MR. KOJO NNAMDIMaryland's race for governor is not a foregone conclusion. According to a poll released this weekend by The Baltimore Sun, the Democratic nominee, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, is only leading Republican Larry Hogan by 7 percentage points. To be sure, the numbers still favor Democrats in Maryland, which is one of the bluest states in the entire country. But the new data indicate that voters may be growing tired of current Governor Martin O'Malley and fearful that taxes are driving economic opportunities out of the state. The candidates met for a televised debate earlier this morning. Joining me to explore the state of the race as we barrel down the home stretch is Andy Green.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIHe's the opinion editor at The Baltimore Sun. He joins us by phone. Hi, Andy.

MR. ANDREW A. GREENHi, Kojo.

NNAMDIAndy, Democrats outnumber Republicans in Maryland by a margin of two to one.

GREENYeah.

NNAMDIBut the poll your newspaper released this weekend was just the latest piece of evidence indicating that Democrats are far from locking up this gubernatorial race for Anthony Brown. What did you make of the number reported in that poll and what do you think they said about the state of the race?

GREENWell, I think they're consistent with the messages we're seeing, both from other publicly released polls -- The Washington Post came out with a poll shortly before ours, which showed it as a 9-point race. We had also seen one from a well-respected Annapolis pollster, Gonzales, that had it at 4 points. Granted, that one was paid for by a pro-Larry Hogan group. But Gonzales is a reliable group. I believe their numbers. So all three of them have overlapping margins of error, would suggest that the race is somewhere in the 5, 6, 7-point range right now.

GREENWhich, as you say, considering the advantages Anthony Brown has not only in terms of the partisan makeup of the state, but also in terms of fundraising -- he's got way more money than Larry Hogan does. And has, if you've been watching TV in Maryland, you know, he has been pounding Larry Hogan with negative ads for the last several weeks. You would think that this race would be more along the line of the 2010 contest between Bob Ehrlich and Martin O'Malley, which was a 15-point blowout, rather than the relatively close race we saw in 2006. But close is what we seem to have.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is our number, if you have questions or comments. Are you a Maryland voter? Who are you supporting in the fall's race for governor and why? What are the issues that are informing your choice for governor in Maryland this fall? Give us a call, 800-433-8850. As we talk with Andy Green, Opinion Editor of The Baltimore Sun. You can also shoot an email to kojo@wamu.org. Or send us a tweet @kojoshow. Andy, what did the poll say about how solid the base of support is for each candidate? Are the people supporting either candidate, who are lukewarm towards them?

GREENThe supporters of the Hogan campaign appear to be more solid. They're more steadfast in their support, less likely to change their mind than the Brown supporters are. Moreover, Mr. Hogan is doing very well among older voters -- people, you know, senior citizen voters who are, of course, the most reliable in terms of actually going to the polls. And that's going to be a big factor. We've got an off-year election here. There's no presidential race on the ballot and therefore turnout is almost certainly going to be markedly lower than it was a couple of years ago. And the big question is, can Brown turn out his supporters who are predominantly younger. Mr. Brown is doing very well among younger voters, people in their 20s and 30s.

GREENAnd then they're, you know, duking it among people in their 40s and 50s. Can he turn those people out? The Brown campaign also is relying on heavy support from the African-American vote. You know, our poll had it at something like, you know, 88 to 6 in terms of the black vote in this race, in favor of Mr. Brown. He's got to be putting a lot of energy and effort into making sure that those voters actually go to the poll. The advantage he has, like I said, he has a lot more money and he's got a better organized political party behind him in Maryland, the Democrat -- sad to say for Republicans -- but the Democrats have their acts together a lot better than the Republican Party does in this state.

GREENAnd so he'll have advantages there. He's also got a lot of organized labor backing. And that tends to be very helpful in terms of getting out the vote. So he's got a lot of advantages here, in spite of the fact that it's a close race. There are certainly scenarios where he may wind up winning comfortably.

NNAMDIWell, we talked about race. Let's talk about geography. We've talked a couple of times during the past year about where the votes are in Maryland. Population centers in the D.C. suburbs and in Baltimore City are huge factors in statewide elections in Maryland. So where are the votes that Larry Hogan would have to get if he is really going to close this gap and pull out a win in November?

GREENHe is doing quite well in the rural counties, as you would expect. But there are not that many voters there compared to the jurisdictions you just mentioned. Mr. Hogan is doing well in Baltimore County. He's beating Anthony Brown by a substantial margin there, but nowhere near the margin, at least at this point, that Bob Ehrlich had against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in Baltimore County in 2002. So he needs to pick up some ground there, in spite of the fact that he is already significantly ahead. Mr. Hogan is also doing well in Anne Arundel County, which is where he now lives and is among the state's largest counties -- the most Republican-friendly among them. So he's picking up support there, you know?

GREENGenerally speaking, in the Baltimore suburbs, that's the key for the Hogan campaign, is to drive up his margins there and to get people to the poll.

NNAMDIOn to the telephones. Here is Steve in Takoma Park, Md. Steve, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

STEVEAll right. Hi, Kojo.

NNAMDIHi, Steve.

STEVEHow you doing?

NNAMDII'm doing well.

STEVEGreat. Well, we don't need Hogan in Maryland. We're a Democratic state. Hogan's a gun nut. Tell him to forget it.

NNAMDIWhat do you feel about taxes, Steve?

STEVETaxes? They need to raise taxes.

NNAMDIAh.

STEVERepublicans always say they're not going to raise taxes. And what do they do in the end? They raise taxes. It's an ongoing thing, you know? You can't avoid raising taxes. Prices keep on going up.

NNAMDIWell...

GREENDid you see his...

NNAMDI...clearly not a Hogan voter.

GREENNo. No. Well, he is from Takoma Park.

NNAMDIStop, already. We're not going there.

GREENBut he does bring up a good point in raising the issue of guns. This has been one of the Brown campaign's chief strategies, has been to run a very negative campaign against Mr. Hogan. And they have been focusing on wedge issues that are not the ones that the Hogan campaign wants to be talking about. And the one that he has been, I think, perhaps most aggressive on -- or one of the ones he's been most aggressive on has been gun control. Anthony Brown was a big supporter of the Gun Control Act that Governor O'Malley pushed through the legislature last year. Larry Hogan has said that he opposed that piece of legislation. Although when you press him on the issues, it's -- he's not nearly so black and white.

GREENYou know, he uniquely, among the Republicans running for office this year, said he would not try to repeal that Act. But there's been a lot of conversation in the campaign recently about the difference between vigorously enforcing something versus simply not trying to repeal it. You know, there's a big middle ground in there in between how -- what kind of State Police Superintendent you get, how much attention that person pays to enforcing the gun laws, what interpretation you have of Maryland's regulations for who gets concealed-carry permits, all that sort of thing.

GREENSo there's a lot of ground on that particular issue that has come up in this campaign, but which the Hogan campaign has been trying to avoid getting into too many specifics.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Andy Green. He is the opinion editor of The Baltimore Sun. You can call us at 800-433-8850. What are the issues that are informing your choice for governor in Maryland this fall? Here now is Jim in Rockville, Md. Jim, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JIMHi, Kojo. I'm a liberal Democrat. And I'm strongly supporting Hogan. And there's several reasons. One, is the gasoline tax, which I think most people that, if you don't follow it, don't realize that it's only been implemented by five or six cents.

NNAMDIOkay. What else?

JIMFully implemented, it'd be 20 cents a gallon, bring us up with California. Secondly, is the estate tax. When they were raising the estate tax to be more in line with the federal plan, O'Malley signed it but Brown said he was against it and he wouldn't have signed it. And it used to -- Maryland's the -- one of two states that has an inheritance tax and plus their estate tax is anything over a million dollars is taxed. Now, they're raising it next year to a million and a half and then the year after that to two and a half. So it's more realistic with what values are today. So it's basically taxes.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. Andy Green, how much of the traction that Larry Hogan is getting is about taxes? The candidates debated on News Channel 8 this morning. It was last -- we got a different debate in Baltimore, when Anthony Brown says he would not raise taxes if he were elected. Is this the issue that's keeping Hogan in the game?

GREENI think so. This is the central issue of the Hogan campaign. And if it were not effective, you would not see Anthony Brown making a flat promise that he would not raise taxes. Because no politician wants to hem themselves in if they don't have to. The fact that not only has Mr. Brown said that, but he has repeated it over and over and over again, over the course of the last week. That suggests to me that that is being -- that's something that's effective for the Hogan campaign.

GREENNow, that said, our poll found that people in Maryland are about evenly split on their view of taxes here -- about whether they are necessary and important investments we're making in public safety and education and so on, or whether they're job killers that need to be reduced, lest we go to the way of ruination here. The voters are basically evenly split between which of those propositions they agreed with more.

GREENAnd although taxes are the single biggest issue for voters here, only, you know, about a quarter of voters say that that is the number one issue for them. Three-quarters of voters say that other issues are more important. So it's obviously working for Mr. Hogan. But I wonder if he's going to need to do something else to get over the top here.

NNAMDIOne wonders exactly what is Hogan offering voters instead. The Washington Post editorial page today, endorsing Anthony Brown. And while, they said, Brown left them wanting, they called Hogan's platform incoherent. Now, here is Yvette in Bowie, Md. Yvette, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

YVETTESpeaking to your incoherent statement, his budget -- it's the exact same thing. He's making a lot of promises that don't add up. And, yes, I am a long-time fan of Anthony Brown's. And, yes, I plan to vote for him, as do I encourage everyone else out there. But Larry Hogan's budget, it -- you can't understand it. When you start adding up the numbers, they don't make any sense. So, not only that, his position on women, his position on birth control. I'm sorry, when you tell me that, yes, I can go buy it over the counter -- do you know how expensive birth control pills actually are? And why fix what is not broken?

NNAMDIOkay. Thank you very much for your call. Andy Green, talk a little bit about what she said about the budget not adding up. That the...

GREENWell, she is 100 percent right about that. The Hogan campaign put out a plan for ways -- or basically a list of ways they thought that you could save money in Maryland's budget. And what they'd done, is they'd gone through a bunch of the audits that have been done by state auditors or federal auditors at agencies and said, look, here's something that they identified as waste, fraud or abuse, that we could do differently. But once some of our reporters started going through the numbers, they found some big errors -- you know, wrong decimal points sorts of things, misunderstanding of what some of the findings were. You know, for example, there was a case where some property had been mis-assessed.

GREENAnd instead of calculating the amount of taxes we lost as a result, they used the number for the amount of property value that was lost, so, you know, this was inflating the value of that particular finding by like 90 times. Or in another case, they had found an audit finding that said for $450 million worth of school construction, there were not adequate tracking and controls, but that the state agency had subsequently fixed that.

GREENSo that didn't mean that the $450 million was wasted, simply that it was not being tracked properly and that problem had been fixed. And moreover, it's not as if the Hogan campaign ever wanted to say they were cutting school construction funding by $450 million in the first place. So the -- she, the caller is absolutely right. That particular plan does not add up whatsoever.

NNAMDIWhat did you learn from this poll, Andy, about whether Marylanders are happy with the direction the state is heading in? Is Martin O'Malley ending his tenure as governor with warm feelings from Marylanders?

GREENNot particularly. The numbers we found were that the state is slightly of the opinion that we are on the wrong track. Other polls recently have shown real dips in Governor O'Malley's approval rating. We also asked whether Maryland voters would support Governor O'Malley if he ran for president. And the answer was basically, no.

NNAMDISo Anthony Brown is trying to distance himself from Martin O'Malley. But a lot of Democrats are still sore about what happened a dozen years ago, when Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the Democratic nominee for governor, had a race ripped out from underneath her in the general election by Bob Ehrlich. If there are lessons from that race that both Democrats and Republicans are taking into the next few weeks, what are they?

GREENI think that the Hogan campaign is looking to recreate some of the Ehrlich magic in the suburbs and going after the lieutenant governor as being unqualified for a promotion, which was essentially the knock on Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and trying to capitalize on the popularity of the incumbent governor. Now, in fairness, Governor Parris Glendening was way more unpopular than Governor O'Malley is now. And I think that Anthony Brown is running a better campaign than Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was also, by far. So that's going to be a harder lift.

GREENNow, what the Brown campaign is doing, I think, more than the lessons of the...

NNAMDIRunning out of time. You've got about 10 seconds.

GREENThey learned the lesson from President Obama that you've got to define your opponent first and that's what they're doing.

NNAMDIAndy Green is the opinion editor of The Baltimore Sun. Andy, thank you for joining us.

GREENThanks, Kojo.

NNAMDIThank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.