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BOWIE — Maryland Republicans overwhelmingly selected former Ehrlich administration official Audrey Scott to be their chairman Saturday in an election where the contention focused more on how to select a new chairman rather than who it should be.

Scott, who was planning secretary under Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), pledged to raise more money for the financially strapped GOP. She also said she would work with the party's elected officials.

"We can do for you what you need us to do," said Scott, who served as mayor of Bowie and on the Prince George's County Council.

About 300 attended the Maryland Republican Party convention where central committee members from Baltimore city and the state's 23 counties voted to replace James Pelura.

Pelura faced growing criticism for the party's meager fundraising. Republicans in the General Assembly bristled at his attempts to guide party policy.

Scott ran against Daniel Vovak, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 wearing a white wig, a symbol from the colonial era, and called himself "The Wig Man."

He entered the race claiming allegiance to the GOP's forebears, the Whig Party, and renamed himself "The Whig Man."

Vovak received 45 votes to Scott's 610 in a complex weighting system the party used.

For recent chairmanship elections, the GOP's voting system tilted toward Maryland's largest counties. After about an hour of debate, the party agreed to a new weighting system that shifted some of the power away from the larger counties.

But as the central committee members were about to cast their votes, one member tried to change the election to a voice vote, prompting more confusion.

Eventually, the voice vote idea was scrapped and the ballots were cast.

The party has about $5,600 in the bank, according to a report released at the convention. The party's executive committee Friday night passed a 2010 budget that anticipates raising $438,000 and spending $339,000. The difference will be put toward outstanding debts, including a charge the party must pay to Michael Steele's campaign account.

Steele, the current chairman of the Republican National Committee who served as state chairman before becoming lieutenant governor, asked for legal help when the party challenged a proposal to redraw legislative districts.

Steele paid the $75,000 out of his campaign account and the state Board of Elections ruled the bill should be paid by the party.

Despite its financial problems, party members remained upbeat, certain that their numbers in the General Assembly and Congress will improve in the 2010 elections.

"It was hard last election to register voters," Joyce Lyons Terhes, a former party chairwoman, told the audience. "How the mood has changed now."

"Our citizens don't want socialism," Scott said. "They don't want the government running health care. And they don't want the secularization of our society."

Pelura, who presided over the convention until Scott was elected, said politics would always be his hobby.

"The people in Annapolis and the people in Washington, they have too much control over our lives," Pelura said.