Miller time: Senate president faces off against another Miller

Not willing to let that stand, last week Ehrlich personally recruited Republican Ron Miller to challenge the nine-term Democrat.

“The governor himself called me,” Ron Miller said.

He gave up a five-month-old race for Congress against Rep. Steny Hoyer in southern Maryland to take on the new campaign.

“They do this to me every other election,” said Mike Miller, who?s been the Senate?s presiding officer for 20 years. The Senate?s newest office building has his name on it.

In 1998 and 2002, a former Democratic delegate named Juanita Miller ran against him.

Mike Miller got 80 percent of the vote in 1998, and 62 percent in 2002.

“This is an act of desperation by Bob Ehrlich,” Mike Miller said. “If [Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan] had stayed in the race, you wouldn?t have seen this.”

He reasons that Duncan and Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley would be fighting a bloody primary battle for the Democratic nomination for governor, taking pressure off of Ehrlich.

“Everything is about Bob Ehrlich,” Mike Miller said. “They want to keep Mike Miller spending money in his own county,” and not helping Democratic senators in seven or eight marginal districts win re-election, as he said he will continue to do.

Since the incumbent governor is a Republican, too, Ron Miller?s name will also appear above Mike Miller?s on the ballot.

Ron Miller made the switch somewhat reluctantly. “It was not something that I leaped on,” he conceded. GOP spokeswoman Audra Miller ? no relation to either man ? recalled that Democratic House Speaker Casper Taylor was narrowly defeated four years ago.

“It can be done,” Audra Miller said.

Ron Miller prayed over it, and “everything came together.” On Monday, he withdrew from the congressional race and filed for state Senate.

“I?m a fiscal and social conservative,” said Ron Miller, 46, who is black. “I think I tend to be more a Main Street Republican than Wall Street Republican.”

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