O'Malley Assails Ehrlich on Race

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley accused Ehrlich of "belittling" the progress of Baltimore schools and students. (By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley accused Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday of using racially "coded, charged language" when talking about Baltimore's schoolchildren and accused the Republican incumbent of pursuing policies unfriendly to African Americans.

The broadside by the Democratic challenger came during a candidate forum sponsored by the NAACP in Baltimore that also drew contenders in the U.S. Senate race and other contests.

Ehrlich, who entered the room after O'Malley had finished speaking, offered no direct response from the podium, instead listing the African Americans he has appointed to key positions and the programs he has supported. Afterward, he called the mayor "uniformly negative."

The pointed remarks underscored the importance of black voters in an election nine days away.

O'Malley hammered the governor for his past assertion that "multiculturalism is bunk," accused him of working to strip the NAACP of its tax-exempt status and said Ehrlich has been "talking out of both sides of his mouth" about Baltimore's arrest policies -- delivering different messages to white and black audiences.

"Our current governor of Maryland declares over and over and over again that multiculturalism is bunk, that history has shown that a multicultural people can never thrive and survive," O'Malley said. "Obviously, the governor does not come to Baltimore City very often. We are a multicultural city in a multicultural state in the strongest and greatest multicultural nation ever created on God's multicultural planet."

Ehrlich took a very different tack minutes later when he took the stage, by which time O'Malley had left for a funeral. Ehrlich ran through a list of 15 African Americans, starting with Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, whom he has appointed in the past four years.

He followed that with a list of such initiatives as construction projects at historically black colleges and universities, changes to minority business contracting rules and the renaming of Baltimore-Washington International Airport to honor Thurgood Marshall.

"And we have more to do, and thank you for your attention," he concluded, then walked off stage.

Asked later what he thought of O'Malley's message, Ehrlich said: "He's uniformly negative. I just got up and talked about the successes of our administration."

Ehrlich spokeswoman Shareese DeLeaver said O'Malley was "trying to create a division that doesn't exist between Governor Ehrlich and Maryland's black voters."

Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the Baltimore NAACP, bemoaned the animosity between the candidates.