Familiar Steps at the End of Campaign Trail

The maneuvers that Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Democratic challenger Martin O'Malley have employed in the final days of the 2006 campaign have a hint of familiarity to them.

Ehrlich will spend his last hours of campaigning cajoling support from African Americans at a church service this morning in Prince George's County, as he had in 2002. And he will hold a rally today with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, as he had the Sunday before the election four years ago.

Echoes were elsewhere, too, as O'Malley barnstormed the state on a bus tour yesterday, as Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend had during her final week on the trail in 2002. And the Baltimore mayor will hold a late-hour rally with former president Bill Clinton, as Townsend had, to elicit cheers from black supporters. Yet for all the similarities between then and now, there is no hint of certainty that Tuesday's election will produce a reprint of the landmark 2002 vote that made Ehrlich Maryland's first Republican governor in a generation.

The differences from four years ago are stark.

Polls that showed the lead breaking to Ehrlich four years ago now show the governor running behind, or in a statistical tie.

Part of that might be because the country is in a different frame of mind this year, said Don Norris, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The war in Iraq and President Bush's dismal approval numbers have been front and center in Maryland, in part because they have been the chief themes of Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D) in his campaign.

Yesterday, Cardin was at UMBC with former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, where the two lamented the nation's declining stature in the world. "We have to put diplomacy back in foreign policy," Cardin said. "Six years ago, this nation was at peace. Six years ago, this nation had a surplus."

The national mood, along with some skirmishes Ehrlich had with religious conservatives and gun enthusiasts during his four-year tenure in Annapolis, have forced the governor to spend more time this campaign trying to motivate his Republican base.

Yesterday, before heading to Baltimore to meet with African American ministers, the governor took a 45-minute spin through the Anne Arundel County fairgrounds, where 10,000 motorcycle enthusiasts were expected to gather for a charity toy drive. The organizer of the event, lawyer Joe Rouse, said he expected broad support for the governor from the biker set.

The governor got a warm reception from some, but not everyone, as he walked quickly past stalls that served whiskey at 11 a.m., sold every imaginable form of leather apparel, including $79 custom-fitted chaps and a booth for the Baltimore chapter Hells Angels chapter.

Dwayne Mitchell, a motorcycle dealer from Gaithersburg, told Ehrlich: "I'll vote for you, but you've got to buy a bike first." Ehrlich laughed, saying, "Talk to Kendel," his wife.

Later, in front of a mission for homeless people and drug addicts in a blighted East Baltimore neighborhood, a crowd of supporters chanted "four more years" as the governor was introduced.

"I went into the African American community five years ago, and I said: 'I'm white, and I'm a congressman. Give me a shot,' " Ehrlich told them. Since then, he said, he has appointed several blacks to key judgeships and Cabinet posts and has lived up to a pledge to invest more in historically black colleges and universities. "They're responding to action," Ehrlich said of the crowd.

He speculated with a talk radio host that he also could benefit from the aggressive appeal for black votes coming from Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who is facing Cardin in a campaign for the open U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D).

Steele appeared yesterday at the reopening of the Baltimore Basilica before knocking on doors in Howard County. He then rode his campaign RV to Silver Spring, where he greeted spectators at the Gonzaga-Montgomery Blair high school football matchup.

Standing in the chilly evening air, as campaign workers hoisted signs nearby, Steele shook hands and talked to students about their schoolwork. O'Malley, meanwhile, sought to rally support from a group that went in large numbers with Ehrlich four years ago: residents of the Baltimore suburbs. During an appearance in Howard yesterday, an upbeat O'Malley sought to portray the governor as disinterested in the hard work of governing.

"Bob Ehrlich, if you can't make our government work for working families, give it back to us," O'Malley said at a rally in Columbia that drew about 300 people.

Staff writer John Wagner contributed to this report.