Just a couple of years ago, when Republican Bob Ehrlich was governor of Maryland and running for re-election, he stood next to Rudy Giuliani at a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser in Baltimore, and the former New York City mayor took questions from reporters. When one brought up Maryland's blue statehood, Ehrlich stepped forward to make a correction.
"Light blue," he said, and ha-ha-ha and hee-hee-hee - that Bobby Slots was some funny guy, no?
Calling Maryland "light blue," suggesting that Democratic power is thin here, was wishful thinking on Ehrlich's part. He was trying to be an optimist, of course, and that's understandable. But when it comes to colors, let's just say I'm glad Bob Ehrlich isn't doing mine.
Light blue? If anything, Maryland was some kind of purple at the time - dark purple on the blue side, or whatever you get when you go down to Budeke's and mix two gallons of Democratic blue with one gallon of Republican red. In 2006, four years after Ehrlich's election supposedly signaled a GOP renaissance here, Maryland Democrats still outnumbered Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin and Ehrlich's party was losing ground.
In fact, from 2002 to 2006, the growth in both independents and Democrats outpaced new Republican registrations by a 4-to-1 margin.
In January 2003, when Ehrlich took office, there were 1,568,027 Democrats and 841,520 Republicans registered with the Maryland Board of Elections. By the summer of 2006, the gap had widened further, to nearly 800,000.
Now, heading toward the presidential election of 2008, the gap is gaping and the donkey braying.
The difference between registered Democrats and registered Republicans is nearly 950,000.
Maryland is still purple, but it's the bluest kind - indigo purple, midnight purple, post-Bush-Bobby purple.
This is all new growth on the Democratic vine, fed mainly by enthusiasm for Barack Obama and something the Republicans in this state don't understand - the hard sweat of voter registration efforts.
Some of the new registration undoubtedly represents voters switching from Republican or "unaffiliated" to the blue party, though to what extent officials of the Board of Elections can't say; they don't have easy access to that information. But voter shifting is a national trend. It's safe to assume that growth in Democratic rolls comes from Obamamania among the young and, to some extent, men and women who've made a decision to switch their party affiliation.
