http://www.gazette.net/stories/02132009/poliras151022_32476.shtml

Ehrlich: He coulda been a contender

Sitting in a radio booth in Baltimore, Maryland's governor-in-exile receives weekly phone calls from his admirers, who lavish praise on him and the former first lady. It is a feel-good moment for the two of them, a reminder that once upon a time Bob and Kendel Ehrlich had a chance to alter Maryland's destiny.

But that is no longer the case. Even though the "Bob and Kendel Show" is the Baltimore region's highest rated radio program in the 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday slot, not a lot of people tune in unless they're running errands in the car.

Those who faithfully listen still believe in a political movement that has lost much of its energy, especially in Maryland.

These are tough times for Republicans, as Laslo Boyd noted in his Feb. 6 Gazette column, "A party on the fringe." The nation is trending Democratic. George W. Bush's unpopularity and failed policies helped defeat Ehrlich in 2006 and elect Barack Obama in 2008. Republicanism is out of style.

Yet callers to the "Bob and Kendel Show" keep bringing up the good old days. What they don't mention is that even during Ehrlich's years in the Governor's Mansion, no dramatic sea-change occurred in Maryland. Budgets continued to grow, sometimes by double-digit amounts. No vast reforms were implemented. No major tax cuts happened.

The era of Big Government persisted during Republican rule, both in Annapolis and in Washington.

The Ehrlich years did not lead to a dramatic increase in Republican voters, either. Instead, Democrats widened their domination.

Before the 2006 general election, the Democrats' registration advantage topped 800,000 voters. Today, that advantage exceeds 1 million voters. In four years, GOP registration dropped from 29 percent to 27 percent of the total. While 21,000 more Marylanders registered as Republicans, Democrats added 230,000 names. Even non-aligned or independent voters grew three times faster than the state GOP.

Maryland voters aren't turned on by the GOP message. That poses a huge barrier to a comeback.

Callers keep urging, even begging the former governor to run against incumbent Gov. Martin O'Malley next year. Ehrlich remains noncommittal. He hasn't yet fallen under the spell of the "Run, Bob, Run!" chants.

Demographics are trending in the wrong direction. Maryland's fastest-growing population subgroup, Hispanics, is voting Democratic. That's happening nationally, too.

African-Americans, a pivotal bloc in Maryland, are enjoying a reawakening. Many more blacks are registering and many more are showing up on Election Day. Thanks to Obama, these voters are providing Democrats with lopsided margins.

That makes an Ehrlich comeback even more problematic. Though the former governor remains personally popular, that could fade quickly in a hardball election campaign. The "R" next to his name has become the equivalent of Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter."

Part of the problem is that Republicans offer no compelling vision, no "other way" that seems to make sense. The narrow, neoconservative ideology of less government intervention and fewer taxes made a mess of things in Washington. We are paying the price for that discredited approach.

The "Big Tent" GOP of Ronald Reagan — open to Republicans of all stripes — is a distant memory. Middle-road, moderate Republicans have become lepers within their own party.

In Maryland, the GOP's best and brightest moderates switched parties (former state senators P.J. Hogan and Bobby Neall) or turned independent (Frederick County Del. Richard Weldon). The few remaining national GOP moderates, such as Olympia Snow, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter in the U.S. Senate, seem to have more in common with Blue Dog Democrats than with rigidly conservative Republicans.

So building a bridge to moderate Democrats will be difficult for Ehrlich or any Republican candidate next year. The GOP's credentials are shot. Ehrlich's failure to avoid bitter, partisan head-knocking in Annapolis turned off voters. He couldn't persuade Democrats to meet him halfway. Next time, it could be twice as difficult to find common ground.

Yet the urge for Ehrlich to jump back into the political arena remains, though running for governor in 2010 may not be practical.

Thanks to the federal stimulus package, Maryland's fiscal woes should be plugged for a year or two. That life-preserver probably will get Democrat O'Malley through the 2010 election. Only a massive budget meltdown requiring steep cuts as well as more tax increases seems to stand in the way of a second term for the former Baltimore mayor.

Ehrlich supporters forget that he won in 2002 because of a split in the Democratic Party, which nominated an exceptionally weak candidate in Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. That won't happen in 2010.

O'Malley has solidified his support among Maryland Democrats. He is a gifted campaigner and organizer. He knows how to tap into a vast reservoir of campaign funds.

Meanwhile, Republican fund-raising sources are drying up. The state GOP infrastructure has disintegrated since Ehrlich's 2006 loss. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, "there isn't any there there."

So if the Ehrlichs want to get back in the political game, they have their work cut out. What can they offer that captures the public imagination? How can tired, Republican ideology be turned into pragmatic solutions that excite voters? How can a thick stack of Democratic advantages be neutralized?

From their radio Elba, the Ehrlichs are cheerful and upbeat with radio callers. And why not? For those two hours on Saturday mornings, anything is possible — even a return to a political Shangri-la that never really existed.