O'Malley accuses Ehrlich of smear campaign

[Judi Lynn]

O'Malley accuses Ehrlich of smear campaign
Mayor responds to media report his wife first acknowledged affair rumors in newspaper article 5 years ago
By Doug Donovan
Sun Staff
Originally published May 18, 2005, 4:33 PM EDT
Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley today accused Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of orchestrating a taxpayer-financed campaign of character assassination by allowing state employees to continue to fuel a rumor about marital discord between the mayor and his wife, Katie Curran O'Malley.

The mayor was responding today to questions that it was his wife, and not Ehrlich aides, who first publicly pronounced the rumor's existence shortly after he was elected mayor in 1999.

"There's a big difference between public wonderings about a young couple thrust into the spotlight of being the city's first family, and a premeditated, orchestrated and relentless campaign run by dirty trick operatives close to the governor funded on state taxpayer dollars," O'Malley said at a City Hall news conference.

"I'm calling upon the governor to end this cowardly abuse of power. I'm calling upon the governor to fire the remaining members of his taxpayer financed dirty tricks team. And I'm calling on the governor to stop right now the politics of character smear and character assassination that apparently he learned at the elbow of Newt Gingrich," the mayor said.

Ehrlich already fired one employee, Joseph F. Steffen Jr., in February after Steffen admitted to spreading rumors on the Internet about the mayor's private life. O'Malley said today that Steffen also admitted that he had been working with other administration employees and that these unidentified state workers were continuing to feed information to the media to try to keep the rumors alive.
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-omalley0518,1,3802467.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
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Mayor O'Malley, Gov. Erlich