Immigrant Remarks By Ehrlich Still Burn

Yesterday, Ehrlich said that the issue has "been hijacked by a politically correct crowd" and that he did not want "to get into this politically correct game."

He declined to wade back into a discussion of Schaefer's complaints about Spanish-speaking immigrants, but he did not back off his contention that immigrants should learn English.

Latino advocates agreed with that goal yesterday, but they said that Maryland is not providing enough resources. In Montgomery alone, 105,000 residents have "limited English" skills, yet the classes for adults who want to learn can accommodate only about 24,000 people, council member Tom Perez (D-Silver Spring) said at the afternoon news conference in Takoma Park. Last year, according to a county report, 2,000 adults were on waiting lists for those classes.

"It's time to put your money where your mouth is," Perez said. "If indeed you want everyone to learn English, support the funding."

Politically, Ehrlich's remarks have provided fodder for his Democratic opponents, with two likely contenders in the governor's race, O'Malley and Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, weighing in.

But one political scientist doubted that the controversy would do much harm to Ehrlich's standing with voters, especially his Republican base. "It's probably not something he should harp on all the time, but it doesn't seem to be a huge risk in the short term," said James G. Gimpel of the University of Maryland.

Still, the governor's remarks could hurt the GOP's efforts to bring more Latinos into the party, said Jorge Ribas, a Hispanic Republican from Montgomery. "The Republican Party is not going to grow with those kinds of comments," he said. "Those comments alienate people."

Last year, Ribas formed the Maryland Hispanic Republican Caucus. But after he complained publicly that the governor had no Latinos in his Cabinet, GOP leaders ousted his group from the party and formed their own Hispanic caucus.