Maryland's Contest of The Media Markets

Aides to Duncan said that intense media coverage of the race will turn him into a household name long before votes are cast in the September primary and that the more important task for now is locking down support of party activists such as those who attended Friday's meeting. Still, some analysts said breaking into unfamiliar territory can be very difficult.

"You tend to vote for a candidate you feel you know in a primary," said Thomas F. Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, who is active in Maryland politics and supports O'Malley. "Region isn't the only thing, but it certainly matters."

On a recent weekday afternoon, O'Malley emerged from an IHOP in the Prince George's town of Forestville, where he had just finished meeting with about 30 Democratic activists and elected officials.

Part of the group headed across the street to a strip mall, where O'Malley was led on a tour by state Sen. Ulysses S. Currie (D-Prince George's). A woman working at Bath & Body Works asked for a picture with the mayor, and others gawked at his entourage. But many of the shoppers clearly had no idea who O'Malley was.

"One day he might run for governor, but he'll let you know that," Currie playfully told a group of teenagers they encountered.

O'Malley has quietly been making such visits to Prince George's weekly, according to campaign aides, as he tries to strengthen his ties in a county also crucial to Duncan's chances of success. The mayor has another foray scheduled today in Greenbelt.

O'Malley has not shied away from campaigning in Duncan's home county, either. Though he rarely mentioned it during his rise to power in Baltimore, O'Malley grew up in Montgomery County, and his parents still live there. A press advisory for Wednesday's announcement tour refers to Rockville as his "hometown."

Analysts said that O'Malley's challenge there -- and elsewhere in the relatively affluent Washington region -- will be to convince voters that his stewardship of a city struggling with violence and drug addiction merits a promotion to governor. His speeches are filled with statistics pointing to progress.

Duncan, in some respects, faces the opposite challenge in the Baltimore region. Once he gets his name into circulation, he will have to overcome the stigma that appears to attach itself to all statewide candidates from Montgomery County.

"They used to say Montgomery County's streets are paved in gold," said Stanton Gildenhorn, a former chairman of the county's Democratic Central Commission and a Duncan supporter. "You had to figure out how to persuade people that, coming from here, you could still understand their problems."

Duncan's initial effort to combat perceptions of wealth and privilege has involved recounting his personal story. He tells prospective voters how he grew up one of 13 children, whose father taught non-English-speaking students in the public schools, and whose mother worked 27 years in the county courthouse.

His Web site says he grew up in the Twinbrook section of Rockville, "a working-class neighborhood, home to federal employees, teachers, police officers and firefighters." He often reminds people that he graduated from college in three years so his parents could afford to send the next sibling off to college, and that his oldest son has joined the military.

Gildenhorn said he believes Duncan's advantage in the race is that it will be less expensive for him to share that story with voters on Baltimore television than it will be for O'Malley in the more expensive Washington market, which reaches the homes of about 45 percent of Maryland Democrats. (Viewers in Anne Arundel and Howard counties can watch stations in both markets but are considered part of the Baltimore market.)

Organizations that sway large blocs of voters in Baltimore, such as labor unions and religious groups, also are more accessible to candidates from other parts of the state. It was largely through those organizations that Glendening, a former Prince George's county executive, was able to break out of the Washington suburbs and capture the Democratic nomination in 1994.

Duncan has been concentrating his initial efforts in Baltimore on these constituencies. Saturday morning, he attended an awards breakfast for African American women with Sen. Delores G. Kelley (D-Baltimore County).

But even with such groups, Sen. Lisa Gladden (D-Baltimore) said she believes O'Malley has an edge.

"Martin has been working with these community groups and these informal leaders in Baltimore City for six or seven years," she said. "And where Martin can use his position as mayor to keep those groups satisfied and tend to their extraordinarily varied needs, Doug can only offer hope for what he might do if he became governor."

For now, Duncan's challenge is even more fundamental, she said. "They just haven't heard of him," Gladden said of her constituents. "It's not that they might not like him when they got to know him. But he's not going to get votes unless people know who he is."