GOP Dirty Tricks

Among the victims of the Democratic sweep on Election Day were Maryland Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., who was running for reelection, and Maryland Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who was running for U.S. Senate. Both lost. But before you shed too many tears for them, check out this dirty trick that their campaigns have admitted to.

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The goal was to capture African-American voters. This is not an easy thing for a Republican to accomplish in Maryland, even if, like Steele, you happen to be African-American yourself. But the black vote was deemed crucial, and postelection analysis suggests this proved true. So the Ehrlich and Steele campaigns sent out to heavily Democratic black neighborhoods in Prince George's County flyers that were designed to deceive black voters into thinking the candidates had been endorsed by three popular Maryland African-American politicians: Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson, former P.G. County Executive Wayne K. Curry, and former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who more recently served as president of the NAACP. (In fact, two of these three men had endorsed Ehrlich and Steele's Democratic opponents, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin. The third, Curry, endorsed Steele but not Ehrlich.)

To give the documents credibility, the campaigns needed to find African-American campaign workers to distribute them. So, they bused in homeless blacks from Pennsylvania and Delaware, paying them $100 and feeding them two meals. When asked by reporters about the flyer, Ehrlich pointed out that it is legal for workers from out of state to participate in local get-out-the-vote activities: "If folks are here from out of town that's fine with me. That's what the Democrats have always done. It's legal." To read the flyer, scroll down and then proceed to the following three pages.

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