Tie Ehrlich and Steele to the prez, and voila! Dems bet they’ll win

The Maryland Democratic Party has done a poll that shows President Bush’s approval ratings are trending sharply downward in Maryland — not unusual in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.

The Dems are looking to use Bush’s unpopularity to tar Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Mike Steele in their respective runs for office next year.

The poll is being used as the framework for the Democratic Party’s agenda going into next year, insiders say.

Spokesman Derek Walker confirmed Dems had done a statewide, issues-based poll, but refused to give many details: It’s a ‘‘self-analytical, internal document.”

But he did say Bush’s approval ratings in Maryland are below the national average. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this week shows a strong majority of voters disapprove of the president’s job performance.

Walker told us Ehrlich’s numbers are dipping — again no numbers — but we’ve seen other surveys that show the opposite.

‘‘We’re going to point out that the governor and lieutenant governor have picked their team and it’s not a team Maryland voters like,” Walker said.

Top aides to House Speaker Mike Busch, Senate President Mike Miller and Democratic county executives were briefed on the numbers last week.

We’re told the progressive, environment-heavy agenda Miller laid out in an interview with us last week dovetails with the poll.

Interestingly enough, the poll did not include a slot machine question.

— Thomas Dennison

Big name fund-raiser

Del. Neil Quinter, who wants to succeed Ben Cardin in the 3rd Congressional District, has secured some big-name House of Delegates members for his Sept. 26 fund-raiser in Baltimore.

Busch, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Norm Conway, Economic Matters Committee Chairman Dereck Davis and Judiciary Chairman Joe Vallario are heading the event at Da Mimmo’s restaurant in Little Italy.

Having these guys on board sends a none-too-subtle message to Del. Jon Cardin that the House leadership is backing Quinter, a Howard County Democrat. Cardin is seriously thinking of running for the seat being vacated by his uncle, who’s running for the U.S. Senate.

The endorsement event also gins up some House-Senate rivalry, considering Senate Education Health and Environmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Paula Hollinger wants to go to Congress, too.

‘‘I’m very honored to have the support of these leaders in the House of Delegates,” Quinter said. ‘‘I think it’s a vote of confidence in my abilities that they are willing to do this.”

— Thomas Dennison

Steele-Perez Honored

MoCo Council President Tom Perez and Steele have been named as ‘‘rising stars” by the prestigious Aspen Institute. They’re among 24 young elected officials invited to participate in a two-year fellowship program there.

Both men could bolster that status next year: Perez, a Takoma Park Democrat, has been raising money and laying the groundwork to run for attorney general if longtime incumbent Joe Curran retires. Steele, who has become a superstar in Republican circles, is being courted by the White House to run for the U.S. Senate.

— Thomas Dennison

Sprouting an offshoot

Equality Maryland, the voice of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in Annapolis, may have a chapter in Montgomery County.

Del. Anne Kaiser, an Olney Democrat, said this week that she and nearly 100 others have been working together for several months to form a Montgomery County chapter of Equality Maryland.

‘‘It would be helpful for me — professionally and personally — that Montgomery County have its own organization so we can reach people and let them know of the resources available to them,” said Kaiser, who is gay. She stressed that the Montgomery County group would only complement the statewide organization.

The group is having a kick-off picnic on Sunday at the Meadowbrook⁄Rock Creek Park and Community Center in Chevy Chase at 4 p.m.

— Thomas Dennison

Eat, drink, man, woman

Remember Aaron Kraus?

He’s the former student government president at the University of Maryland, College Park who protested higher education cuts by staging a hunger strike on Lawyer’s Mall.

In an interesting reversal, Kraus is now inviting people to eat — barbecue, specifically, and for guv wannabe Doug Duncan.

— Thomas Dennison

Just dropping by

He didn’t ask for Rockville Mayor Larry Giammo’s endorsement, saying firmly that was ‘‘not the purpose of the trip,” but Ben Cardin said he’d be happy if Giammo cast a ballot for him next fall.

Cardin called Giammo recently to ask if he could visit Rockville and meet with the mayor, joining what’s turning into a stream of elected officials with eye to the 2006 election.

After a 45-minute private meeting Monday afternoon, the mayor took Cardin on a walk around the downtown redevelopment project that has become old hat in this town. Steele and Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley are two other politicians who checked ‘‘tour Rockville, compliment Giammo” off their to-do lists in recent months.

But while those men visited in their official capacities, Cardin’s stop was billed as a campaign visit. Montgomery was the seventh county Cardin visited since Saturday, campaign spokesman Oren Shur said.

Giammo, prouder with every additional piece of steel that workers hoist in Town Center, took Cardin to the condominium leasing trailer for the project to see the model of what is being built.

Visiting with the project managers in an office overlooking the site, Cardin smiled at one piece of news. General contractor Andy Linden of Whiting Turner is a big fan of Cardin’s sandwich (a Reuben) at Chick and Ruth’s Delly in Annapolis.

— Noelle Barton

Stepping down

Republican Del. John Trueschler, who has been one of the few members of the GOP caucus to buck Ehrlich, will not run for re-election next year.

The Lutherville freshman’s decision was reported this week by The Jeffersonian newspaper.

Trueschler said his family commitments meant more than running for a second term, but there has been a subtle chilliness between the delegate and the Ehrlich administration over the past few years. Trueschler opposed slots, voted for the minimum wage bill and even dared to vote to override some of the guv’s vetoes.

Greg Massoni, an Ehrlich spokesman, found out about Trueschler’s decision from a reporter.

‘‘If he’s telling you before he tells us, that shows the relationship was not chilly on our part, but on his, and his not wanting to cooperate,” Massoni told the newspaper.

— Thomas Dennison

Family business

Melissa Redmer Mullahey, daughter of former House minority leader and current Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer, has sent a letter to prospective donors announcing that she’s running for the House in Baltimore County’s District 8.

That pits Mullahey and fellow Republican Dels. Joe Boteler and John Cluster versus Del. Eric Bromwell, a Democrat and one of the GOP’s targets in next year’s election.

The race also puts two of the most familiar names in Baltimore County politics up against each other. Bromwell’s father, Tommy, is a former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and is currently head of the Injured Workers Insurance Fund.

Eric Bromwell held a fund-raiser Tuesday night in Baltimore that raised more than $20,000 and attracted several hundred including Mike Miller and former governor Marvin Mandel.

‘‘I’ve known Melissa for a long time, and I’ve always encouraged her to run for office,” a seemingly unfazed Bromwell said.

— Thomas Dennison

Sticking to his guns

As if there was any doubt, Del. Pat McDonough plans to continue his crusade against ‘‘illegal aliens” next year.

He sent out a news release this week, saying he was going to blast a decision by the Maryland Court of Appeals dealing with extending benefits to workers in the country illegally.

‘‘Maryland is the most ‘illegal friendly’ state in America,” the Middlesex Republican wrote.

— Thomas Dennison

Fair shakes

County fairs have one desired ingredient that candidates relish — an informal setting filled with throngs of untapped voters. It is an ideal location for shaking hands, kissing babies and checking the pulse of the electorate.

U.S. Senate candidates Ben Cardin and Lise Van Susteren are coming to Saturday’s 82nd annual Charles County Fair for just those reasons.

Cardin, who’ll swing by the Anne Arundel fair early Saturday afternoon, has made several appearances in Southern Maryland since announcing his candidacy in April. It will be Van Susteren’s initial visit to Charles since formally launching her bid two weeks ago.

The fairly remote jurisdiction of about 135,000 people has not historically garnered much statewide political attention, but the area’s booming growth has altered the strategy.

‘‘Politically, it’s becoming a very valid area,” said Virginia Benedict, chairwoman of the Charles County Democratic Central Committee.

Dems have urged candidates to reach beyond the borders of Baltimore city, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the so-called Big Three jurisdictions that have been the focus of past elections.

‘‘As Democrats, we need to reach out to every voter, regardless of where they live,” said Lisa McMurray, Van Susteren’s campaign manager. ‘‘The votes in Charles County count as much as the votes in any county.”

— Alan Brody

Easy to find on the ballot

Takoma Park activist Kevin Zeese, former spokesman for Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign and avowed opponent of the war in Iraq, is running for the U.S. Senate — as an independent.

He hopes to galvanize the Green, Libertarian and Populist parties while attracting voters from the Democrat and Republican candidates.

In announcing his run on Monday, Zeese drew a parallel between the war and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

‘‘Katrina is the Iraq war coming home to roost. Instead of taking care of our crumbling infrastructure, misplaced federal spending priorities have made our entire nation vulnerable,” he said in a statement.

Zeese is a founder and director of TrueVoteMD, a group pushing for touch-screen voting machines to produce paper receipts.

— Thomas Dennison

Tee hee for DD

The humor was more topical than political at Del. Kumar Barve’s comedy fund-raiser Tuesday night.

While comedian Roger Kent Mursick mostly took a pass on poking fun at specific politicians, Doug Duncan took some hits from the funnyman, who lives in Bethesda.

Duncan did not attend this year’s event, held at AFI’s Silver Theatre.

Mursick said Duncan did get ‘‘really pissed off” at him at a comedy event a few years ago after he told Duncan, backstage, that he passed a strip of unmetered parking on the way to a show.

But the big guy got over it — bada bing! — in a few ‘‘months,” the comedian said.

The Duncan drubbing wasn’t done.

‘‘I see the campaign season has started,” Mursick told the crowd Tuesday night. ‘‘Doug Duncan went to El Salvador.’

‘‘Trolling for votes in El Salvador— where is that, Easton?”

Too bad Mursick hadn’t heard that Duncan sent the county’s homeland security director and fire and police chiefs to New Orleans that morning. (Tchoupitoulas? Where is that? Wheaton?)

For the record, Duncan didn’t attend the Barve fete because he was meeting with Somerset County Democrats on Tuesday afternoon and in Ocean City at the AFL-CIO conference that night, a spokesman said.

— Margie Hyslop

Grover’s ‘hero’

Conservative powerhouse Grover Norquist is hosting an Oct. 5 re-election do at his D.C. home for Sen. Alex Mooney.

Norquist, who once compared the morality of the estate tax to the Holocaust, hailed Mooney as a ‘‘hero of taxpayers” in a National Review profile two years ago.

On his Web site at Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist urges Congress not to listen to people seeking to repeal the estate tax — he calls it a ‘‘death tax” — in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, saying the best response to the disaster is to make the tax cut permanent to stimulate growth.

Meanwhile, advocacy group Working Assets is also using Norquist to raise money.

The group plans to put up a billboard in Norquist’s neighborhood with a photo of a flooded New Orleans and his oft-repeated quote, ‘‘My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

No word on whether the billboard will be up in time for the Mooney fund-raiser.

— C. Benjamin Ford

Strong sentiments

John Roberts might be dodging questions on abortion at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearings, but Maryland residents didn’t duck the issue for a SurveyUSA poll.

In the poll released Monday, 65 percent of Maryland residents identified themselves as ‘‘pro-choice” compared to 29 percent as ‘‘pro-life.” Six percent answered ‘‘not sure.”

Maryland ranked seventh among pro-choice states or 43rd among pro-life states, depending on your point of view.

‘‘These are great numbers for us,” said Ariana Kelly, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland in Silver Spring.

The poll results mirror a 1992 referendum in which 62 percent of Marylanders upheld a woman’s right to choose.

‘‘These are disturbing statistics for us, no doubt about it,” said Robert Hay Jr., president of the Maryland chapter of Democrats for Life.

The relatively new organization is pushing what it calls the ‘‘95-10 Initiative” — a series of reforms aimed at removing the root causes of abortions, reducing the number of procedures by 95 percent over the next 10 years. Ohio Republican congressman Tim Ryan is expected to submit legislation to support that effort.

SurveyUSA’s national results also showed 56 percent of respondents considered themselves pro-choice and 38 percent pro-life. Vermont led the nation with 70 percent reporting they considered themselves pro-choice. At the other end of the spectrum, 61 percent of Utah respondents said they were pro-life.

The results cross-indexed 2004 election results with abortion sentiments. According to the results, Democrat John Kerry did not win any pro-life states while Bush won 14 states where more people identified themselves as pro-choice than pro-life.

— Douglas Tallman andC. Benjamin Ford.

Flying high

MoCo Councilman Mike Subin will receive an award Sept. 20 for going public with his fight with prostate cancer.

The Institute for the Advancement of Multicultural and Minority Medicine will present Subin with the Eagle Fly Free Award. The institute seeks to eliminate health disparities in African-American and other minority communities.

Being honored with Subin at Washington’s Fairmount Hotel will be former president Bill Clinton, Arizona Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy, singer James Brown, Dan Abrams of MSNBC, Freddie Mac Foundation President Maxine Baker and Black Enterprise Magazine Chairman Earl Graves, among others.

Subin revealed his surgery for prostate cancer in October as a way of encouraging more men to get tested for the disease.

— Douglas Tallman

What about weddings?

Education advocates, Democrats, union officials, journalists — even commission members themselves — tried without success to get a sneak peek at the report by the Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland before its release Wednesday.

State teachers union prez Pat Foerster said Monday that she was anxious to see the report, but not to expect her to line up at the State House on Wednesday for a signed.

In an op-ed piece sent to newspapers around the state in May, Foerster criticized the commission, chaired by Steele, for excluding the state’s two teachers unions, the state PTA, the state association of school boards and child advocacy groups.

Needless to say, the Ehrlich administration, which has had a mutually antagonistic relationship with MSTA, did not invite Foerster to the report’s release party.

‘‘I’m not much of a party crasher,” she said. ‘‘I might be escorted out.”

— Sean R. Sedam

Eerie similarities?

When your government agency fails to act quickly in the face of a huge fiasco, it can be a career-ending mistake.

Just ask Michael D. Brown, formerly of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He was shown the door days after being praised by the boss.

Over at Montgomery’s Planning Board, Derick Berlage doesn’t foresee he’ll be similarly ‘‘Browned.”

Granted, the mess over the height and setback violations in Clarksburg can’t be compared with the devastation of the Gulf Coast. But short of a natural disaster, what else do Montgomery residents take more seriously than planning regulations?

When he met with Gazette editors and reporters last week, Berlage expressed confidence that his bosses on the County Council will let him keep his job.

‘‘I believe they view me as an agent of reform, and they’re supportive of me,” said Berlage, himself an ex-councilman.

Now we’re just waiting for someone in the Council Office Building to send the ultimate signal: that Berlage is doing a ‘‘heckuvajob.”

— Douglas Tallman

Star pupil

Every once in a while the Montgomery County school board gets a reminder of why they exist: the children.

On Tuesday Xochi Cortland, a first-grader at Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park, served as a shining example of how a child can clarify the board’s purpose.

As part of the board’s recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, Nora Cortland, Xochi’s mother and vice president of Rolling Terrace’s PTA, told the board about the school’s Spanish translations of PTA newsletters and other correspondence. That helps to connect Spanish-speaking parents in a school that was 52.5 percent Hispanic and had 21.4 percent of its students enrolled in English for Speakers of Other Languages classes last year.

But the real star of the presentation was Xochi, who board President Pat O’Neill remarked has ‘‘the biggest dimples I’ve ever seen.”

‘‘I like going to school at Rolling Terrace because it’s very fun and it’s an English and Spanish school,” Xochi told the board.

‘‘We’ve finally had someone come before the board that’s made some sense,” said board member Steve Abrams.

He’s not kidding.

— Sean R. Sedam