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A Politician Who Thinks Like a Linebacker
"He's a linebacker in mentality. He has always been able to take a hit and return it with that much more," says D. Bruce Poole, a longtime Democratic friend of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s
(By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
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The son of a car salesman, Ehrlich grew up as an only child in a rowhouse in Arbutus in Baltimore County. With a gift for athletics -- and the help of his father's boss -- he landed a scholarship to the exclusive Gilman prep school in Baltimore.
It was a world unlike his own, and Ehrlich remembers having "a chip on my shoulder" at first. But he became a standout athlete, playing three sports, and with the help of the headmaster went on to Princeton, where he was a linebacker and team co-captain.
Ehrlich turned to politics in 1986, after law school at Wake Forest University. He had practiced three years, in a silk-stocking law firm in Baltimore -- Ober, Kaler, Grimes & Shriver -- when he decided to make a run for the state House.
Few thought he could win. But he did. Twice.
Those years, he said recently, were "the happiest of my life."
Several senior Democrats brought him along. "They taught me how to be a legislator," he recalled. "They made me part of the group. They let me in the backroom. They had me handle bills on the floor, which was very rare for Republicans."
The political mood had shifted when Ehrlich was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He won in 1994, during the heady days of Newt Gingrich's Republican revolution. For the first time, he was part of the majority.
But when he returned to Annapolis as governor, he was a Republican in a Democratic state -- in a more partisan atmosphere. Although he tried to forge relationships with lawmakers over basketball games and evenings watching sports at the governor's mansion, he said, it did not work.
On issues such as slot machines and medical malpractice, he did not find enough allies.
"Coming back, I mistakenly thought I could go home again -- and you cannot," he reflected in an interview. "It was the biggest surprise of my four years, the biggest disappointment."
A Candidate Who Hates to Lose
His morning coffee is iced. It is 9:30 on a rainy Friday, still early for Ehrlich, an admitted night owl who usually doesn't go to sleep until 2 to 3 a.m. Today he started earlier than usual, making football picks on "The Junkies," a popular morning radio show on WJFK (106.7 FM). He has two more losses than wins for the season, but he defends his record. "It's not just the winners; it's the point spreads," he says. "It's easy to pick winners. This is a science."
The athletics that so defined Ehrlich in his youth are still part of his adult life. He reaches for sports metaphors in his speech; he asks about game scores on the campaign trail. For much of his term, he has played golf frequently, even improving his handicap from 10.6 to 8.3. But his aides say he has been too busy to hit the links during the past year.
