MD-Gov: Ehrlich (R) has to return half a million

This has to hurt.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich returned more than $540,000 in political contributions to the Republican Party after state elections officials discovered that a federal account was used to funnel funds to his re-election campaign.

A letter from the State Board of Elections, obtained by The Sun newspaper, said use of the federal account to pay for the governor's re-election effort allowed Ehrlich to receive large sums of in-kind contributions from the state party by bypassing the $4,000 donation cap set by state law.

Final campaign finance statements filed before Tuesday's election showed Ehrlich had a significant financial advantage over his Democratic opponent, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley.

Even without the half-million dollars, Ehrlich's campaign still had more than $2 million in the bank as of Oct. 22. The O'Malley campaign had about $600,000.

This is another race that will go down to the wire, having tightened considerably in the last two weeks.