All politics is local, but he keeps eye on national scene
Poised for his next act, looks ahead to the GOP after President Trump, a politician Ehrlich says has positively expanded the party
Cellphones held aloft, the masked crowd paid rapt attention as a former governor laid out a game plan for how they could fight the closure of the restaurants where they work due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tell your personal stories, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. advised the gathering, huddled in a tent in a restaurant parking lot on a cold, wet December night.
“They’ve never been in your position,” Ehrlich said of politicians. “You need to explain your bottom line, what it takes to create a job in the state ofMaryland, in the United States of America, late in 2020. It’s a struggle, and they need to get it. They really need to get it.”
For Ehrlich, a Republican who served as governor from 2003 to 2007, the rally with Anne Arundel County restaurant owners and employees was the second local issue he’s waded into in recent months. In the fall, he publicly pushed for high school sports to be allowed to return.
Having an ex- governor onstage was a coup for the organizers of the restaurant rally. Someone like Ehrlich lends credibility and draws interest fromthe media.
“We decided we needed someone who had strong exposure. A top- of- the- ticket kind of guy,” said state Del. Brian Chisholm, a Pasadena Republican who volunteered to ask Ehrlich to join the event.
Ehrlich, 63, says these local appearances aren’t part of anewpattern. In an interview, he said he intends to keep his political focus on national issues.
“It’s just been people who asked me to get involved… There’snoplan there, it’s just people who ask me for help, that’s all,” Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich’s interest in sports is longrunning: He played football at the Gilman School in Baltimore and at Princeton University. He’s also the father of two student- athletes, including younger son Josh, the quarterback for Broadneck High School.
“Two of my hot spots are small business andyouth sports,” Ehrlich said. “So, Iwould be the appropriate person to go to bat for those issues.”
But Ehrlich has his eye on national politics heading into 2021. He’s writing his fifth book — about Republican President DonaldTrump’s influenceonpolitics— and planning to launch a podcast with his wife, Kendel.
And Ehrlich’s also looking for ways to shape the Republican Party as it moves forward fromtheTrump presidency.
“What that means, I don’t know. But I do knowit’s only to the positive to be raising a
national profile,” he said.
Running for office again isn’t on Ehrlich’s radar. But he won’t rule out joining some type of policy or political effort.
“If it’s the right slot, the right spot, on the issues that I care about, that would be something Iwould look at,” he said.
Ehrlich said he previouslywas in preliminary talks with the Trump administration about a potential “senior position” had the president won a second term in office. He won’t say what was discussed, other than to describe the position as something that “would have been fun and it would have made a lot of sense.”
The WhiteHouse declined to comment. After stints as a state delegate and member of Congress, Ehrlich won election as governor in 2002, breaking a string of more than 30 years of Democratic control of the governor’s office. He lost his 2006 reelection bid to DemocratMartinO’Malley, and lost a rematch to O’Malley in 2010.
After leaving the governor’s mansion, Ehrlich, who grew up in Arbutus, and his wife settled in the Annapolis area to raise their two sons.
Ehrlich has been in private legal practice for the last nine years as senior counsel at King & Spaulding. For several years, he helped run a clinic at Catholic University’s law school that focused on post- conviction relief for defendants.
Along the way, Ehrlich kept his hand in politics on the national level. In addition to his books, Ehrlich writes a column for the conservativewebsiteWestern Journal.
The columns are largely strongly partisan in defense of Trump, though Ehrlich occasionally notes that the “unvarnishedTrump” has been divisive. But Ehrlich also writes that Trump’s bluntness can be a positive: “What you see is what you get.”
Some of those columns will end up in Ehrlich’s yet- to- be- titled book, amixof prior writings and new analysis about Trump’s effect on politics and policy.
Ehrlich said he finds that Trump, to the surprise of some, made positive steps in expanding the Republican Party. He flipped some segments of the Latino community from the Democratic Party and shifted the GOPinthe direction ofworking- class voters.
“I’ve talked and advocated for expanding the party over the years. By that I mean all lines — class, ethnicity, race, you name it,” Ehrlich said. “Here comes a very unlikely change agent, maybe the most unlikely change agent of all. He achieved a great deal of success along the lines of what I’ve wanted, and he did it in a very interesting and uniqueway.”
Under Trump, the Republican Party has become “less a party of the Chamber of Commerce and more a party of workingclass folks,” Ehrlich said.
Asked about negative views people have of Trump’s effects on politics and policy, Ehrlich remains aTrump defender.
“That’s part of the equation. The equation has changed… Someof his personal qualities are very controversial. I think that cost him,” Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich said there are many people who liked Trump’s decisions, but not how he comported himself. Some of them still voted forTrump, while others turned away.
“When people generally like what you’ve done, but still vote against you, that’s a problem,” Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich also thinks Trump was treated unfairly, by the news media and others. The investigation into theTrumpcampaign’s ties to Russia and that country’s meddling in the 2016 election “was always a hoax tome.”
The big question, Ehrlich said, is where does the Republican Party go forward from here?
“Is it a Trump 2.0 that hits the brakes a little bit on that aspect of his personality? Or is it a new candidate who carries a similar intellectual platform?” Ehrlich said. “Nobody knows the answer to that.”
Ehrlich acknowledged there’s likely to be a glut of books about Trump, but he thinks he’s hitting a sweet spot with a combination of analyzing what happened and looking forward.
“This is hopefully more substance, not directed toward the politics of Trump, but more directed to the policies and how the policies have impacted the country and the party,” he said.
Ehrlich doesn’t have a publisher lined up, but with four books under his belt, expects he won’t have trouble landing a deal. His most recent book, “Bet You Didn’t See That OneComing: Obama, Trump, and theEndof Washington’sRegular Order,” was published by Post Hill Press.
Ehrlich’s view of Trump’s influence on the GOP— that it’s mostly positive— stands in stark contrast to his lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, who has been a prominent anti- Trump critic as an analyst on MSNBC and supporter of the Lincoln Project, which ran anti- Trump ads during the campaign. Steele said he voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president.
And it’s also a strikingly different point of view from the current Republican governor, Larry Hogan, who wrote the late President Ronald Reagan’s name on his ballot rather than cast a vote forTrump or Biden.
Hogan, a rare Republican elected official who occasionally pushes back against the president, has called for a Reagan- inspired, big- tent party. Hogan published his own book this year, calling for a less divisive approach to governing.
Ehrlich is also plotting a reprisal of his radio career as away to expandhis influence. From 2007 to 2010, the Ehrlichs hosted a Saturday morning talk show onWBAL- AM in Baltimore.
“The radio show was very successful and we had a lot of fun with it,” Ehrlich said.
Now, they’re working on a yet- to- benamed podcast that will debut once Kendel Ehrlich finishes her service in the Trump administration. She’s acting director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance in the U. S. Department of Justice, managing grants.
The podcast could nurture part of the next political generation: Helping is their older son, Drew, a student atWashington & Jefferson College inWashington, Pennsylvania.
If all goes to plan, the podcast could begin shortly after Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.