Ehrlich Comes Home To Launch Campaign

By Matthew Mosk and John Wagner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 29, 2006

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. returned to his boyhood home yesterday to launch his bid for reelection, and he plans to name his running mate this morning, a 36-year-old female Cabinet secretary who is blind.

Ehrlich made the formal reelection announcement standing on the front steps of his parents' modest brick rowhouse in the Baltimore suburb of Arbutus, telling a sun-drenched crowd that he wants to be Maryland's first Republican governor in 50 years elected to a second term. Today he is expected to embark on that effort with Kristen Cox, his secretary of disabilities, sources close to the governor said.

Cox, who has never sought political office, did not attend the campaign kickoff. But in recent weeks, she has appeared more frequently at Ehrlich's side, at state and political events. His advisers believe the selection could help bolster Ehrlich's standing with female voters -- whose support, as indicated in polls, has been declining since he took office.

The governor is more than halfway to his target of raising $20 million and has had a campaign operation that has been moving at full tilt for months. Yesterday, he vowed not only to keep his hold on the governor's mansion but also to realign a state that has been dominated by Democrats for most of the past 100 years.

"So here we go," Ehrlich said. "We're going to compete hard. We're going to engage. We're going to debate. We're going to take on the monopoly. And this time, we're going to bring the monopoly down."

Ehrlich, 49, will spend the next five months locked in combat with Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democrat who had expected an extended primary fight until his opponent, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, withdrew from the race last week.

Ehrlich and O'Malley have been trading barbs for months in anticipation of the campaign. Yesterday, O'Malley surfaced in Arbutus two hours before Ehrlich's speech to try and showcase his support in Baltimore's blue-collar suburbs.

But the governor's focus was not on O'Malley. Instead, he ticked off a list of accomplishments he has been touting in speeches, on his Web site and in the first of what is likely to be a summer-long barrage of television commercials.

In a 15-minute speech, Ehrlich boasted of turning a $4 billion budget deficit into a $2 billion surplus and fending off what he said were $7 billion in proposed taxes from Democrats. All are numbers that Democrats have disputed.

He also reached out to farmers, environmentalists, moderate Democrats and, most notably, given his choice of running mates, the disabled. "People with disabilities in Maryland are empowered more than in any other state in the country," he said.

Ehrlich created a Cabinet-level position two years ago aimed at addressing the community's needs. Cox became that department's first secretary.

Cox, who was born in Bellevue, Wash., has said she lost her vision to a degenerative genetic disease at 11 while growing up in Utah. She walks with the aid of a white cane. She told the Examiner newspaper in a recent interview that she had to "memorize everything" when she attended Brigham Young University because she had not yet learned Braille.

She went on to receive a bachelor's degree in educational psychology and a certificate in special education, then worked as a lobbyist for the National Federation for the Blind, according to the state Web site. While working on Capitol Hill, she got to know Ehrlich.

"She was never subtle. That was never one of her strengths," said the governor at an event last fall with Cox. In 2001, she was appointed by President Bush to serve at the U.S. Department of Education. She joined Ehrlich's administration in 2003.

Stephen Marriott, an executive with his family's hotel corporation, recalled meeting Cox when they were both learning life skills as blind adults. "I was learning to read Braille," said Marriott, who remembered that Cox told him she was learning, too, "so she could read bedtime stories to her son."

"I was impressed with her perseverance," he said.

Cox lives in Towson, in Baltimore County, with her husband, Randy, and her two sons. She did not return calls for comment yesterday. Sources close to Ehrlich spoke about Cox on the condition that they not be named because the governor has attempted to keep her name closely guarded until today.

In New York, Democrat Eliot L. Spitzer has selected a blind state senator as his running mate in this fall's race for governor.

Ehrlich's selection comes as a Washington Post poll shows his support lagging with female voters: He trails O'Malley by 19 percentage points among women registered to vote. He is running even among men.

Matthew A. Crenson, a Johns Hopkins University political science professor, said Cox's selection could help with the "gender gap problem" and send a signal to the disabled community that "he's caring." But he said Ehrlich is unlikely to expand his voter base with the choice.

Ehrlich's event yesterday was a homecoming in many ways. It was on the front stoop of the house that he first announced for governor March 26, 2002. His parents were there yesterday, as were his wife and two young sons.

In 2002, he was a four-term congressman from Baltimore County who had signed Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" but sought the top elected job in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1.

Ehrlich said he relished the uphill fight against then-Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, whose strong lead in the polls and in fundraising scared off several potential Democratic challengers.

Ehrlich has said repeatedly over the course of his career that he has no qualms entering a campaign as an underdog.

The Post poll released yesterday showed the governor trailing O'Malley by 11 points among registered voters and 16 points among those most likely to vote this fall.

O'Malley did not cede the day to Ehrlich, staging an early afternoon rally outside the State House in Annapolis that was followed by a march with supporters to the State Board of Elections headquarters, where the mayor and his running mate, Del. Anthony G. Brown (D-Prince George's), officially filed as candidates before Monday's deadline.

Then, less than two hours before Ehrlich's announcement, O'Malley made a foray into Arbutus, holding the latest in a series of "kitchen table" talks in the family home of an air-conditioning technician and part-time mental health worker.

The rally, which drew about 300 people, including many labor union supporters, and the more intimate event were attempts to frame O'Malley as the champion of working-class families in the race.

In a fiery speech at the rally, O'Malley said he was seeking to oust "an administration that has failed to defend our middle class."

Staff writers Mary Otto and Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.