This time former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, R, will get a fair shot at a second term.
In 2006, Gov. Martin O’Malley, D, then mayor of Baltimore, ran against the incumbent Ehrlich and derailed his re-election bid. Actually, that’s not quite correct.
Four years ago, O’Malley ran against former President George W. Bush. The anti-Bush sentiment in Maryland was so strong that Ehrlich caught some of the fallout. But Bush is gone; now O’Malley will have to run against Ehrlich, not Bush. That’s why I like Ehrlich’s chances.
Some full disclosure is in order. I know Ehrlich and O’Malley. During my days as a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, I had more than one interview with both, and, on a personal level, I like both. But Ehrlich I could vote for in an election, even though we have our differences as conservative Republicans.
Ehrlich is pro-choice; I’m not so much “pro-life” (or “anti-abortion,” the preferred Associated Press Stylebook term) as I am pro-Constitution: The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision wasn’t a ruling, but seven justices hijacking the Constitution.
In June of 2006, Ehrlich fired Robert J. Smith, a member of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, for saying that, based on his religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic, gays and lesbians led “deviant lifestyles.”
I wrote in a column that Smith had every right to his opinion and should have kept his job, unless it could be shown that he used his position to discriminate against gays and lesbians. (That column never saw the light of day, by the way; a Sun editor killed it.)
Despite those differences, I could still vote for Ehrlich. O’Malley? Not even at gunpoint.
My opposition to O’Malley’s jackboot “let’s-arrest-as-many-people-as-possible” anti-crime policy when he was Baltimore’s mayor is on record. His conduct and that of his fellow Baltimore Democrats after the revelation that at least $58 million of taxpayers’ money had gone missing from the Baltimore school system was despicable and shameless.
Ehrlich, then governor, offered to have the state bail out Baltimore and restore the money. Of course, he made the stipulation that the state would have some control over how that money was spent.
O’Malley and his posse of loyal Baltimore Martinistas reacted quite as I knew they would: They shifted the focus and made Ehrlich the villain, not those incompetents in the school system who ran up the deficit. There has still been no accounting for what happened to the $58 million.
During O’Malley’s run for governor, he touted Baltimore’s 60 percent graduation rate as an achievement. He didn’t mention the deficit. By bringing up the school system, he was, in essence, running on a record of failure.
And he won.
So no, you won’t see me scurrying to the polls in November to cast a vote for O’Malley. But other Marylanders certainly will, especially those in Baltimore, Howard County, Prince George’s County, Montgomery County and Howard County.
Those are the only five Maryland subdivisions O’Malley won in 2006. Ehrlich won everywhere else. (If Maryland had a county unit vote system, which some states had in the past, Ehrlich wouldn’t have lost, and the state would have fewer Democratic governors. A unit vote system is the equivalent, for states, of an electoral college.)
That’s why I like Ehrlich’s chances. O’Malley probably isn’t going to win in any of the subdivisions he lost in 2006. Anti-Obama sentiment may result in a huge Republican turnout. And Ehrlich only needs to win one of the subdivisions he lost in 2006 to regain the governor’s mansion.
Can he do it? We’ll know in November.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
