Painting his opponent as a “tax and spend” Democrat, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich attacked Martin O’Malley’s fiscal record Tuesday, directly challenging the Baltimore mayor’s “fighting for hard-working Maryland families” campaign theme.
In the first of what he promised would be a series of campaign speeches on the issues, Ehrlich savaged O’Malley for raising income taxes in the city by 20 percent in 2001, increasing water and sewer rates in 2003 and creating telephone and energy taxes in 2004.
“This is the record of someone who wants to represent working families?” Ehrlich asked in a 15-minute speech at the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World at Arundel Mills. “Forget it. People aren’t buying it. And they’re never gonna buy it.”
Ehrlich said the “tax and spend” policies of O’Malley and the Democratic General Assembly work against the very people they claim to support.
“That’s the M.O. in Annapolis, Maryland. That has to stop,” he said. “Your day has come; your day is past. The taxpayers are going to step up and take you down.”
Ehrlich encouraged the crowd to look around at the massive Outdoor World store and the sales traffic at Arundel Mills, which opened in 2000 and brings shoppers from out-of-state. He then asked them to look at the fiscal records of the two candidates for governor.
“The great thing about this race is it’s a race [of] executive against executive, record against record,” Ehrlich said.
He said O’Malley record is simple: “Taxes and taxes and regulation and more taxes and blaming George Bush for everything. He even worked Enron into one of the last debates.”
About an hour after the brief appearance, O’Malley’s campaign shot back with a statement which labeled Ehrlich the “biggest tax and spender in Maryland history.”
The O’Malley statement outlined what it said was the Ehrlich administration’s 31 increases in taxes and state fees, including those at the Motor Vehicle Administration, the State Department of Taxation and Assessments and district courts. It also cited increased property taxes, the new “flush” tax and an overall 31 percent increase in the state budget from 2004 to 2007.
Rick Abbruzzese, a spokesman for the O’Malley campaign, said: “Regardless of how [Ehrlich] tries to spin