By John Wagner and Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 21, 2006; B01
This week, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Democratic Senate hopeful, visited the Potomac home of a 20-year-old quadriplegic to highlight the potential of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
Yesterday, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Democratic candidate for governor, visited the Catonsville home of a couple coping with Parkinson's to pledge more state money for the science.
The Republican incumbent, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., has also been staking his claim to the issue in television ads suggesting that his support of such research is evidence that he "doesn't govern from the right or the left, but the center, where most of us are."
Stem cell research has emerged in Maryland this year as a litmus test of moderation, with candidates practically tripping over one another to let the public know about their support for a science that holds great promise for a range of debilitating conditions -- despite raising moral qualms in some quarters, including the White House.
Politicians touting their support "see themselves as fighting for people who are suffering from disease, and politically, that's a very powerful place to be standing," said Ronald Walters, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The issue was brought into sharper focus this week by President Bush's veto of a bill that would have lifted funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research -- which opponents say is tantamount to abortion because it involves the destruction of a human embryo.
Democrats seized on the development to question Ehrlich's commitment to state stem cell legislation passed this year, with advocate and former governor Harry R. Hughes saying Ehrlich's television ad "turns my stomach."
They also sought to highlight Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's awkward response to the issue throughout his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat.
Despite his opposition to abortion, Steele is trying to craft a moderate image in a state where a recent Washington Post poll found that 63 percent of voters questioned support legal abortion, and 35 percent oppose it. This year, Steele made headlines for comparing stem cell research to Nazi experimentation -- comments he later apologized for. And he did not appear eager to discuss the Bush veto.
During a radio interview yesterday, WBAL talk show host Ron Smith asked Steele whether he would vote to override a Bush veto if he was in the Senate. The listeners heard only static in response.
"Hello?" Smith said. "Are you there? Maybe not. We'll be back. And try to reestablish contact with Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele."
After the commercial break, Steele was back, but the question was not. Instead, talk turned to Steele's crime prevention initiatives. Later in the conversation, Smith did repeat the question, and Steele replied that he supports the president.
"I do not support any effort that would result in the destruction of a human embryo," Steele said. "I view that embryo as human life."
Steele said he would approve of research using adult stem cells, which are derived from a variety of sources, and cord blood cells. That research is considered less controversial though not as promising by many scientists.
He also said he supports embryonic research that seeks to extract cells without destroying an embryo, a practice that some leading researchers in the field say remains impractical.
On this issue, as well as a handful of others, Steele has broken with Ehrlich. Ehrlich has highlighted Maryland's pledge to subsidize stem cell research in the wake of Bush's 2001 executive order putting the restrictions in place. A state commission that will decide how to spend up to $15 million in the coming year is scheduled to meet for the first time next week.
In his first campaign commercial, the governor boasted of "funding groundbreaking stem cell research." Ehrlich again called public attention to his support at an event this month announcing his appointees to the commission that will guide the funding process.
At O'Malley's event yesterday, however, Hughes said that if Ehrlich had committed to the issue sooner, Maryland could have started funding the research at least a year earlier. That sentiment was echoed by O'Malley, who pledged to boost state spending on the science next year to $25 million. O'Malley also ticked off initiatives to support the research, including helping the state's leading universities create fellowships to foster the science.
Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, a leading sponsor of Maryland's legislation, also chided Ehrlich at the event. "We need leadership," Rosenberg (D-Baltimore) said. "We don't need a governor who has an election-year conversion."
Ehrlich's history on the issue is somewhat nuanced.
He was largely supportive of stem cell research as a member of Congress. But advocates of the science became disillusioned with the governor in 2005 when he remained silent on a bill that would have earmarked $25 million a year for work on embryonic cells.
Ehrlich's budget secretary raised objections to the proposed funding source, and the bill died on the final day of the session because of a threatened GOP-led filibuster in the Senate that Ehrlich made no visible effort to help avert.
At the outset of this year's legislative session, however, Ehrlich announced that he had included $20 million for stem cell research in his budget and that he would not object to embryonic work if a panel of scientists found it the most promising. But under Ehrlich's approach, the state would also be open to funding work on adult cells.
Ehrlich had branded as "unnecessary" Rosenberg's bill to put into law a process for spending the state money. After the bill passed with provisions including adult stem cell work, the governor announced that he would sign it, saying it had evolved to look much like something he had proposed earlier.
"I was very pleased with the result," Ehrlich said yesterday.