Blossoming Gubernatorial Campaigns, in All but Name

O'Malley and Duncan Working Hard to Keep Elective Efforts Informal

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley says he collected more than $2 million at a fundraiser Monday night. He spent yesterday afternoon in Montgomery County, the back yard of the other technically unannounced 2006 Democratic primary aspirant, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan.

But when a reporter asked O'Malley why he has not formally declared his candidacy for governor of Maryland, he seemed unable to summon an answer, saying such an announcement might come "sometime not in the too-distant future."

It is one of the oddities of Maryland's political landscape at this moment: O'Malley and Duncan are both clearly running for governor, yet are engaged in a form of semantic gymnastics to avoid formally declaring themselves candidates.

Each man has made no secret of his plans. Both have hired a campaign managers. Both say they have raised in excess of $2 million. Both have been traveling the state, making appearances before partisan crowds.

And both have been trying, at times gamely, to avoid crossing that rhetorical threshold.

There have been slip-ups, as when an overeager O'Malley intern called reporters and said he was from the "O'Malley for governor campaign."

When Duncan told an audience of Cumberland Democrats last month that he "wants to be Maryland's next governor," he thought he was still safely in the unannounced zone because he followed that with the caution that his words should "not be taken as a formal announcement."

But an Associated Press reporter didn't see the caveat in a local news report, and so wrote: "If there had been any doubt that Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan is running for governor, there isn't now. He told Democrats in Cumberland last night that he wants to be the next governor of Maryland."

The account was quickly picked up by Baltimore radio stations, where the wife of a top Duncan aide heard it and told her astonished husband, who knew of no plans to make such an announcement. After speaking with his boss, the aide then made a flurry of calls to news outlets to bottle the story.

Why not just fess up?

Part of the answer is that the campaigns want to sustain some kind of dramatic tension over what is now a 15-month march to the September 2006 primary. A formal announcement, which virtually guarantees a day of heavy television and newspaper coverage, is regarded by strategists as an important moment. The other reason is that voters -- and often journalists -- tend to expect more from announced candidates: more command of the issues, more details about how they would govern.

"That is the point at which the scrutiny becomes higher, the level of detail is expected to be higher," O'Malley said.