With her promise of a tax break for the highly motivated senior citizens' bloc, Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey made a bold bid last week to set the agenda for Maryland's general election campaign -- throwing it into high gear three weeks early.
Primary challenges are failing in both parties, leaving the results of those Sept. 15 contests all but foregone.
Sauerbrey and her likely Democratic gubernatorial opponent, Gov. Parris N. Glendening, are already campaigning aggressively against each other.
Yesterday, the two main contenders campaigned within shouting distance of each other, delivering one of the campaign's sharpest exchanges.
Glendening made his remarks at a community picnic in Glenarden, a Prince George's County community.
Sauerbrey's responses came at Bayfest in North Beach, Calvert County.
While reminding his audience of his administration's financial assistance to Prince George's, Glendening warned that Sauerbrey and her agents would try to buy the election.
"What unmitigated gall from the $6 million man!" she replied.
Her response referred to the 1994 campaign, when Glendening held a decided fund-raising edge over his Republican opponent, raising $5.2 million for that race.
Sauerbrey raised $700,000 in private funds in 1994 and collected $1.1 million in public funds for a total of $1.8 million.
Recent official reports show that Glendening has raised $3.9 million for this year's contest, compared with $3 million for Sauerbrey.
Addressing an almost entirely African-American audience, the governor also accused Sauerbrey of saying that Robert M. Bell, an African-American who is chief judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, was "not qualified" for that post. Glendening appointed Bell in 1996.
"Absolutely untrue," said Sauerbrey. "He's eminently qualified, of course.
"What I said was that he was too often the one judge on the Court of Appeals who voted against affirming a death penalty or other tough sentence."
Despite the earlier-than-expected onset of head-to-head electioneering, both sides have been spoiling for a fight since Glendening won by 5,993 votes out of 1.4 million cast four years ago.
"We never had any doubt that we'd have a clear and overwhelming primary victory," said Peter S. Hamm, Glendening's spokesman.
"But we've been preparing all along for our debate with Ellen Sauerbrey."
Preparing, certainly, but whether the Glendening forces were ready for her tax-cut proposal is another question.
"She's turned things topsy-turvy," said Keith Haller, president of Potomac Survey Research, a polling firm in Bethesda.
"The Democrats are back on their heels. It's left them struggling to find a response."
Haller said a proposal of this sort has the potential to separate the candidates in a fundamental way. It could become a far more powerful issue, for example, than whether to put slot machines at race tracks. On that one, the candidates appear to have few major differences.
Something that puts money in people's pockets, then, is a good bet to seize the initiative.
"We're apt to be facing such a razor-thin margin in this race that moving 10 or 15 percent of a critical constituency like seniors can dictate the outcome," he said.
Counting voters age 55 and older -- those who are looking to retire soon as well as current pensioners -- the Sauerbrey proposal touches as much as a third of the likely voters, Haller estimated.
The Republican said she hopes such an easing of the tax burden would stop an exodus of seniors to states where they fare better with tax collectors.
Even before the tax-cut idea, the Glendening-Sauerbrey rematch seemed likely to make the 1998 campaign memorable.
It could provide a test of voters' tolerance for political campaign language and a textbook example of modern media campaigns because both sides will have sufficient cash to get their messages on television.
Both candidates enter the final weeks with high negative ratings from Maryland voters: Will the commercials focus on the other candidate's problems? Or will they promote ideas for better government? Or both?
The Glendening forces may mount their television assault even before the Sept. 15 primary, a measure of their confidence in the strength of his record and their calculation that Marylanders, once they see what has been accomplished, will want to stay the Glendening course.
Early Glendening TV may also be recognition that Sauerbrey is bringing the fight to him in ways that can't be ignored.
She, too, is planning to be on Baltimore area channels before the primary, according to Jim Dornan, the Sauerbrey campaign spokesman.
Both sides insist they will attempt to avoid the negative.
But observers say the underlying dynamics of this race -- two candidates with high negatives -- could lead to exchanges that resemble mudslinging. Yesterday's exchange suggests the tone could be, at the very least, testy.
In her tax break initiative, Sauerbrey argued that high income taxes have led to an "exodus of seniors" from the state; she proposed making as much as $66,000 of a retired couple's Social Security and pension income free from state taxes after they turn 65.
Glendening at first called her idea "pandering" to the coveted senior vote.
But he later made his own appeal to those interested in lower taxes, observing that his 10 percent income tax cut and an expanded homeowner's property tax credit had helped seniors,
too.
Some further indications of the campaign's tone also may have been seen in the governor's suggestion that Sauerbrey's overtures to black voters are "tokenism" -- an assertion he appears, based on yesterday's charge, prepared to continue.
At the Glenarden picnic yesterday, a number of Democrats worried openly about the need to turn out the African-American voter, a critical element in any Democratic victory scenario.
For its part, the Republican candidate's camp has said all along that Glendening's character is the 1998 campaign's central issue and will provide sufficient leverage to turn him out of office.
Given that theme, the Democratic governor may not have been helped by President Clinton's concessions last week in the Monica Lewinsky case.
But Glendening spokesman Hamm said last week that he did not think the president's problems would have any impact in Maryland. And he said the governor is eager to have Clinton here in October for a long-planned fund-raiser.
Nevertheless, according to Timothy F. Maloney, a former Democratic Maryland lawmaker, the president's "integrity" problems will be damaging to Glendening if they persist: "People only use issues as a window into character.
"It's been a very clear window with Ellen Sauerbrey and a murky one with the governor. You can't wake up after three years and all of a sudden try to be the substantive candidate as opposed to the political one."
But Hamm said Sauerbrey will be hard-pressed to push a negative message.
Her own image from the past, he said, will be the strongest brake against that strategy.
People will remember her failed election protest in 1994, when she charged that the election she lost by fewer than 6,000 votes had been stolen. She challenged procedures across the state and alleged thousands of fraudulent votes.
Though she did not prove her charges, she stood outside the Anne Arundel County courthouse declaring, "I'm conceding nothing. There is no governor-elect."
"Those images will be remembered," he said.
If she is already perceived as a hard-edged conservative, he said, launching an attack will engrave that image even more deeply on the voters' consciousness.
Dornan, Sauerbrey's campaign spokesman, countered: "We're going to be talking about the issues, but I have no doubt that Glendening, once he sees his governorship slipping away, will get as mean and nasty as he was in 1994."
Glendening's basic problem as the general election campaign opens remains a curious one.
He has yet to associate himself with his best asset, the attribute that can give incumbents such an advantage: his record.
"I don't think the governor has been able to do a good job at all of getting the message out. He just doesn't seem to do it. And he is not a charismatic candidate," said Donald F. Norris, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
From Glendening's viewpoint, Norris said, the deficiency is vexing one: "He's got a good record. He's achieved what he set out to achieve."
Yesterday in Prince George's, where Glendening served as county executive for 12 years, public officials and voters were rock solid in their support of him.
"We have to work like we've never worked before," said county State's Attorney Jack Johnson. "We have to re-elect Parris Glendening so that we have a future. This election is about the future of our children."
The urgency of these appeals may reflect a growing consensus view on both sides of the political divide that Sauerbrey is demonstrating considerable agility and professionalism thus far in the campaign.
When Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann quit her primary challenge to Glendening, Sauerbrey called a news conference immediately to say that, even in failure, Rehrmann had properly criticized the governor on matters of character and integrity.
The next morning, the Republican candidate took to Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore, working crowds that were almost entirely Democratic and African-American.
By most political calculations, they should have been Glendening supporters. But many seemed to enjoy meeting Sauerbrey and had reservations about the governor -- which they were all too happy to share with the reporters trailing her.
All of this was part of her relentless pursuit of a new or more complete political identity -- an image that is less rigidly conservative, more reasoned and all-encompassing.
Pub Date: 8/23/98