Bob Ehrlich has lost track of time. (Photo: Jay Westcott)

Bob Ehrlich has lost track of time.

It’s hard to blame the guy. This has been a long campaign. Who can remember when one candidate slandered the other? Wasn’t one of these guys responsible for the Gulf oil spill or something? Did the other have a secret plan to raise tuition? Or was that the same dude? Who knows anymore?

It should be easy enough to remember when the campaign began, though. It was March 31 when Ehrlich officially announced his gubernatorial bid. O’Malley made the inevitable official the next month.

So we were a little puzzled when Ehrlich said at a rally Sunday that he had been the victim of negative ads from O’Malley since March. (He also said this during the first televised debate between the two men earlier this month.) That would mean O’Malley was attacking a candidate who wasn’t even in the race yet.

Sure enough, Ehrlich has his timeline off. The first truly negative ads of the campaign — the ones that linked Ehrlich to the gulf oil spill — began airing in late June. And a look at campaign finance records shows O'Malley didn't even make a media buy until the end of the April.

That said, the state Democratic party and O'Malley did immediately start attacking Ehrlich, just not over the airwaves. They released Web ads and press releases highlighting the idea that Ehrlich was a lobbyist, for example.

Still, Ehrlich said the ads were attacking him. And television and radio ads reach a lot more people than Democratic party press releases, enough that the two aren't really comparable. His timeline is Total Malarkey.