Opening salvos in the 2006 election

by David Grand
August 4, 2005

Looks like neither the Republicans nor Democrats could wait until the campaign began to raise their battle flags and to start bombarding one another with broadsides.

What precipitated it was the governor announcing a $1 billion budget surplus, which he attributed in large part to his keeping his promise not to raise taxes, while repelling the spendthrift Democrats efforts to boost taxes sky-high. Not to take his boastful claims lying down, the Maryland Democratic Party fired back with an incendiary statement titled "Ehrlich lies about taxes and spending," with an accompanying fact sheet intended to expose Ehrlich's attempt to substitute fiction for fact and supposition for evidence.

That's when a number of Democratic biggies, who smelt blood, quickly entered the fray, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him. And the media was anything but neutral in covering the battle of words. Here in Carroll County, conservative columnists, who believe that Ehrlich can do no wrong, praised him to high heaven for bringing about that surplus and eliminating the deficit.

A metro paper, however, saw it in a much different light in an editorial titled What Surplus? And that " Ehrlich's outlandish claim that he resolved a $4 billion deficit is not true; for what he's done is balance the budget three years in a row is by raising taxes and fees, transferring funds and cutting some programs." In short, a lot of "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul."

While it's true, that Ehrlich does, as former Gov. Marvin Mandell (an Ehrlich ally) said, "deserves some credit for the economic turnaround and  surplus, albeit that the roaring economy, especially in the housing sector, was the primary reason." And adding, "that billion dollar budget surplus is going to evaporate with increases in education, and that slots are necessary to keep the money rolling in."

The two rivals for his job-Mayor Martin O'Malley And Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan-didn't couch their language in such polite terms in attacking Ehrlich. O'Malley, who obviously had his "Irish up," mocked him by pointing to the higher car fees, property taxes, instate tuition and flush fees; and calling his fiscal policies "morning glory budgets that raid the Transportation Trust Fund (which is still owed a quarter-billion dollars) and Program Open Space."  Duncan followed suit, saying "It's one thing to make broad, sweeping claims repeatedly, but in order to be credible they must be based on reality, and that's clearly not the case with what the governor is claiming."

And it was Ehrlich's nemesis, Michael Busch, who launched a frontal assualt on his braggadocio claims, by rattling off specific stats, among which were: that Ehrlich has raised more than $600 million in fees and taxes over the last three years; that $300 million per year is generated by his car and flush fees alone; that he increased the property tax by $200 million; and that tuition's at Maryland University have jumped 40 percent. And as a parting shot, he said Ehrlich "had treated the truth with more flexibility than Gumby."

Gumby? That name didn't ring a bell with me, but when I checked it on a web site, I found it was an animated, little green, clay puppet in the long-running cartoon series "Gumby and Pokey." I was glad to learn that Busch has, despite his hard-nose image, a lighthearted side, and enjoys watching cartoons in between plotting Ehrlich's downfall.  (I couldn, however, find any reference to Gumby being "flexible with the truth," but perhaps he was looking in the mirror when he said it.)