By Carol Arscott Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page B08

A negative campaign is generally defined as one aimed at increasing the negative name identification of an opponent. In this strict sense, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's negative campaign to be Maryland's next governor has worked: Republican Bob Ehrlich's negatives have more than doubled since my polling company did a survey in August.

But Townsend may be perilously close to crossing a fine line. In The Post's poll released last Sunday, 57 percent of voters said that Maryland's gubernatorial campaign has been too negative, and twice as many blamed Townsend as blamed Ehrlich for the campaign's off-putting tone.

Townsend and her allies have thrown everything at Ehrlich but the proverbial kitchen sink. He has been tagged as an enemy of education, a scourge of seniors, a fan of firearms and bad for the bay. One radio ad, featuring wheezing and coughing actors, proclaims him to be "hazardous to your health" for his failure to support higher cigarette taxes. Another says that Ehrlich voted to adhere to existing deadlines for filing asbestos litigation "even as people were dying."

But nothing is quite like being called a Nazi. Republicans in Maryland have been the victims of race-baiting before, but this incident was decidedly different. It occurred not in the final weekend of the campaign, confined to black neighborhoods, but in full view of everyone on Sept. 20.

Julius Henson, a Baltimore-based specialist in voter turnout, had just been hired by the Maryland Democratic Party's coordinated campaign to halt Ehrlich's progress with African American voters in the Washington suburbs. He wasted little time in warming to the task.

"Bobby Ehrlich is a Nazi. His record is horrible, atrocious," Henson told a reporter that day. "In Prince George's County, we'll define him as the Nazi he is. Once we do that," Henson opined, "I think people will vote for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend."

Townsend's campaign clearly was embarrassed to have Henson's in-your-face strategy appear on The Post's Sept. 21 front page. But anyone who thought the Democrat's camp would be cowed by such a tactical blunder was mistaken. Henson was dismissed, but his race-baiting strategy lived on with the next salvo fired the following week by the candidate herself.

In her opening statement at the campaign's only televised debate, Townsend played to the partisan crowd: "My opponent opposes affirmative action based on race. Well, let me tell you," Townsend thundered, "slavery was based on race, lynching was based on race, discrimination was based on race, Jim Crow was based on race, and affirmative action should be based on race!"

The audience at Morgan State University whooped with enthusiasm. But in Television Land, jaws were hitting the floor. Townsend was broadcasting the underground campaign. Seldom had such an overtly racial appeal been delivered to such a wide audience.

To put it bluntly, white voters don't usually have the opportunity to witness this brand of politics. The Townsend campaign must have been desperate to disseminate such an inflammatory message in such a public way. Ehrlich was cutting too deeply into Townsend's African American base, and the Democrats had to stop him.

But at what cost? While Townsend has driven Ehrlich's share of the black vote down to 11 percent in my company's latest survey, her slice of the white vote also has shrunk, from 35 percent to 33 percent. Townsend seems to have succeeded in winning back the black voters who drifted away after she decided not to name an African American running mate, but she may have repelled enough white voters to cost her the election. If Townsend manages to emerge the victor on Tuesday, she will have "won ugly," a sorry state of affairs for voters in the Free State.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2002