O'Malley Assails Ehrlich on Race

By John Wagner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 29, 2006

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.

"The mayor and the governor have both failed us and our children because they have not come together," he said in an interview. "They need to set aside the politics."

Exchanges between the Senate candidates, who shared the stage, also grew testy at times.

Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D) argued that Steele would do President Bush's bidding. Steele (R) responded that Cardin's long tenure in politics has left him out of touch.

Cardin said their biggest policy difference was on the Iraq war. "I opposed the war in Iraq four years ago," Cardin said. "Michael Steele to this day believes it's the right thing to do."

Steele later said that a lack of international involvement in Iraq had made it "a mess" and cautioned against pulling out too soon. "We need to focus on bringing our troops home but be mindful of the Iraq that we leave behind," he said.

O'Malley's remarks came after Ehrlich has spent months airing ads about Baltimore's low-performing schools. O'Malley has expressed frustration with the tactic, noting that scores are improving, particularly in younger grades. Yesterday's remarks were his most spirited thus far.

"Why is he spending so much money belittling the progress of our people, talking in coded, charged language about those city kids and those city schools, as if the children of our city are not blessed with the same brains that God has given the children in every part of our state?" O'Malley asked.

O'Malley also brought up a 2001 letter that Ehrlich, then a congressman, sent to the IRS asking the agency to follow up on a request for an investigation of the NAACP's tax-exempt status. Ehrlich's fundraising chief, Richard E. Hug, was among several Republicans who made the request.

"Rather than work to bridge the divide, he decided to use his wealthy and influential friends like Dick Hug to try to influence the IRS to shut down the NAACP," O'Malley said yesterday.

The mayor criticized Ehrlich's veto of legislation increasing the minimum wage and said Ehrlich's record on promoting use of African American contractors is "abysmal" -- something Ehrlich aides strongly dispute.