06 campaign just got a little uglier. Ehrlich hires Cleland swift-boater.

In the first major step toward building a campaign team, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has hired a political director whose major credit is the successful race he ran to unseat a former Georgia senator and crusading war veteran that has Democrats there still crying foul four years later.

Bo Harmon, a veteran of the National Republican Congressional Committee and other GOP organizations, as well as manager of Saxby Chambliss' campaign against then-Sen. Max Cleland, said yesterday that he is coming to Maryland to get the word out about Ehrlich's accomplishments.

Democrats here and in Georgia immediately criticized the hire, saying Ehrlich is bringing to Maryland a virtuoso of nastiness who attacked the patriotism of Cleland, an Army veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam.

"Bo Harmon ran one of the most despicable campaigns in the history of Georgia, if not the nation," Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Kahn said in a statement.

"Senator Chambliss' campaign was the worst example of the politics of personal destruction, defaming the character of a man who gave up so much for his country in Vietnam," Kahn added. "If Bo Harmon was willing to do that in 2002 against an American war hero like Max Cleland, one can only imagine what he is likely to do in 2006."