Ellen Sauerbrey

In her 1994 campaign for governor of Maryland, Ellen Sauerbrey ran as the unabashed conservative Republican that she was and had been during her 16 years in the House of Delegates, the last eight years as the feisty and combative House minority leader.

She came within 6,000 votes of winning--a margin of only four-tenths of 1 percent of the votes cast.

This time around, the 60-year-old candidate is seeking to broaden her appeal and go over the top to victory by moving closer to the political center in a politically liberal state.

Her softened image includes references to her childhood in a Baltimore rowhouse, the daughter of a blue-collar father who worked for Bethlehem Steel, belonged to a union, and always voted Democrat.

And she is soft-pedaling her stance on hot-button issues that her opponents delight in using to portray her as an extremist and a right-wing radical.

One of those issues, of course, is abortion.

She is only being realistic, she says: in polls, most Maryland voters say they favor legalized abortion. Though she opposes existing state and federal laws that allow abortion, she would not try to repeal them. 'I recognize that you have to choose your battles,' she told the Washington Times.

Pro-lifers who might find her new strategy disheartening may take comfort from a June 30 letter she wrote to the Rev. Paul Schenck, a pro-life leader and pastor of Bishop Cummins Memorial Church in Catonsville.

In it, Mrs. Sauerbrey declared her belief in the following principles:

• An end to partial-birth abortion
• Restricting taxpayer funding of abortions
• Parental notification when minors seek abortions
• Abstinence education to avoid pregnancy outside of marriage
• Providing women with the information they need to make informed choices about crisis pregnancies
• Holding abortion clinics to the same standards as other medical facilities
• Public assistance for crisis pregnancy centers
• Making adoption easier
• Opposition to assisted suicide
• Opposition to same-sex marriage and to special legal protection for homosexuals

On other issues the Baldwin resident remains conservative as well. She supports cutting state income taxes by another 14 percent for a total of 24 percent. (Pressured by her 1994 campaign proposal for a 24 percent income tax cut, the General Assembly has already voted a 10 percent cut.)

She favors school vouchers; tax credits for things like nonsectarian textbooks and transportation; and the rights of families to home school.

She would veto any new gun-control legislation.

She opposes slot-machine gambling but leaves the door open if no other solution can be found to boost revenues for the state's ailing horse racing industry.

Mrs. Sauerbrey was a high school biology teacher in Baltimore County for five years. After she and her husband Wil found they were unable to have children, she entered politics.

Her interest in politics began with a stint as a volunteer in Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, and was spurred on by a trip to Germany to visit Wil's parents. She was struck by the contrast between the repressiveness of Communist East Germany and the freedom and well-being of capitalist West Germany.

That trip helped shape her philosophy that people can better decide how to run their businesses, spend their own money, care for their own families, and prepare for their own future than government can. 'First and foremost, I'm an economic conservative,' she says.

The National Review says Mrs. Sauerbrey may be 'the most impressive conservative running for governor anywhere in America this year.'

Recent Mason-Dixon polls have shown her only a few points behind Governor Parris Glendening, her likely opposition in the general election.