By Robert Barnes and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. starts his reelection campaign today significantly trailing Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, according to a new Washington Post poll. Although the state's voters give the governor good marks for the job he's done, they also appear inclined to return a Democrat to the governor's mansion.

Ehrlich kicks off his campaign today at his boyhood home in the Baltimore suburb of Arbutus, attempting to become the state's first Republican governor in 50 years to serve a second term. But the poll shows why he is preparing to spend a record amount and why he is considered one of the nation's most endangered Republican governors.

Ehrlich is running in an overwhelmingly Democratic state at a time when voters are not happy with the GOP. Maryland voters are more critical than voters nationally of the Bush administration and more strongly opposed to the war in Iraq. And, unlike earlier in Ehrlich's term, more Marylanders than not believe the state is heading in the wrong direction, the poll shows.

Public education is the top priority of voters statewide, and that is the area in which they give Ehrlich his lowest marks. Among the state's largest jurisdictions, controlling crime ranks a strong second in Prince George's and Baltimore counties; growth and transportation are emerging priorities in Montgomery County.

The poll shows Ehrlich trailing O'Malley by 11 percentage points among registered voters and 16 points among those who say they are "absolutely certain" to vote in the Nov. 7 election. The deficit comes even though a majority of voters find Ehrlich likable, approve of the job he has been doing and believe that the 48-year-old former congressman from Baltimore County has a vision for the state.

The telephone poll was conducted among 902 registered voters June 19 to Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan dropped out of the race the week of the poll, leaving O'Malley as the remaining major Democrat to oppose Ehrlich in the fall.

Ehrlich declined to comment, but aides said they did not believe he trailed by such a large margin; communications director Paul E. Schurick said the campaign's most recent poll, conducted in mid-May, showed O'Malley ahead by 5 points.

"We've always known this was going to be an incredibly difficult and close race," Schurick said. "But there is something in this poll that strikes us as wrong."

O'Malley said the poll showed more than simply Democrats supporting a Democrat.

"There are a number of issues that have defined who our current governor is," O'Malley said. "The choices he's made are not in the best interests of expanding the middle class and helping our working families. . . . People feel that our state is moving in the wrong direction, and they're smart enough to know we need effective leadership."

Reelection campaigns are most often considered referendums on the incumbent, and the poll offers both good and bad news for Ehrlich.

He has lost support among independents, women and voters in the central part of the state where he put together a historic win four years ago. Democrats who took a chance on him then seem ready to return to the fold for O'Malley.

But voters still have a mostly positive view of Ehrlich; large majorities say he is honest and likable. He has only begun to fight, and he is hoping to spend $20 million to convince voters that he deserves another four years.

According to the poll, Ehrlich and O'Malley are about equally popular with the state's independent voters and within their own parties. In most parts of the country, that would signal a very close race. But because more than half of Maryland's registered voters are Democrats, it provides the substantial lead for O'Malley.

In 2002, Ehrlich overcame that advantage with a forceful and fresh-faced campaign against then-Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Exit polls showed that he attracted support from independent voters, people who considered themselves moderates and women who have traditionally backed Democrats. But the new poll shows that the governor has been losing those constituents at this point of the campaign.

Although an Election Day telephone poll showed that Ehrlich got about 55 percent of the independents in 2002, he and O'Malley are tied in the current poll. His support among self-described moderates dropped from 50 percent to 37 percent and among white women from 61 percent to 45 percent.

The new poll asked how much Ehrlich has accomplished in his first term and found that 8 percent said "a lot" and 21 percent said "not much"; 40 percent gave him credit for a "fair amount" and 30 percent for "some."

"I think what you're seeing is voters think he's done an okay job, but they can't really point to any accomplishments," said Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz, who advised Timothy M. Kaine's successful gubernatorial cam paign in Virginia last year and does not have a statewide client in Maryland. "They're not seeing a compelling reason" to reelect.

Ehrlich also won in 2002 by disrupting Democrats' traditional winning strategy of rolling up enough votes in Montgomery and Prince George's and the Baltimore region to offset losses elsewhere. But although Ehrlich got a boost of more than 50,000 votes last time in the region consisting of Baltimore and the counties of Baltimore, Harford and Carroll, the new poll shows him trailing O'Malley there by 12 points. It shows the two running even in the Central Maryland counties of Anne Arundel, Howard and Frederick, where Ehrlich won by more than 85,000 votes against Townsend.

On issues, Ehrlich gets his poorest marks on public education. Even though he says he has spent more money on schools than any other governor -- a state law passed the year before he took office mandates it -- half of the poll respondents said he has done a "not so good" or "poor" job of "putting more state money into the public schools."

Public education was cited by 35 percent of the respondents as the issue that should be the top priority of the next governor, more than any other. Female voters especially were interested in education; 39 percent of them said Ehrlich was doing a good job.

And the poll indicated that some might believe Ehrlich is too close to big business. Two-thirds of the respondents said "large business corporations" had too much influence in the Ehrlich administration, and 77 percent said the legislature was right to force Wal-Mart to pay for health insurance for its employees. Ehrlich vetoed that legislation, as well as an increase in the minimum wage, and was overridden by Democratic lawmakers on both.

Those actions convinced Noelle Joll, a geographer from Anne Arundel, that Ehrlich was not as moderate as he said. "I don't think he's a bad guy," she said. "I just think he's pandering to his base."

On the other hand: Tom Caulfield, 59, a Republican who owns Chubby's Barbecue restaurant in Frederick, said he is sticking with Ehrlich.

"I think his first term has gone very successfully considering the odds he's had stacked against him," Caulfield said. "He does not have a popular Republican majority. For him to get anything done is amazing."

The poll indicates that many agree. While Ehrlich's favorability ratings have declined since the last Post poll in 2004, nine in 10 of the state's Republicans have a positive view of him, and nearly six in 10 of those who consider themselves independent feel the same way.

Overall, 56 percent approve of the way he handles his job, three in four say he is honest, even more say he is likable and two-thirds say he "has a vision for the state's future." A majority say he has done a good job protecting the Chesapeake Bay, and, despite his highly publicized battles with the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, six in 10 say he is "willing to make reasonable compromises."

More than seven in 10 say he deserves credit for the state's projected budget surplus.

Republican pollster Ed Goeas, who is not advising a candidate in Maryland, said the reason the Ehrlich-O'Malley matchup numbers do not reflect the generally positive views of Ehrlich is mostly because of the state's Democratic majority.

"People go back to their partisan leanings," he said. "What you have to do in a state like Maryland as you get close to the election, you have to get people to put aside their leanings and look at the person."

It is clear already that Ehrlich is trying to restore his moderate credentials and appeal to those he counted on in 2002. His first television advertisement features testimonials from six women, a black man and a man who appears Latino and includes the line: "He doesn't govern from the right or the left but from the middle, where most of us are."

He recently crossed some conservatives by quickly firing a Metro board member who described homosexuals as "persons of sexual deviancy."

And he could look to appeal to women by naming a female running mate to replace Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who is running for the U.S. Senate. Ehrlich's list of candidates is almost exclusively composed of women, although the list of candidates running for statewide office this year, Democratic and Republican, is almost exclusively male.

The top two issues that voters want the next governor to "work hardest on" -- public education and crime -- are two on which Ehrlich has most criticized O'Malley. The state moved to seize control of Baltimore's worst-performing schools before Democratic legislators stopped the move, and a state study is underway to see whether the city is underreporting crimes there.

The poll showed great variance, though, on voters' priorities based on jurisdiction. In Prince George's, nearly as many people listed crime as the top priority as did those who said education. In Montgomery, 20 percent said transportation should be the governor's top priority and 13 percent said growth. That compares with 25 percent who said it should be education.

On other issues, Marylanders showed a liberal streak. Although 56 percent said they would oppose a state law that would allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, respondents were just about evenly split on allowing civil unions.

And those in the poll were very negative about the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, with 63 percent saying the war "was not worth fighting."

More than two-thirds say they disapprove of President Bush's job performance -- 55 percent disapprove "strongly." And 56 percent said the fact that Bush was backing a candidate would make them less likely to vote for the candidate, as opposed to 19 percent who said it would make their support more likely.

Staff writers Richard Morin, Matthew Mosk and John Wagner contributed to this report.