He'd rather the malpractice crisis continue for now than accept what he considers a bad bill and a new tax.
"I'll veto it at my convenience," he vows.
As a stormy legislative session nears its end in Maryland, the political football called malpractice reform is hurtling toward Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
(Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
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Derision flows both ways. Outside the conference committee room, Democratic House Speaker Mike Busch blurts out to no one in particular: "You bring everybody here for two days. You have the governor prancing around" -- here Busch adopts a singsong voice -- " 'I'm going to veto.'
"What is the point?"
The Fight of His Life
It's a question one might ask after so many public showdowns over the past two years.
Ehrlich has scheduled a "veto-signing press event" for tomorrow. Democrats will attempt to override the veto Tuesday, followed by the start of the regular 90-day session Wednesday. The malpractice meltdown reinforces dueling images of Ehrlich for critics and supporters: Here is a politician with a partisan chip on his shoulder that prevents him from getting the big things done. Or: Here is a governor standing on principle against an ossified establishment.
Either way, he governs as if he's in the sandlot fight of his life. Cue the highlight reel of highly visible, what-is-the-point? moments:
The new governor nominates an in-your-face controversial environmental secretary -- and the Democrats promptly vote her down, the first rejection of a cabinet nominee in state history. The governor, on a talk radio show, declares multiculturalism "bunk" and "crap." The governor forbids state employees to speak to two Baltimore Sun reporters. The governor calls Democratic appeals to black voters "racist." The governor accuses Busch of "playing the race card" on slots.
Oh yes, the slots war, a fine mess on Ehrlich's signature issue. For two years the Democrats and the governor huffed and puffed and postured so furiously it made voters' eyes roll like jackpot lemons. The payoff: another bilious stalemate.
It was complicated, with Democrats battling among themselves. At one point the Senate passed a bill, but the issue never reached the House floor. There was blame to go around, but it was the governor who campaigned on the issue, to solve the budget crisis and save horse racing, he said. Even though he had the backing of Mike Miller, the powerful Senate president, he couldn't deliver. There was a moment when it seemed he could have gotten slots through the House if he would have agreed to hundreds of millions in taxes that some Democrats said were also needed to fix the budget. The governor refused to deal.
Not that nothing has been accomplished. In his first year only two of Ehrlich's initiatives survived the legislature, one to make it easier to establish charter schools and one to enhance juvenile justice education. But last year, about two-thirds of 18 initiatives succeeded, including landmark legislation to raise $66 million a year to reduce sewage flowing into the Chesapeake Bay and a measure to raise $173 million a year for transportation projects.
Both were funded with hikes in fees -- water bills and vehicle registrations -- not higher taxes. It's a vital distinction for Ehrlich -- but a distinction without a difference for his critics.
Ehrlich attributes legislative disappointments to Democrats bent on seeing a Republican fail. He and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele were elected with 52 percent of the vote, and a Baltimore Sun poll in October said Ehrlich enjoyed a 59 percent approval rating. Still, Ehrlich is riveted on a different statistic: The General Assembly, and the state's registered voters, are 2-to-1 Democratic. Ehrlich was able to defeat Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend by appealing as an affable moderate to voters who had wearied of eight years of Gov. Parris N. Glendening.
"I guess I had underestimated the extent to which some would resent the fact that there is a new player in town," Ehrlich says in an interview. "And now I was coming back not as 'Bobby' " -- as he is known from his delegate days -- "I was coming back as governor, with my views and my philosophy and a whole new set of players and new appointments, new cabinet, new regulators, you name it. And this town was not accustomed, nor did it expect for us to win, and it certainly didn't expect this entire new regime to come to play here.
"There is an anger, an anger that's real. It began on Election Day and has not dissipated to any extent, and I think the more successful we are, basically, on a policy end, the more it's thought that we might be around here for a while, the angrier they get."
Democrats hear such talk and wonder if the governor inhabits an alternate universe, a desperate, zero-sum combat zone that does not resemble their chummy Annapolis.
"He takes this personally," says Miller. "He has a thin skin. If you have a thin skin, you shouldn't be in politics. . . . We had a Republican governor named Theodore McKeldin [1951-59] who was one of the most successful governors in the history of the state. But he governed from the middle. Spiro Agnew [1967-69] -- under his administration, they passed a progressive graduated income tax. He reached out."
