Well it appears my purely speculative post about determining Governor Ehrlich’s Lt. Governor based on which url was available was just that…purely speculative. It turns out Governor Ehrlich has chosen Kristen Cox to be her running mate. From The Baltimore Sun.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. introduced Maryland Disabilities Secretary Kristen Cox, a legally blind former Washington lobbyist, as his pick for lieutenant governor this morning and said that her interest in empowering underserved communities would be an asset to his administration.

“She met the two-prong test: personal compatibility, philosophical compatibility,” Ehrlich said during a news conference at the City Dock in Annapolis.
….
“Let’s be honest, most politicians don’t step up and make disability a key part of their platform,” said Cox, 36. “… But this governor says, ‘You know what? These are people that can contribute, that can get back to the workforce, that can be productive if we give them some support.’”

I don’t think it turned out to be much of a surprise to many. Cox’s name had been mentioned numerous times to me and in the “mainstream” media over the past few weeks as the likely choice. Obviously her blindness will have an initial shock value, but I don’t think it will be as big a shock to the system as Michael Steele’s victory in 2002 as Lieutenant Governor was in the state of Maryland. I personally do not know much about Cox other than she has been an active player in the Disability arena, so it will be interesting to see how she progresses as a candidate. I missed the announcement this morning, so I haven’t yet actually heard her speak.

Meanwhile, in my absence, The Washington Post released the first poll since Doug Duncan dropped out and it shows O’Malley with an initial 16% lead over Ehrlich among likely voters.

MD GOVERNOR
Martin O’Malley (D) 55%
Bob Ehrlich (R) 39%

Among registered voters, it was a little closer, 51%-40%. Despite the deficit, Ehrlich does hold a pretty healthy approval rating 56%-41%, so it is somewhat interesting that he would be so far behind. Now that the running mates have been chosen on both sides, I think the next poll will be more telling. This poll was done June 19-25 among 902 registered voters (# of likely voters was not clear to me).

I should point out, someone did in fact purchased the http://www.ehrlichcox.com url since my post earlier this week. Hopefully it was someone in the Ehrlich campaign and not an O’Malley ally who could use it for nefarious purposes.

from Dave at the Hedgehog.

Well, this just proves to me how unthinking MD voters are. Is the city safer under O’Malley? No, it’s worse. Are the schools better? That is questionable. The economics are little better. More people have moved out…

let me remind you again….since O’Malley Baltimore is again the number one murder capital.

The three cities of 500,000 or more residents with the highest homicide rates were Baltimore, Detroit and Washington, D.C.

Baltimore’s murder rate among its 634,279 residents was 42.41 killings per 100,000 residents. Detroit, with 359 killings among its population of 914,353, had a murder rate of 39.26. Washington, with 195 homicides and a population of 553,523 had a murder rate of 35.23

(Highest)
BALTIMORE 42.41
DETROIT 39.26
WASHINGTON 35.23
PHILADELPHIA 25.40
MEMPHIS 20.84
(Other notable cities)
CHICAGO 15.51
LOS ANGELES 12.66
NEW YORK 6.66
(Lowest)
SAN JOSE 2.86
EL PASO 2.19

So since he did a crappy job as mayor, let’s make him Gov. What a bunch of unthinking lemmings some voters are. …….lets vote for the Democrat no matter what kind of job he did.