Leadership Quote by Bob Ehrlich

A blunt little sentence that’s doing a lot of political choreography. “I support stem cell research” is the headline: pro-science, pro-innovation, pro-medical hope. The clause that follows - “including embryonic stem cell research” - is the tell. Ehrlich isn’t merely endorsing a popular-sounding idea; he’s stepping onto the most flammable part of the terrain and signaling he knows it.

In the mid-2000s, embryonic stem cell research functioned as a cultural Rorschach test. To supporters, it was a pragmatic bet on cures for Parkinson’s, spinal cord injuries, and diabetes; to opponents, it was a bright moral line. By specifying “including,” Ehrlich collapses the dodge many politicians preferred: praising “stem cell research” while quietly steering away from embryos, or hiding behind “adult stem cells” as the less controversial substitute. The phrasing reads like a deliberate refusal to let the listener pretend the debate is only technical.

The subtext is coalition management. Ehrlich, a Republican governor in a blue-leaning state, is positioning himself as a centrist executive: willing to defy national party orthodoxy, comfortable with biomedical modernity, attentive to research institutions and patients’ advocates, and not easily boxed in by religious-right litmus tests. It’s also a wager that voters will reward candor on a contested issue - or at least respect the clarity.

The rhetoric is intentionally spare. No moral philosophizing, no promises of miracle cures, no hedging. Just a clean declaration that invites you to argue policy, not parse euphemisms.