started that day, and the two men, marked by strong ambition from their early years, tangled ferociously, tearing down each other?s record, little hiding thepersonal animosity between them.
O?Malley began the contest more than a year ago touting the progress made in reducing crime and improving city schools. He offered a broad range of new programs on education, the environment, crime and transportation but did not say howhe would pay for them.
Ehrlich attacked O?Malley over the low performance of Baltimore City schools, particularly deriding his support of the General Assembly?s blocking of more state intervention this spring. The governor also criticized the mayor?s failure to reduce violent crime further in the city and live up to campaign promises that he would cut the annual murder rate to 175.
O?Malley in turn attacked Ehrlich?s record on environment and education, criticizing cuts in open space funding university budgets that led to higher tuition and the governor?s failure to spend more on K-12 education.
Part of the Baltimore Examiner’s 2006 election coverage
