Maryland: Robert L. Ehrlich

Gov. Martin O’Malley would best former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich in a poll about a hypothetical rematch in 2010, but the sitting governor still may be vulnerable, according to pollsters at Clarus Research Group. How did they come to that...

The legal saga surrounding former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich’s personnel practices continued this week when Maryland’s second highest court found that Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration was within its rights to fire a holdover patronage employee from Ehrlich’s term. The case...

--Richard E. Vatz

Expropriation of a political opponent’s issues and primary values is both a time-honored and time-dishonored practice. It is a method of weakening one’s opponents’ constituency by taking away their causes célèbres and claiming them as one’s own. Thus, in Maryland, we have seen serial attempts and some putative successes at such expropriation by Mayor and then Governor Martin O’Malley regarding such issues as electric rate increases and slots, issues that correctly attributed would benefit Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich and Republicans. In cases such as these and others, expropriating politicians fool the public into thinking that the issue or value in question has been historically sponsored by them, when in reality it was his or her opponent or opponent’s party that was the leader on the position favored by the public.