It was “four more years” versus “no more years,” working class roots versus a pledge to fight for working families as the contest for governor switched to high gear Wednesday.
Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich officially announced he will seek re-election from the steps of his boyhood home in Arbutus, and Democratic Mayor Martin O?Malley formally filed the papers to challenge him after a rally across the street from the governor?s mansion.
Then O?Malley trekked off to Arbutus in southwest Baltimore County himself to hold a kitchen table talk with a family just six blocks from where Ehrlich made his announcement.
“We?re going to run on our record,” Ehrlich said to several hundred supporters in remarks cued for the evening TV news. “We?re going to compete hard ? we?re going to debate ? and this time we?re going to bring the monopoly down.”
In reciting a familiar litany of accomplishments, Ehrlich said his record his record included fixing “a budget mess,” turning a $4 billion deficit into a $2 billion surplus; holding the line on taxes; and giving more money to public schools while measuring student progress.
“Test scores are up in every jurisdiction ? with one exception,” Ehrlich said, referring to Baltimore City. “We?ll talk about the failed leadership there,” he promised.
It was a much different Ehrlich record lambasted at the O?Malley event.
It was hard to keep track of how many times O?Malley and his running mate, Del. Anthony Brown of Prince George?s County, used the terms “working families” and “working people.” O?Malley pledged to a crowd of several hundred mostly union members and elected officials “to get our governor back on the side of working people.”
It was Brown, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Army Reserves colonel who served a year in Iraq, who revved up the crowd with persistent chants of “no more years.”
O?Malley and Brown portrayed Ehrlich as a tool of big corporations and special interests, and again knocked his record of raising college tuition, failing to help those uninsured for health care, and vetoing an increase in the minimum wage.
