One month after stepping down as Maryland's first Republican governor in a generation, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and several of his top aides are opening a Baltimore-area office of a major North Carolina law firm, which will include a public affairs consulting group.
"Sitting in an office and billing hourly is not something I wanted to do," said Ehrlich, 49. "The opportunity to bring in new clients, meet challenges, bring in people who have done such a good job running the state was very attractive to me."
Ehrlich is joining Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, a 500-member firm that employs several former elected and appointed officials, including former North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., a Democrat.
Hunt said the firm was looking to expand into the Mid-Atlantic region and particularly in Maryland because of the large concentration of life sciences businesses around Johns Hopkins and along the Interstate 270 corridor. Ehrlich's loss last fall was their gain, he said.
Ehrlich will be joined by his former communications director, Paul E. Schurick; his former press officer, Greg Massoni; and a former spokesman, Henry P. Fawell. None is an attorney.
Former Deputy Chief of Staff Edward B. Miller and former counsel J.P. Scholtes, who are attorneys, will also join the group, as will David B. Hamilton, formerly of the Ober/Kaler law firm in Baltimore, who was Ehrlich's personal attorney.
Miller came in for heavy criticism from Democrats over the past four years for his association with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. According to state documents and congressional testimony, Miller was the founder and sole owner of a company that Abramoff used to launder money in 2003. Miller sold the company when he entered government service later that year and was never charged with a crime.
Also, Hamilton was the subject of a state ethics complaint over the government relations practice he set up at Ober/Kaler, though he was cleared of allegations that he improperly engaged in lobbying without registering with the state.
Ehrlich, a graduate of Princeton University, practiced law at Ober/Kaler for 12 years after graduating from the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem (where Womble Carlyle is based). He served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1989 to 1995 and in Congress from 1995 to 2003.
