There are a dozen possible answers to the question of why state Gov. Robert Ehrlich lost his re-election bid ? not the least of which is that the governor is Republican in a year that was very bad for Republicans.
How he lost is very simple to answer when you look at the numbers in the contest, still incomplete and unofficial, but telling nonetheless: Mayor Martin O?Malley shaved his margins.
In county after county where Ehrlich ran well in 2002, particularly in the crucial Baltimore region that supplied his entire margin of victory, on Tuesday the governor got 7 to 12 percent less support than he did four years before.
In crucial Baltimore County, which he represented both as a delegate and a congressman, he lost 11 percent of his margin, going from 61 percent dominance over 2002 rival Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Baltimore County resident like Ehrlich, to a 50-50 split with O?Malley, whose record as mayor was known better here than in any other area of the state.
“There was some underperformance,” said Ehrlich communications director Paul Schurick, the chief political guru on the governor?s staff, to put it delicately. “In the end, it had nothing to do with the governor?s record.”
Not the higher tuitions at public universities caused by his budget cuts? Not the almost-doubled vehicle registration fees? Not the flush tax?
But if it wasn?t his record, why did the voters in Harford County, the people he represented in Congress for eight years, drop their support by 12 percent, from a whopping 75 percent in 2002 to a very respectable 63 percent?
O?Malley and camp made no secret that part of their playbook was to trim Ehrlich?s margins, campaigning all over the state, even in places they knew the governor was popular, but not quite as popular as he once was.
Even in 2002, Ehrlich did not trounce Townsend. He beat her by 64,000 votes out of 1.7 million cast in the race, garnering 51.5 percent of the vote.
Even giving O?Malley 40 percent of the absentee ballots to be counted this week, which will likely go more toward the governor who urged citizens to vote that way, the mayor will likely only wind up with 20,000 to 30,000 votes more than Ehrlich got in 2002.
O?Malley trimmed his margins.
If it wasn?t Ehrlich?s record, was it simply the word “Republican” tied to his name?
Maybe so.
In Howard County, the five-term Register of Wills Kay Hartleb, who even Democrats said has the best-run office in the courthouse, was running against an unknown Democrat named Lawrence Blickman, a funeral home inspector for the state. He admitted to The Examiner last week that he had never been in the courthouse and didn?t know Hartleb, but “it?s time for a new face in there and new ideas.”
Republican Hartleb barely held onto her job, winning unofficially by 321 votes out of 84,000 votes cast.
Part of the Baltimore Examiner’s 2006 Election Coverage
