Gov. Robert Ehrlich raised more than $60,000 for his re-election campaign ? and all he had to do was talk at a white-fenced horse farm in western Howard County Saturday night.
Ehrlich shared his fundraising secrets with the 135 guests, almost all of whom paid $500 to attend. For many of them, it was their first time giving to a politician.
“I spend zero amount of time raising money,” Ehrlich said. “I have a group of people around me ? literally hundreds of people on the finance committee run by Dick Hug ? who believe in what we?re doing, who believe in what we?ve accomplished already.”
Because he?s free from the hours of phone calls to potential donors, “I?m actually able to do my job every day,” Ehrlich said. “And once in a while, I come to a house party and I eat a couple of crab cakes and I leave. That?s not hard.”
“It is so much more preferable than what other statewide officials have to go through, which is an incredibly painful series of shakedown operations,” the governor said.
The governor also had to schmooze and pose for photos. One was with a miniature Sicilian donkey named Emma. A sign placed on the donkey by lawyer Joan Becker, the fundraiser?s hostess, read, “Another Democrat for Ehrlich.”
“There were a lot of new faces” among the contributors, Becker said, many of them local business people. There were even six teachers, two of them her own sisters, as well as her parents, two retired teachers.
“You?d be surprised how many teachers are supportive of the governor because of the Baltimore schools situation,” Becker said.
In political speeches, Ehrlich gets most passionate about the legislature?s blocking of the takeover of failing Baltimore schools.
“They celebrated historic dysfunctionality,” he said. “These kids are no different from your kids other than where they were born and the color of their skins.”
Most of the farms along Carrs Mill Road in heavily Republican Woodbine will be sporting Ehrlich signs, Becker said. But there is one holdout across the street, Jeanne McMahon, who will reportedly host a Martin O?Malley fundraiser later this month.
Great expectations
Gov. Robert Ehrlich is expected to hold about 70 home fundraisers in this election cycle, compared to 223 in the last campaign, according to a campaign official.
