Political Campaigns

Political campaign literature will seldom be mistaken for the gospel truth, but last November's "sample ballots" indicating former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele were Democrats and that they had been endorsed by a number of prominent black leaders crossed a line. Various versions of these handouts, which were widely distributed on Election Day in Baltimore and Prince George's County by African-Americans bused in from out of state, didn't change the outcome for either candidate, but in terms of sheer brazenness, it set a new - low - standard.

In an early campaign gaffe that initially rankled some political insiders and fundraisers, City Councilman and Baltimore mayoral candidate Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. distributed a list of financial supporters that included people who are undecided or who support his opponent in this year's election. Mitchell, a three-term City Council member who officially announced his candidacy in January - and who appears to be Mayor Sheila Dixon's leading opponent - said the e-mail, which included several members of Dixon's transition committee, was a mistake.

Every so often, the national body politic awakens from its slumber, yawns, stretches, surveys the landscape in horror and swats aside the prevailing power structure. That's what happened in unusually high turnout congressional elections yesterday that apparently returned control of the House to the Democrats for the first time since a similar swat-out in 1994, and at least narrowed the GOP Senate majority to a sliver. Widespread opposition to the Iraq war, disgruntlement about an economy that rewards some but leaves many others out, and disgust at former Republican revolutionaries who abandoned their principles of fiscal restraint and seemed oblivious to corruption and abuse of power within their ranks - all took a mighty toll on the party in power.

As the final weekend of the 2006 midterm campaign arrives, one of the most powerful players among the politically powerful has already posted results unprecedented in the history of American elections. That has been the television industry. And its numbers have been huge. Broadcasters will have sucked in about $2 billion from political campaigns, including $20 million spent on candidates for Maryland governor and the state's open U.S. Senate seat. The numbers, compiled from records at Maryland broadcast stations and analysts who track the ads nationally, have been boosted by the closeness of races around the country.

The man told the judge that he had been picked up for trespassing by a police officer who didn't really want to make the arrest. "He said, `I only have to do this for the man who wants to be mayor, I have to make my quota,' " the defendant said during an appearance at the Eastside District Court earlier this week. He didn't get the details quite right -- the man whose administration is accused of having an arrest quota is Martin O'Malley, and he is already the mayor but wants to be governor.

A buddy did me the immense favor the other day of sending me a link to a wonderful New York Times piece about fantasy congress. The game, created by four students at California's Claremont McKenna College, asks players to pick teams of 16 legislators (two senior senators, two junior senators, four senior representatives, four junior representatives and four rookie representatives). Teams accumulate points as their elected officials push legislation toward becoming law. As usual, I applaud these folks for taking fantasy and applying it to their area of obsession.

WITTMAN -- Just before the sun sets over Cummings Creek, Joe Trippi ambles over to say hello to Yoda, the one-horned goat, and Mrs. Lucky, one of his favorite ducks. He seems a world away from where he was three years ago: inhaling Diet Pepsi, stuffing his cheeks with Skoal, and trying to elect an obscure former Vermont governor as president of the United States. These days, when Trippi's not in Italy advising Romano Prodi's campaign or in Moscow addressing the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he is here, surrounded by old-growth pines and noisy chickens, trying to safeguard the Eastern Shore's open spaces from fast- encroaching development.

JERUSALEM --Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister and the leader of the new Kadima Party, has been renamed Smolmert in an effort to label him dovish and left-wing (smol is Hebrew for left). Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, the former prime minister known as Bibi, is pictured as shifty-eyed, bloated, anxious and untrustworthy, giving himself pep talks ("I can do this; I'm the Bibi"). Amir Peretz, the Moroccan-born leader of the Labor Party, is portrayed as an inexperienced socialist simpleton, with Israel's Russian-born voters reminded of how much he looks like Stalin.

Two-thirds of the money donated by churches to political campaigns will be returned - a sum that was buoyed yesterday when three more elected officials vowed to refund thousands in religious contributions. Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Baltimore County Democrat who had received more from churches than any other Maryland candidate, said yesterday he will refund about 80 contributions that total about $16,000. "The law is the law - though I don't agree with it - and must be honored," Burns said in a statement yesterday.

USUALLY, WHEN reporters call an aspiring politician with just $400 in the war chest, the candidate is eager to slam the opposing party and boast about his professional contacts - that is, unless the candidate is a federal employee. Gilbert Renaut, 58, a community leader and lawyer at the Department of Energy, is running for mayor of Annapolis - as an independent. And his day job is certainly cramping his campaign style. When reached at work, Renaut could not take the call. The Hatch Act prohibits him from campaigning on government time.