MD-Gov: Ehrlich To Enter the Race

This has been pretty clearly telegraphed for the last few months, but now it’s looking official:

Former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich has decided to make another run for the governor’s office, an informed source tells ABC 7 News. A spokesman for Ehrlich said he could not confirm or deny our source’s information.

The source indicated Ehrlich would formally announce his bid Wednesday, April 7, in Rockville, followed by an event at his childhood home in Arbutus.

Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley defeated Ehrlich by a 53-46 margin in 2006, and polling of another hypothetical O’Malley/Ehrlich race has generally been in the same high-single-digits ballpark. So while this doesn’t seem like a governor’s mansion that’ll flip unless things start to go seriously south on the Democrats, it’s one more juggling ball the DGA (with O’Malley as vice-chair) is going to have to keep in the air. (Also worth noting: this should end the brief speculation that Ehrlich was interested in taking on Barbara Mikulski in MD-Sen instead.)

Racetracker Wiki: MD-Gov

25 thoughts on “MD-Gov: Ehrlich To Enter the Race”

  1. We got a race on ar hayunds yeah we doo.

    Seriously tho, as a Marylander I actually kinda welcome this. This will force O’Malley to be a better candidate and be more open about what he plans to do. Competition isn’t always bad, sometimes it’s healthy and prevents things from getting stale.

    Of course, if Ehrlich had a chance of winning I wouldn’t be so optimistic right now lol. He pretty much needs a major O’Malley scandal – and even then Brown could probably beat him (although that would be interesting because then the question would be ‘can a black man beat a former governor in MD?’ and I’m not sure what the answer would be)

  2. I’m not surprised by this development. From what I know of from my friends in Maryland, O’Malley could have a tough time getting re-elected honestly.  

  3. This isn’t really a surprise, Ehrlich had been eying a rematch since Brown won in MA.

    While this will force O’Malley not to take the race for granted, I’m not too worried on this race. O’Malley and Erlich have very similar approval ratings (altho Erlich has less disapproval) around the mid 50 or so, and in Maryland if you like both the Dem and the Republican equally, your probably going to pick the Dem.

    Compared to MA, MD has more Republicans but much fewer indepedents and the Democrats in MD are more loyal to the party than in MA. Most Dems in MD are either Black (Black majority Prince George’s County and Black majority Baltimore City are major populations centers in the state) or college educated whites who either work in the tech industry or for the federal government (and many live in Montgomery county, the most populous county in the state and another Dem stronghold). Most white collar workers here are black or white, blue collar workers are generally hispanic (another difference from the many white blue collar workers in MA) which are generally Dem. Alot of the other counties in central MD are more toss-up like, with places like Howard and Baltimore County leaning Dem, Ann Arundel county (home of the state captial Annapolis) leaning GOP, and St. Mary’s County being about 50/50. The GOP are very strong in the Eastern Shore and Western MD, but those parts of the state are sparsely populated. So basically while Erlich is the only Republican who could win, its going to be very difficult.

    Also, MD dems were really a mess back in 2002. Paris Glendenning was more unpopular than Corzine was, and Townsend, the Lt. Govenonor was a very weak campaigner. O’Malley has the benefit of being a strong campaiginer and the incumbent. The fact that he actually beat Erlich before will help alot, and it can be simple to remind Marylanders why they voted him out the first time. And of course Marylanders are not as rabidly anti-tax as much of the rest of the country so that angle shouldn’t help too well.

    In sum I say that O’Malley will beat Erlich by the same margin in 2010 as he did in 2006. This is thanks to Erlich’s residual popularity and the fact that he was really voted out because he was a Republican and not as much because of his polices. But O’Malley is a Democrat and the incumbent and isn’t hated by Marylanders, so he will likely be able to serve another term.

  4. Ehrlich must really be behind by ten points then.

    O’Malley will have to actually campaign, but not much to worry about here.  Still, once again Team Red gets the sirt of top tier candidate to run that Team Blue does not.

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