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With a mock campaign Web site, Maryland Democrats on Thursday took a shot at forestalling a long-anticipated move by former Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to recapture the office he lost to Gov. Martin O'Malley in 2006.

Featuring a tongue-in-cheek biography, the site www.bobehrlich.org portrays Ehrlich, the first Republican governor in Maryland since Spiro T. Agnew, as an out-of-touch exile, "plotting the restoration" from his employer Womble Carlyle's "Elba Island" office while he labors to aid "mortgage company CEOs" and "hedge fund managers" whose incomes have been hobbled.

Those who can't wait to vote can cast ballots in an online poll that asks, "Which Bob do you prefer?" The choices: "Fiscal conservative in Name Only Bob," "Big Spender Bob," "Lobbyist Bob" or "Payola Pundit Bob."

The last is a reference to Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Turnbull's recent complaint to the Federal Communications Commission that Ehrlich did not follow FCC rules when he failed to disclose during a television interview that the Cordish Cos., whose application for a slots license he mentioned in a favorable light, is a client of the Womble Carlyle law firm.

Asked whether Ehrlich would respond with a similar fake O'Malley Web site, Henry Fawell, a spokesman for the former governor, demurred, saying that to answer presumes that Ehrlich will run.

Ehrlich will announce his decision in the "next several weeks," Fawell said, refusing to be more specific.

He did comment on the Democrats' electronic pre-emptive strike.

"When your own candidate is bereft of ideas and accomplishments, you attack the other guy," Fawell said.

"They don't want to talk about the very harsh realities that everyday Marylanders are facing now," he said, noting that the state's unemployment rate rose again in January.

Last week, the O'Malley-Brown campaign released a poll it commissioned by Washington, D.C.-based Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group showing O'Malley with a 10-point lead over Ehrlich. But the same day, the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report downgraded O'Malley's re-election chances from "safe" to "narrow advantage."

Maryland Democratic Party spokesman Isaac Salazar said the mock Ehrlich Web site was created in-house. It plays off Ehrlich's own Web site, www.bobehrlich.com, using similar colors, typeface and graphics.

Where Ehrlich's site refers to "Maryland's Future," the Democrats' parody refers to "Maryland's Past" and includes a YouTube ad that mimics the audiovisuals of an old filmstrip and 1950s television and jabs at Ehrlich with a soundtrack sampling funk and 1960s sitcom music.

The ad closes with a clip of a crowd wearing 3-D glasses and recoiling when the narrator says, "Now Bob Ehrlich wants to be governor again."

Democrats have seized the role of media innovators in campaigns in their use of the Internet, said Bruce E. Gronbeck, director of the University of Iowa's Center for Media Studies and Political Culture.

Republicans were great innovators in the use of television, Gronbeck said, beginning with Dwight D. Eisenhower's hiring of Walt Disney and Irving Berlin for animation and music in 1952.

Democrats have yet to match Republican strength on talk radio, but Republicans have lagged in using the newer media, Gronbeck said.

Staff Writer Douglas Tallman contributed to this report.