Out With The Old Gov And In With The New The Governor’s mansion in Annapolis changed hands yesterday. Ehrlich is out, O’Malley is in. So what did Bob Ehrlich accomplish as Governor? As the first Republican to hold the highest office in Maryland since the disgraced Spiro Agnew, how should we judge his one term performance?

Ehrlich’s most memorable legacy will likely be a highway, the Inter County Connecter, which took the Governor’s backing to move the project from plans to pavement. Other than that, history will judge Ehrlich’s tenure as unremarkable. There were some achievements, like the “flush tax” to help rescue the Chesapeake Bay, and more funding for black colleges and primary and secondary education. These are important, but were hardly that major change to politics as usual in Annapolis that his election promised.

Ehrlich’s goal was to move Maryland politics to the “center” and provide an ideological balance to a liberal legislature. His policy achievements were mostly “small ball”, incremental changes that built on earlier policies. In this respect, he probably was not much different than his democratic predecessors.

Where Ehrlich should be judged is for his inability to move the state in bold new directions. His biggest failure is that he lacked vision. Being a nice guy from Arbutus wasn’t enough. This was the reason why Ehrlich was unable to achieve his long-term goal to create a competitive and sustainable Republican party in Maryland.

Ehrlich’s uninspired leadership was mainly the reason he wasn’t re-elected, not the fact that it was a democratic year nationally. After all, Republican Governors won re-election in blue states.

One of the bluest is California where the Governator, Schwarzenegger easily won re-election and is now making waves with a show of bold policy making that Ehrlich lacked. In his first term, Schwarzenegger took on entrenched interests to reform the state’s worker’s compensation program, which was killing businesses in California. Now Schwarzenegger is proposing far reaching reform of California’s health care system and is taking the lead nationally on global warming by proposing a reduction in the carbon intensity of gasoline.

Health care and the environment are issues where voters look to democrats to take the lead. But Maryland, which prides itself on its progressiveness, has failed to meaningfully tackle long-standing problems with education, health care, and the environment. Baltimore’s students are still failing, too many lack health insurance, and the Bay is still dying.

Being a great governor is less about whether you are a democrat or republican and more about whether you dared to provide bold leadership. Yesterday, Martin O’Malley began his first term cautiously, but in time, we will know whether the new governor is willing to take that dare.

Labels: Bob Ehrlich, education, flush tax, Governor, O'Malley

  3:35 PM •