That's a cogent theory. I'll try to keep an open mind. I do have to say, ten years ago when he was running for Senate, I put a Michael Steele sign on my front lawn, and one of my black neighbors picked a fight with me over it and stomped off, ending our formerly very friendly family relationship.
I followed the Ehrlich/Steele campaign very closely and traveled pretty extensively to attend some small campaign gatherings. I was quite smitten with Steele and continued to be until he started talking like a RINO a few years ago.
I helped out a fair amount with low-level grunt work during the campaign, including making calls, driving to Annapolis to work on mailings, taking literature door-to-door, manning a campaign booth at a county fair, and freezing my head off all day and all evening at the fire hall polling place on election day (I was the only volunteer).
My conclusion, just based on my exchanges with various black people, is that there were many blacks in the big voting districts who voted for him just because of race. Which was fine with me. It got Ehrlich in, and many of the black people who crossed over to vote R would do so again once they saw how a Republican straightened out $pendenning’s mess. That was my thinking, but we saw how that went....
When Ehrlich ran a second time, the wind was out of my sails. I could not believe how poorly his campaign was run. I never even got a follow-up to my online application to help. One of my sons, who wanted to donate considerable time, talent, and effort to the campaign for advertising, never had his phone call returned.
Hate to be a cynic, but I got the impression that Bobby was just going through the motions, did not really care about winning the race, and was just content to maintain the networking and the lifestyle. After I kept getting all sorts of post-election solicitations for groups started by him and/or his wife, I got really disgusted.
Sorry to make this so long....