If Republican dreams of political parity in Maryland are ever to become reality, the party will need converts like Cal Steuart. Lots of them.
For much of his life, Steuart, 66, voted for Democrats, as did everyone on the family farm in Baltimore County where he grew up. But two years ago Steuart, the owner of a Dunkirk title company, chose the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. He has no doubt how he will vote in the presidential election Nov. 2.
"My basic values have changed away from the liberal idea that the government can do best for you," said Steuart, who cringes at the mention of Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry. "It was good to be able to vote for a Republican in Maryland and have him win."
The election will provide the first real indication of whether Ehrlich's victory was a watershed in Maryland politics, propelling the state toward a long-term "realignment," as Republican leaders like to call it -- or whether, as many leading Democrats argue, it was a fluke in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1.
If Ehrlich's win was to be the harbinger of change in Maryland, there is limited evidence for Republicans to cite -- short of anecdotes such as Steuart's conversion.
Since the last presidential election, in which Al Gore carried the state by 17 percentage points, the percentage of registered Republicans in Maryland has dropped slightly, to less than 30 percent.
Party registration does not always foretell what voters will do. Steuart, for example, is a registered Democrat. But the percentage of registered Republicans has changed little in Maryland since 1992, when it was 29 percent.
For Democrats, that isn't necessarily good news. As of August, the party's share of voters in the state also had dropped slightly from four years ago, to 55.5 percent, continuing a decades-long erosion.
The real development in the past four years has been among unaffiliated and minor-party voters, who now make up nearly 15 percent of voters in Maryland.
The growing ranks of the unaffiliated may make Maryland politics more volatile, but there is no fundamental realignment taking place, argued John T. Willis, a former Maryland secretary of state and a Democrat.
"They've taken the one election and tried to make a mountain out of an aberration," Willis said. "If it did exist, we'd be a battleground state" in the presidential race.
Neither campaign has treated Maryland as such. Ehrlich publicly advised President Bush in an August radio interview to campaign elsewhere, saying he "needs to be in the states he can potentially win."
Polls have shown the Democratic ticket as having a comfortable lead in the state, which has 10 electoral votes.
Neither campaign has bought much advertising, and the only major-party candidate to make an appearance in recent months is Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
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