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Gubernatorial hopeful Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. is spending this evening place where he has no chance of picking up a single vote: McLean, Virginia.
Ehrlich, a Republican, will benefit from a fundraiser there starring that state's conservative governor Bob McDonnell. It will be hosted in a private home, said campaign spokesman Andy Barth. Ehrlich and McDonnell have “cordial” relationship, Barth said. However he deferred questions about areas of policy where the two agree or disagree.
McDonnell has made news in recent months by standing up to the Obama Administration, including pulling Virginia out of the running for the federal Race to the Top education grant and signing a bill prohibiting the federal government from requiring Virginians to carry health insurance. A similar health insurance bill went nowhere this year in Maryland’s General Assembly.
Ehrlich, a Republican, will benefit from a fundraiser there starring that state's conservative governor Bob McDonnell. It will be hosted in a private home, said campaign spokesman Andy Barth. Ehrlich and McDonnell have “cordial” relationship, Barth said. However he deferred questions about areas of policy where the two agree or disagree.
McDonnell has made news in recent months by standing up to the Obama Administration, including pulling Virginia out of the running for the federal Race to the Top education grant and signing a bill prohibiting the federal government from requiring Virginians to carry health insurance. A similar health insurance bill went nowhere this year in Maryland’s General Assembly.
McDonnell is also a longtime proponent of drilling for oil off his state’s coast and was critical of the Administration’s decision to cancel the planned lease just south of Ocean City. Ehrlich does not support nearby drilling until the causes of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico are better understood, according to a spokesman.
Comments
Bob Ehrlich apparently has no problem with Gov. McDonnell furloughing Virginia workers, as governors in 25 states have done to get through the deepest recession since the Great Depression while preserving jobs.
Similarly, last week Mr. Ehrlich endorsed GOP county excecutive John Leopold, who also furloughed Anne Arundel County workers.
Yet Mr. Ehrlich criticizes Gov. O'Malley for taking the same painful but necessary step at the state level in Maryland, even whenMr. Ehrlich's law and lobbying firm cut workers' pay much more severely, and with no days off.
Mr. Ehrlich says furloughs were presented to him as an option when he was governor during the much milder recession of 2003. Instead he chose to fire state workers, transfer funds, accept federal bailout money, and raise taxes, including a 57 percent property tax hike, all of which he criticizes his successor for doing to cope with an exponentially more severe recession.
- Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis
Posted by: justdafacts | June 8, 2010 12:45 PM