Tom LoBianco, Maryland politics reporter

(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.

I’ll be talking about this at 1p on WYPR, but here’s a brief rundown on the new Rasmussen poll showing Bob Ehrlich and Martin O’Malley neck-in-neck (linked here):

- The poll shows O’Malley beating Ehrlich again, if the election were held today, 47-44.

- It shows strong approval for Ehrlich among men and for O’Malley among women.

- It also shows O’Malley with higher unfavorables than Ehrlich (no doubt a function of O’M being the incumbent.)

Some general critiques:
- Rasmussen only polled 500 likely voters. An excellent sample would be 1,000 likely voters and Gonzales Research, which has a long history in Maryland, typically does around 800 people.

So the margins are going to be bigger, making this either a lot tighter of race than the poll would have it appear, or a lot less close.

- Rasmussen’s robocall method of polling has drawn criticism because, among other things, it’s harder to judge the validity of your respondents than if you had a person asking the questions.

- All of that said, one national analyst, Nate Silver, has lauded Rasmussen’s national polling work.

- UPDATE: A reader took issue with the assessment that Nate Silver “lauded” Rasmussen and provided a link to this post. In the post, Silver lays out why Rasmussen’s polling methodology tends to favor Republicans. It’s a good read, tad esoteric, but worth the time as we are entering heavy-speculation and prognostication season.

(My latest for WYPR, linked here. TL)

BEL AIR, MD (wypr) – Last week, on a sunny day outside the Harford County Circuit Courthouse in Bel Air, Brian Murphy is tried to whip a crowd of Tea Partiers into a frenzy, not a difficult task with this enthusiastic crowd. But the newcomer’s stump speech was unrefined and he wasn’t getting the jazzed reaction many other speakers get at the rally of about 200 supporters.

Murphy is running for governor, first against former Gov. Robert Ehrlich in a Republican primary in September. Then, if he is successful, he would likely face Gov. Martin O’Malley

Talking just a few feet from the pickup truck-turned-dais at the Tea Party party, Murphy was insistent he can take the governor’s office for the Republicans.

“This is for real. I feel like people, when they meet me, they say This is for real.’ I’m not here to make a point. I’m not here to protest, I’m here to win. And when I win, I’m going to fix this government’s budget, God as my witness.”

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.)

“Sine Die” the last day of the legislative session, is spoken in Annapolis as “Sign-ee Die” as opposed to the proper Latin, which would sound like “See-nay Dee-ay.” It’s sort of a Bawlimer bastardization of the language, which is why it’s both lovable and universally accepted.

So the governor’s office sent out this press release earlier announcing he’d be taking quesitions on Sine Sie. Was it a “Sie” of relief? Regret?

So The Sun had a big blowout this morning on lawmakers, lobbyists and Gov. Martin O’Malley all clearing a packed Annapolis bar late last night after a fire was reported.

But there was no fire, at least that’s what the fire department said. From the AP:

¶ ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) _ An Annapolis Fire Department spokesman says firefighters found no evidence of a fire at a bar where Gov. Martin O’Malley and state lawmakers evacuated after someone smelled a smoky odor.

¶ Lt. John Bowes said firefighters got a call at 11:17 p.m. Thursday for a report of smoke coming from a vent. Bowes says they found no evidence of a fire or damage. Bowes says firefighters believe the odor was created when the bar turned on the heat.

¶ Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley says O’Malley was starting to leave the bar with his security detail when the odor was detected. Lawmakers and others followed the governor’s exit from the event they were attending, a celebration for about 40 lawmakers finishing their first term in office.

(The Sun has recently corrected its original report — corrected version here — but the “fire” bit, which was picked up by the AP earlier this morning spread nationwide, with the Examiner chain running the original piece and then the corrected version.)

Both of The Sun reporters were in the bar, so reasonable reporting standards dictate you can write what you see. Not sure how there was smoke without a fire, but the fire department said there wasn’t one.

So news aggregator Eye On Annapolis grabbed the piece, stripped it down, and reposted it with nary a link or a source. I traded comments with the staff, earlier. The exchange is pictured to the right (not sure why I got this goofy tomato icon for an avatar.)

(It also stands to note that The Daily Record held the blog title “Eye On Annapolis” back in 2008, about a year before this other blog started.)

UPDATE: The Capital, an Annapolis newspaper, was the first with the correct account from the fire department. Here‘s a vociferous post from Capital reporter Josh Stewart.

And … Here’s the invitation to the party which started the whole thing, the freshman class party. They really rocked the house …

This is the invite that was posted in the House lounge for a few days this week. Rock the House ...

(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.)

So I filmed this gaggle with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley yesterday (Maryland Day) using my droid and Qik I asked him what he thought about Bob Ehrlich possibly announcing his run for governor on April 7 and he said he was too busy with the legislative session to really care. (Here’s the video.)

That was at 2 p.m. in Annapolis. Two hours later I saw him at the gym in Baltimore.

I asked him about playing hookie (which I was too, though I’m a freelancer) and he responded: “It’s called wellness.”

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).