Bobby Haircut

The Maryland gubernatorial election campaign is getting started, and believe it or not, the incumbent Republican, Robert "Bobby Haircut" Ehrlich, is in trouble, as is his current lieutenant governor and candidate for the U.S. Senate, Michael Steele. You've got to give these guys some credit: For Republicans, they show an uncommon grasp of reality. A couple of months ago, Steele talked to a Washington Post reporter about the perils of being associated with George W. Bush (with whom he had been photographed acting very chummy indeed and whose chief of staff was attending a for him) in the political climate of 2006. And Bobby and Mikey are now running as neither Democratic nor Republican but "middle of the road, like most of us."
If somebody asked me what Ehrlich and Steele had done to turn me against them, my answer would be "Not much. Not much at all." There's the rub, though. They haven't done much. Holding a typically Republican horror toward taxation, Bobby decided that he would fix everything that was wrong in Maryland without raising taxes. He was just bright enough to know that he probably couldn't sell the electorate on the idea that economic growth was going to pay for everything. They had seen Jim Gilmore make that argument when he was governor of Virginia, and they had seen it fall apart with the economy tanked.
Bobby got creative. He was going to pay for everything with the income from slot machines. It really bothered him that people were going to West Virginia and New Jersey to play slots that they could play in Maryland. The outcry was enormous. First of all, people raised moral objections because gambling, to them, was a sin. And then others raised objection because gambling, to them, was really another tax on the lower economic strata. And then there were the folks who had no particular objections to slots, but they damn sure wanted them or didn't want them in their back yards. People found so many reasons to hate slots that I didn't even hear anyone say that slots aren't a reliable revenue stream. People have to have some sense that they can afford to start playing, and when consumer confidence is down, that's not going to happen. And people have to be able to afford to get to the slots.
Bobby Haircut got elected on a promise not to raise taxes, buthe couldn't sell his alternative revenue. So what happened after this became apparent? He pouted. Getting slots approved mattered more to him than the things that the revenue was supposed to pay for. Ehrlich looked like a petulant child, and he did very little in the way of legislative initiatives except to push slots.
Bobby wasn't much of a steward of state revenue. Wal-Mart managers told their employees, as they do in most states, that they aren't eligible for medical benefits through their employer, but they can enroll in the state Medicaid program. Wal-Mart increases its own profits this way while getting the state to pay some of what should be its operating expenses. The Maryland legislature disapproved of this and passed a law forcing any company over a specified size to either provide health benefits or pay a tax to the state. Wal-Mart threatened to leave. Ehrlich threatened to veto. The legislature overrode the veto.
Bobby screwed up in other ways. He made a series of "tourism" commercials featuring himself as the principal actor. Democrats pointed out that this was, in effect, using state tourism money to foster name recognition for the upcoming campaign. Bobby brought in the State Comptroller, a senile Democratic ex-governor named William Donald Schafer, to appear with him and another Democratic ex-governor, convicted raceketeer Marvin Mandel. The problem was that Willie Don had gotten terrible press for himself by asking an attractive young intern who had brought him a cup of coffee and walked away to come back and then walk away again--so he could check out her ass.
I suppose we'll see whether claiming to be a moderate can trump a lousy record. If it can, maybe the Republicans can avoid getting torn apart in November.