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GOP faces up to another long winter

Gains of 2002 crumble as voters take Maryland deeper into the blue

Friday, Nov. 10, 2006

BALTIMORE — The Mood Swings was an appropriate band for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s election night party. Four years ago, it played while Republicans popped champagne corks and promised renaissance, but this year the Mood Swings played while the party faithful came to grips with political carnage.

The mood couldn’t have been any brighter for the state GOP in November 2002. Ehrlich had just scored a monumental upset over Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) to put a Republican in Government House for the first time in 36 years. As a Prince Georgian and Maryland’s first African-American lieutenant governor, Michael S. Steele, symbolized the promise of a fundamental racial and regional shift in state politics.

A bumper crop of ambitious candidates — and rejuvenated Republican caucuses in the General Assembly — had party leaders crowing about the prospects of major gains in the Democratic-controlled legislature. Those circumstances, along with a popular president who was still riding a wave of post-9⁄11 goodwill, had the GOP bullish on their future.

Today, that’s all gone, and there is a growing realization that Tuesday’s election could banish the Republican Party into deeper obscurity than ever before.

‘‘Even Stephen King couldn’t come up with a script this bad for Republicans in Maryland,” said Donald Murphy, a Republican former delegate from Baltimore County.

The governor has spent the past two days reassuring his staff members, his supporters and countless donors who helped him shatter all of the state’s fundraising records. On Thursday afternoon, Ehrlich was throwing a football in his front lawn with his son, Drew.

In a brief interview with The Gazette, Ehrlich was not interested in talking about the past or blaming his defeat on anything. Instead, he wanted to thank the voters and his staff for ‘‘four terrific years that put the state in terrific shape” for Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley (D), and promised a smooth transition.

Related: Winners & Losers

He repeated his oft-used phrase that ‘‘we don’t like whiners,” while stressing that no one in his administration would blame his loss on anyone or anything. The governor said he has not decided what he will do after his term ends, but it’s the question everyone is asking.

Steele, meanwhile, is rumored to land in the Bush administration — potentially secretary of Housing and Urban Development, according to CNN. Other insiders believe that Steele, whose star power was the strength of his campaign, could land a television gig, and there has also been talk of him succeeding Ken Mehlman, a Baltimore native, as head of the Republican National Committee.

Ehrlich, meanwhile, did admit that his loss, coupled with the losses in the legislature and at the local levels in places such as Charles and Howard counties — previously considered swing jurisdictions — means that Republicans face a nearly impossible task of gaining a strong foothold in Maryland. His re-election campaign raised a record amount of money, his approval numbers were above 50 percent, his organization was considered strong, and he was proud of his accomplishments. But that didn’t matter to the voters.

‘‘Clearly, Maryland wants to go in a different direction and it’s a very different direction,” Ehrlich said. Then, he added, referring to his time in the House of Delegates and in Congress, ‘‘I could not have had a better 20 years.”

Both Ehrlich and Steele lost by decisive margins, part of a national tide of public discontent with the Republicans. With their departures goes any serious speculation, at least for now, about political realignment despite the claims from outgoing Maryland Republican Party Chairman John M. Kane that the GOP will bounce back.

‘‘[Tuesday] was a giant step backwards for the two-party system in Maryland,” said Zach P. Messitte, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. ‘‘The Republicans can put on a nice smiley face and say, ‘But Ehrlich and Steele were competitive,’ but you come right back and say horseshoes and hand grenades. Close doesn’t count in politics.”

Most troubling is the lack of a Republican bench behind Ehrlich and Steele, which Messitte compared to the diluted Baltimore Orioles’ minor league system

‘‘They lose their two top stars with no farm team. Nobody’s being cultivated behind them,” he said.

Republicans’ best statewide prospect for 2010 could be Mehlman, who grew up in Baltimore and lives in Potomac.

‘‘Republicans overreached and they got their hats handed to them. Their goals should have been modest for 2006 to build on 2002,” Messitte said. ‘‘...They put both their stars out there and they said they were going to make gains in the legislature. They gambled, and they lost.”

Adding further insult to injury, the GOP’s highest-ranking county official and most viable statewide candidate for 2010 could be Del. John R. Leopold, a Republican maverick and no friend of Ehrlich’s, if his razor-thin margin holds and he is elected Anne Arundel county executive.

Maryland’s African-American voters provided overwhelming support for the Democratic ticket, as did voters throughout the densely populated Washington suburbs, despite efforts by Republicans to peel off support in those constituencies. Right up to Tuesday, Ehrlich aides were confidently predicting that the governor would improve his dismal performance in Prince George’s County compared to 2002. Steele aides were predicting that because the lieutenant governor is black and lives in Landover Hills, he could win up to 35 percent of the overwhelmingly Democratic Prince George’s vote.

Instead, Ehrlich ended up with 12,000 fewer votes in Prince George’s than he did in 2002, or 19 percent. Steele got 39,514 or 23 percent of the vote in Prince George’s compared to 130,615 votes (76 percent) that went to his Democratic rival for the U.S. Senate, U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.

Democratic Party leaders who brought in national luminaries at the end of the campaign to energize black voters said this week that they knew Ehrlich and Steele would fail in their attempts to sway the African-American vote.

‘‘It failed miserably because they totally underestimated the importance of talking about issues like education and health care and moving this state forward,” said Democratic Party Chairman Terry Lierman.

‘‘All they wanted to talk about was trash cans and puppies,” Lierman said, referring Steele’s snappy television ads.

Lierman, who instituted a ‘‘No County Left Behind” strategy, said he wanted to make the Democrats competitive everywhere in the state. As a result, Charles County has a Democratic sheriff for the first time in 126 years. In Queen Anne’s County, the make-up of the county commissioners flipped from four Republicans and one Democrat to four Democrats and one Republican, according to absentee ballot counts certified Thursday.

‘‘It worked because we had planning, execution and a terrific army of volunteers,” Lierman said. ‘‘The issues were on our side and put all that together and have some wonderful candidates, you have a recipe for a landslide victory.”

Staff Writer Alan Brody contributed to this report.