DANA POINT, Calif. -- Republican pollsters, media consultants and other political experts digesting the 2002 elections here yesterday turned frequently to Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s gubernatorial victory as they searched for lessons to teach future GOP candidates.

Ken Mehlman, the White House political director and a Pikesville native, singled out Maryland's governor-elect -- who became the state's first Republican winner in 36 years by defeating a Kennedy -- as an example of the type of candidate Republicans need to field.

"It's Bob Ehrlich and people like him," Mehlman said.

Speaking of congressional and statehouse victories, Mehlman said: "It was not the White House. It was the quality of the candidates."

Ehrlich's pollster and media consultant participated in a panel discussion on the 2002 elections yesterday, the final day of the Republican Governors Association's national convention. Amid an exchange on whether state-level races had national implications, they tried to dispel perceptions that Ehrlich lost the campaign's only debate and that he was hurt by his impromptu call to review the state's gun laws.

Ehrlich wrapped up his first conference among his new colleagues at a luxury oceanfront resort here saying he has started gathering ideas for his re-election. But political strategies are less important now, he said, than his accomplishments during the next four years.

"People are going to judge a governor on performance, on what you've done," he said. "As opposed to Congress, an executive is judged on his or her record."

With election euphoria fading, Ehrlich said the time is arriving to implement his ideas on reducing gun crimes, on cutting the flow of pollutants from sewage treatment plants into the Chesapeake Bay, and on bringing more Medicaid money into Maryland.

Still, after a morning devoted to politics, Ehrlich said his campaign strategy of appealing to African-Americans, women, Hispanics and other groups who don't traditionally support Republicans was validated.

He said he would like to do better among those groups in four years. "Growing that is a matter of politics," he said.

Russ Schriefer, Ehrlich's media consultant, told the nation's GOP governors that the Timonium congressman was successful because he sold himself as a change from the status quo.

"Voters always have a desire for change," Schriefer said. "In Maryland we were [in effect] running against Parris Glendening's third term and 36 years of Democratic control."

Focus groups showed early on that voters wanted an alternative to Glendening and were turned off by decades of Democratic control in Annapolis. "Even before they knew who Bob Ehrlich was, they liked that message," Schriefer said.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's relentless television advertising attacking Ehrlich's record was ineffective because the congressman could not legitimately be portrayed as an extremist, Schriefer said.

"In order for negative ads to work, they have to be inherently correct," he said.

Glen Bulger, a pollster who worked on Republican governor's races in Maryland, South Dakota, Arizona and New Hampshire, said Ehrlich's mid-campaign call to review strict gun-control laws did not hurt him, even though Democrats and interest groups pounced on the issue.

A few weeks later, the sniper crisis unfolded, and observers wondered whether Ehrlich made a dangerous misstep.

"People thought it was having much more significance in the race than we were seeing in the polls," Bulger said. "Over a period of time, we realized that wasn't happening. Our position on crime was beating her position on guns."

Bulger also said that a commonly held view that Townsend won the race's only debate was incorrect. Her opening statement attacking Ehrlich's stand on race-based affirmative action cost her support when her words were read back to potential voters, he said.

"She hurt herself in that debate," he said.

Other political experts delivered predictions on GOP prospects in the coming months and years.

Mike Murphy, a consultant to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Massachusetts Gov.-elect Mitt Romney this year, said liberal Democrats appear poised to take control of the party after this year's losses. He said the prospect was tantalizing for Republicans.

"We are on the cusp," he said, "of having Democrats do a lot for us."