O’Malley looks to future, Ehrlich eyes votes still out

Buoyed by a national tide against Republicans, Mayor Martin O’Malley declared victory in the governor’s race last night, appearing to have prevailed in his long and difficult campaign against a popular incumbent. Despite a poor showing in the crucial Baltimore suburbs, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said he will not concede until thousands of absentee ballots are counted.

With more than four-fifths of the state’s precincts reporting, Ehrlich, Maryland’s first Republican governor in a generation, faced a large deficit that he could overcome only by capturing the vast majority of absentee votes.

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Ehrlich told several hundred backers at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore early this morning that his administration had a "decent shot" at another four years.

"We don’t know, folks, we just don’t know," Ehrlich said. "We will count the votes. We will count all the votes. … We’ve been around 20 years, and we’ve got a decent shot to be around four more."

Ehrlich’s speech interrupted O’Malley’s televised victory declaration, prompting boos from the crowd at the Hippodrome who could see the governor’s image on a big-screen television.

"I’m still waiting for the call, by the way," O’Malley said.

He’ll be waiting a long time.  A lot of people in this state are under the mistaken impression that Ehrlich is a moderate.  He’s nothing of the kind.  He’s an Ellen Sauerbrey right wing republican kook who’s only real difference from Sauerbrey is that he was willing to put up the appearance of being a moderate so he could win elections.  He has not governed as a moderate, except when he knew damn he didn’t have the votes in the statehouse to win on a particular issue.  Maryland limits governors to two terms, so you would have seen a much more hard line Ehrlich in his second term, particularly if he had presidential aspirations.  You can see what he’s really made of now.  It’s Ellen Sauerbrey loosing badly all over again.

Republicans said they believe the governor can make up ground when the record number of absentee ballots are tallied. More than 190,000 people requested absentee ballots after calls by Ehrlich and Democratic leaders to use them as a means to bypass the state’s new electronic voting machines. More Democrats than Republicans requested absentee ballots, however.

Election workers will begin counting those ballots on scanning machines tomorrow, but election challenges from the lawyers who have been retained by both political parties could prevent a winner from being officially declared for weeks. The last time an election was this close, in 1994, the losing candidate, Ellen R. Sauerbrey, pursued a legal challenge for two months and never conceded defeat.

Go for it Bob.  Let the people in the rest of the state see the real you finally.