Tom LoBianco, Maryland politics reporter

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will headline the Maryland Republican Party’s June fundraiser, Maryland Republican sources said Friday night.

Romney will deliver the keynote at the party’s Red, White and Blue dinner in June, the sources said.

(My latest for WYPR, linked here. – TL)

COLUMBIA & TOWSON, MD (wypr) – Gov. Martin O’Malley says he has a problem with the “fairytales” former Gov. Robert Ehrlich has been telling. Before a cheering crowd of supporters in Columbia Wednesday afternoon, the governor shot down some of the fallacies he says his opponent has been spreading.

“His campaign is based on a number of fairy tales. That might be believed when he’s on right-wing radio. But it doesn’t stand up to the facts, it doesn’t stand up to the truth of the matter. And I’m looking forward to having this conversation directly with him whenever he’s up to it.”

The rhetoric may be new, but the political hits are the same in this race as when the governors first ran against each other four years ago.

Ehrlich claims that O’Malley will raise taxes and kill business in Maryland. O’Malley, in effect, calls Ehrlich a right-wing demagogue, who is incapable of governing.

Full story here.

Former delegate Carmen Amedori has quit running with Brian Murphy against Bob Ehrlich in the Republican primary, Republican sources are reporting.

Murphy told a small group of Republican activists tonight that she quit the campaign, according to two Republican sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Republican Blog Red Maryland first reported the departure. Neither Amedori nor Murphy returned calls to their cell phones Thursday night.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski just launched her Twitter account about a week ago, and the best part? She does her own tweeting!

Check out some of these gems:

I’m having bad SAT flashbacks just writing this. But analogies are pertinent and are a pretty good way at drawing an intuitive connection, especially for a public with a short attention span.

So the state Democratic Party has gone hard after Ehrlich ever since it looked like his run for governor was inevitable (a few months ago now.) And the whole RNC sex club spending debacle has proven for very nice ammo (Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele was Ehrlich’s former second-in-command.)

Ehrlich, for his part, has been just as coy as ever when handling tough questions. “Who? Me??” is pretty much de rigeur. (Interestingly, one reporter who attended one of his press gaggles asked a colleague if Ehrlich’s always this weird. The short answer is: yes.)

So as this debate (or what amounts to a debate around here) grows, the pertinent question is who is O’Malley’s Steele? Or to flesh it out some: Who’s the goofball who keeps O’governor’s handlers on edge for fear of some strange sex-club scandal.

Perhaps it’s Sheila Dixon, Baltimore’s own guilty-without-being-convicted former mayor, and a benefactor of the O’Malley/Curran political machine.

Cheryl Kagan, liberal Democrat running to oust Montgomery County Democrat Jennie Forehand in the state senate, got the dirt on Facebook last week. Here are the goods:

(And if you want a real laugh, check the tags at the end of this post. The only person missing from that cast of characters is Willie Don.)

(My exclusive from WYPR, which aired this morning … TL)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy is set to announce former House of Delegates member Carmen Amedori as his running mate Friday. The duo poses a possible problem for former Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s attempt to re-take the State House. WYPR’s Tom LoBianco reports.

Amedori is set to end her bid for U.S. Senate and join Murphy, completing a ticket which will be running to the right of former Gov. Robert Ehrlich in the Republican primary, the sources told WYPR Wednesday.

The Carroll County native served as a Republican member of the House of Delegates for five years before being appointed by Ehrlich to serve state parole board in 2004.

According to a press release from the Murphy campaign, the name of a running mate will be announced Friday.

Murphy declined comment for this story. Amedori did not return calls to her cell phone and an e-mail seeking comment Wednesday.

Here’s my spot from Sine Die where I spoke with NewsChannel 8‘s Bruce DePuyt about the end of the 2010 legislative session and its implications for the elections. Among some of the more interesting points we hit: why the budget shortfall pushed out most other major issues, and why hot-button social issues almost never crop up in Annapolis.

Big thanks to Bruce and his excellent cameraman for making me look somewhat professional.

Video is here. (Until I figure out why YouTube ain’t workin’ for me right now.)

(My latest for WYPR … linked here. TL)

ROCKVILLE, MD (wypr) – “Once more into the breach. This time it’s history, part two.”

This time it’s different.

Former governor Bob Ehrlich is challenging the man who ousted him less than four years ago, Martin O’Malley. And he hopes to use his status as the challenger attacking an incumbent in an anti-incumbent year to his advantage.

Now it’s O’Malley who must defend some very unpopular budget choices and a string of tax increases. This is a situation Ehrlich told a crowd of a couple hundred supporters that he is very familiar with.

“It’s not just about the past folks, it’s about the future. While we’re talking about contrast, what do we know? We know they raised taxes and we tried to cut them. We know they spend beyond our means and we spent within our budget. They kill jobs, we help create them.”

So, maybe the talking points aren’t that different from four years ago. But the roles are definitely flipped, and so is the mood of the nation. Now Ehrlich is the challenger in a Republican-favoring election cycle, as opposed to when O’Malley ran as the challenger in 2006 in a Democratic-leaning year.

(Adds Richard Vatz reply below … TL)
I’ll forgo the resurrection analogies for this edition of the blogger roundup and jump straight to it: Bob Ehrlich is going to announce his run for governor Wednesday and that’s going to be the buzz for a long time. (You can debate whether that’s a good thing for his campaign as it detracts from the legislative session and the state budget, which are key debating points for anyone running for governor.)

Over at Red Maryland, Towson University Professor Richard Vatz, a longtime Ehrlich ally, is surprisingly pleased with The Sun’s coverage of Ehrlich thus far. (Full story here.) For anyone unfamiliar, the Sun and the Ehrlich Administration got in some pretty nasty battles during Ehrlich’s four years as governor. Most of it surrounded Ehrlich’s ban on any executive branch workers talking to Sun writers David Nitkin and Michael Olesker, reaching a head in late 2004 to early 2005.

Here‘s an excellent write-up from the Sun’s former ombudsman/reader’s advocate Paul Moore. (For full disclosure, I recently submitted my resume to The Sun. I’ve also been to a handful of Vatz’s bi-annual classes where Bob Ehrlich comes to talk political rhetoric.)

I’m not going into the old battles here because they’ve been pretty thoroughly explored by others more familiar with them than myself. I will offer one critique of this media critique, which is that Vatz has a horse in this race: Ehrlich. Whatever he says — just like whatever former JHU prof Matthew Crenson, an active Democrat, says — needs to be viewed in that context.

I e-mailed Vatz to ask why he’s being friendly to The Sun and will update this post when I hear back. So here’s what Vatz wrote back:

“Honestly, I do not write with ulterior motives… I wrote an earlier piece criticizing the Sun editorial page and an earlier article by another writer as well, but this Bykowicz has really impressed me with her journalism as the campaign starts – especially when contrasted with 2006. Who knows if it will last.”

I was going to link a fairly amusing post by former Ehrlich hack Joe Steffen here, but I have yet to independently verify his information so I’ll wait until later. (This is part of the problem in any sphere, blogos or otherwise. Information can be hard to independently verify, that’s part of the reason why people pay reporters to ferret information. Good info is valuable info.)

So check back a little later today, and I hope to have some (confirmed) news for you.

Former Republican Mayor of Westminster, Kevin Dayhoff, links Doug Tallman’s analysis of what Ehrlich would have to do to win, here.

I’m re-linking the link largely because of this one comment from Dayhoff:

I have always liked Doug Tallman’s work – and I especially like when a writer does his homework and gives me the numbers.

Among other things, as we get into the campaign season, it’s good to remember that we do have certain things bordering on objective benchmarks (to counter the inflated partisan hits) and we reporters do best when we lay out solid information. Doug hits the “if past is prelude” nail on the head in the piece with solid analysis of voter registration. (And another disclosure, I used to work for Doug, and I like his work, too.)

Here’s a great little snapshot of Maryland’s left-right politics debate. Conservative activist Mark Newgent going up against Democratic hack Steve Lebowitz, all on Twitter (God bless ‘em.)

Steve Lebowitz argues the Democratic angle from the left

And conservative hack Mark Newgent Tweet-beats Lebowitz from the right

For full disclosure, I write for Center Maryland, so I won’t address the topics being debated here. But expect plenty more of this as we wind through the campaigns. The hardest of the hardcore political nerds are nitpickers more than anybody and Newgent and Lebowitz are emblematically nitpicky.

What’s the difference as opposed to any other election? The Twinteractivity of the argument. (Which is a godawful merging of Twitter and interactivity … the word, that is.) Anyway you can track the play by play better than before and you can actually read through some of the backup information used to argue the point. And smartasses like myself can take screenshots for perseverance (shift+apple+4).