Four years ago, Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele ran together and the Republican duo made electoralhistory in Maryland. This time around, Gov. Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Steele are running at cross purposes.
That may sound odd, so let me explain.
Although hard-core Republicans are part of both Ehrlich’s and Steele’s electoral coalitions, in a state where only 30 percent of registered voters are Republican, the trick is getting the other 21 percent needed to win. In 2006, Steele is campaigning for Senate on his own, not as Ehrlich’s running mate, and each man has a different calculus for reaching a majority.
As the first African-American elected statewide in Maryland history, Steele hopes to capture a larger share of the black vote than the estimated 12 percent the Ehrlich-Steele ticket received in 2002. Improving on that figure means Steele must attract voters in Baltimore City and, especially, Prince George’s County — the latter being Steele’s home county and the base for the most affluent majority — black congressional district in the country.
Ehrlich’s coalition is based on support from white suburbanites in the greater Baltimore metropolitan region. Ehrlich’s vote shares in the “Big 6” counties that ring Baltimore, and which catapulted him over Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in 2002, were: Anne Arundel County, 65 percent; Baltimore County, 61 percent; Carroll County, 79 percent; Frederick County, 66 percent; Harford County, 74 percent; and Howard County, 55 percent.
Big turnouts among African-Americans in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County — and portions of the emergent Charles County, where affluent blacks are moving in search of bigger spaces and better school districts, much as white exurban voters do — are potentially dangerous for Ehrlich. The governor won just 24 percent of Baltimore City votes and 23 percent in Prince George’s.
Actions past and present by Ehrlich are creating problems for Steele, however, as he attempts to build a somewhat different constituency in the state’s two, majority-minority jurisdictions.
In late 2000, one of then-Congressman Ehrlich’s biggest fundraisers, Richard Hug, wrote a letter to the IRS advocating that the government investigate the NAACP, an organization revered and supported by donations from the very middle class black voters to whom Steele is reaching. Ehrlich later sent the IRS a follow-up letter on Hug’s behalf.
When the media reported the letters last week, those hoping to unseat Ehrlich pounced.
Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan scoffed at Ehrlich’s assertion that Hug, who resigned his appointment (by Ehrlich) to the University of Maryland’s Board of Regents so he could head Ehrlich’s re-election fundraising drive, is just a regular constituent. Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley called Ehrlich’s behavior dirty politics.
More recently, Ehrlich has threatened to file a law suit to stop Maryland’s new early voting law, claiming that the law will lead to vote fraud. State Democratic Party leaders cite the 35 states that have successfully administered early-voting programs, and defy Ehrlich to substantiate his claims.
Neither the NAACP nor Hug developments pose much danger to Ehrlich: African-Americans are 30 percent of the population, but only 25 percent of age-eligible voters and closer to 22 percent of the actual electorate. Ehrlich can win with little support from them, as he did in 2002.
Steele can’t. For him, the danger is that Ehrlich’s actions will be (rightly) perceived by African-American voters as another attempt — like Florida’s felon lists in 2000, or the curious shortage of voting machines in Cleveland in 2004 — to defenestrate them.
Ehrlich is undermining Steele’s efforts to portray himself as a new type of Republican. If Steele doesn’t rebuke Ehrlich, he risks losing credibility from the very voters that are part of his potential winning coalition, but not part of Ehrlich’s.
Thomas F. Schaller is an associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
