A campaign account maintained by former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) was used to pay more than $100,000 last year to law firms involved in the criminal defense of his 2010 campaign manager, Paul E. Schurick, on charges related to voter suppression.

Schurick was convicted in December by a Baltimore jury of four counts stemming from an Election Night robocall that prosecutors said was intended to mislead black voters into staying home.

A campaign finance report filed this week by Ehrlich lists payments to at least two law firms known to have worked on Schurick’s defense.

I wonder if people donating to Ehrlich’s campaign thought the money they donated would go to this cause?

Schurick sent out a voice mail targeted to black Democrats that said the election had already been decided and that they should stay at home.

This is what Republicans do all over the country. Luckily here in Maryland, they got caught in the act.

Over the course of a few days, O’Malley chided Republican governors for staying silent while “the dinosaur wing” of their party dominated debt talks in Washington.

He blasted “a new breed of tea-partying, FDR-hating” governors who have come to power, singling out Chris Christie of New Jersey for additional scorn. That “colorful character,” O’Malley said, lives in a “make-believe world, where down is up, up is down, candy is a vegetable, and vegetables are candy.”

Cough, 2016, cough.

A senior aide and a consultant hired by former Maryland governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) were indicted Thursday in a case stemming from thousands of anonymous robocalls placed on election night last year that suggested voters could stay home even though the polls were still open.

Paul Schurick, 54, Ehrlich’s de facto campaign manager, and Julius Henson, 62, a consultant paid by the campaign, were both charged with three counts of conspiracy to violate election laws, one count of influencing votes through fraud and one count of failing to identify the sponsor of the calls. In addition, Schurick was charged on one count of obstruction of justice.

In a statement, the Office of the Maryland State Prosecutor, which obtained the indictments from a Baltimore grand jury, said its investigation is continuing. All but one of the charges handed down Thursday carry maximum prison sentences of five years.

The story goes on to note that Bob Ehrlich was deposed on this. Considering he was at the top of the ticket and the subject of this election (his second crushing defeat), I doubt his hands are clean.

Two mediocre tastes that go horribly together.

Citing data recently released from the Census Bureau, Harris also worried about the increase of the Hispanic population in Maryland, which he called “the sanctuary state of the Northeast.” The exchange came during a “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event sponsored by the controversial anti-immigrant group FAIR.

Sometimes they make a mistake and tell us what they really believe.

Andy Harris just replaced “Democrat” Frank Kratovil (who voted against health care reform) and was most recently in the news complaining about not getting his government health care after promising to repeal Obamacare.

“The other side would have you believe we can somehow eat cake and lose weight. That we can somehow just cut our way to a better future – no need to invest in education or rebuild our infrastructure,” O’Malley will say, according to prepared remarks shared with POLITICO. “We all say we must cut … But you and I know that to make this new economy ours, we must be strategic in how we cut.”

“Creating jobs and expanding opportunity is not only about the spending we cut. It’s about the progress we protect,” he will say. “It’s not only about today’s budget math. It is about giving our children the opportunities they will need to win the future.”

That “cake” line is nothing new – it’s a staple of O’Malley’s campaign-trail rhetoric. But his speech this weekend represents a fresh foray onto the national stage for the Marylander, marking the beginning of his rollout as a messenger for his party.

The top 10 states with the greatest proportion of their seniors from the class of 2010 having at least one successful AP experience were: Maryland (26.4 percent), New York (24.6 percent), Virginia (23.7 percent), Connecticut (23.2 percent), Massachusetts (23.1 percent), California (22.3 percent), Florida (22.3 percent), Vermont (21.8 percent), Colorado (21.4 percent) and Utah (19.2 percent).

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is poised to take over the chairmanship of the Democratic Governors Association, according to a source familiar with the committee’s plans, putting a proven fundraiser and campaigner at the helm of the organization ahead of the off-year elections in 2011.

The widely anticipated promotion cements O’Malley’s status as a Democratic Party leader, giving the youthful former Baltimore mayor an opportunity to expand his national profile and political network.

Maryland’s Attorney General filed a complaint in federal court this week alleging that the company and two individuals behind election day robocalls that told mostly Democratic voters to “relax” and not bother voting violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The court filing by Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler also revealed that the phone calls, which began two hours before polls closed, went out to more than 100,000 Maryland residents, more than double the number originally reported.

Controversial Democratic operative Julius Henson has admitted that Rhonda Russell, an employee of his company Universal Elections, placed the order for the phone calls. Hensen was working for the campaign of the Republican nominee for governor, Bob Ehrlich.

Bucking what is anticipated to be a national Republican trend, Democrat Martin O’Malley will win a second term as Maryland governor Tuesday night, handily dispatching longtime rival Bob Ehrlich, ABC News is projecting based on exit polls.

It may be one of the few states doing so, but Maryland is likely going to avoid the GOP wave (except in MD-01 where Frank Kratovil’s opposition to health care reform has done nothing to appease the right, could have told you that).

Today’s poll is just more evidence:

Gov. Martin O’Malley has opened a 14-point lead over former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in their gubernatorial rematch, solidifying his Democratic base and winning over independents while his rival struggles to capitalize on the voter anger that is propelling Republicans in other parts of the country, according to a Baltimore Sun poll.

Democrats who had been undecided during the summer are lining up behind O’Malley, who enjoys wide margins in the vote-rich Washington suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties and has a narrow edge in the Baltimore suburbs — regions where Ehrlich had hoped to make inroads.

No doubt Jerry Brown’s double-digit lead in California will also be seen by Fox as a race that’s getting close.

MD Voter:
This is silly. Voters are looking to Ehrlich to get MD moving again. That’s what matters. He’s got a proven record and folks know that.

Needless to say, this comment didn’t sound like standard English and the commenter had never written a comment on my site before. So, I looked up the IP address and turned up this:

MarkMonitor?

MarkMonitor is the only company offering comprehensive, end-to-end solutions that enable an enterprise to both establish and defend their brands against multiple online risks. As the leading global provider of brand protection for the enterprise, MarkMonitor offers solutions that safeguard brands, reputations and revenues from ever-evolving online risks. The company’s exclusive access to data, combined with its real-time prevention, detection and response capabilities, enables a more secure Internet for enterprises as well as their customers.

So, this doesn’t seem to be an actual person but rather a paid shill posting comments in favor of the Ehrlich campaign. Did Ehrlich hire him? Or is some outside money involved?

The Republican Governors Association (a beneficiary of Fox News/News Corp. money) is rumored to have begun taking money out of the O’Malley-Ehrlich race here in Maryland. That’s the sort of thing you hear when practically every poll shows O’Malley pulling away from Ehrlich (who never had much of a chance to begin with).

Thirdly, after reading and reviewing hundreds of e-mails from both campaigns in the last six months, there was another difference that continued to stand out on Monday. The O’Malley e-mail buzzed in on my BlackBerry at 11:20; the Ehrlich one 29 minutes later at 11:49.

The half-hour gap is emblematic of a stark difference in the level of organization, planning, media outreach and messaging that has existed between the two candidates’ campaigns for months.

On Monday, scores of lime-green O’Malley signs lined the roadway to the debate, a mob of dozens of green-clad campaign staffers and supporters crowded the front entrance of the television studio, and the O’Malley’s campaign brought in Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and an A-list of Maryland Democrats to sit in the audience and praise the governor’s performance afterward for on-air interviews. At another appearance on Monday for the two candidates, at the Maryland Disabilities Forum, the O’Malley campaign arrived with more than $500 worth of campaign materials — complete with large-type and Braille editions for the blind.

The 11:20 a.m. e-mail also fit with O’Malley’s at times aggressive campaign mode in recent months. It arrived almost before the candidates had stood up from their seats in the television studio.

By contrast, Ehrlich’s e-mail arrived later, after reporters had staked out the rear, service entrance to the studio to catch the former governor before he was whisked away — out of sight of the gathering out front of O’Malley supporters.