Duncan Raises Profile At O'Malley's Expense

After settling into a Baltimore area radio studio last week and slipping on some headphones, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan offered a candid admission about his bid for governor: Too many people in that region still know him only as "the other guy in the race."

"I think it's the biggest disadvantage I have," Duncan told listeners more familiar with the other Democratic candidate, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. "But that's changing."

To the extent that Duncan is right, his growing visibility has come not so much from what he is telling voters about himself as from what he is saying about the issues of the day in Baltimore.

In recent weeks, Duncan has voiced solidarity with Baltimore students skipping school to protest run-down facilities. He has repeatedly taken to the airwaves to question the validity of O'Malley's crime statistics. And with television cameras rolling, Duncan stood by the city's top prosecutor, after her leadership was aggressively challenged in a City Council hearing by two of the mayor's allies.

"Duncan has found some cracks in O'Malley's support, and he's doing everything he can to exploit them," said Matthew Crenson, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Most analysts say they expect O'Malley to dominate the Baltimore region in the September primary. But they see potential for Duncan to make inroads among pockets of Democrats who are disillusioned with the mayor.

In 2004, O'Malley won reelection with 88 percent of the vote in the majority-black, heavily Democratic city of Baltimore. But in the Democratic primary, an African American high school principal drew 32 percent of the vote with just a fraction of the campaign money O'Malley raised.

More recent polls suggest that O'Malley remains popular in the Baltimore area, but he has had fallings-out in recent years with several high-profile Democrats, whose help Duncan is now enlisting.

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy has appeared with Duncan several times, including this weekend at a Women for Duncan meeting in Baltimore. He also has won endorsements from Kurt L. Schmoke and state Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, two former mayors who are considered foes in a city where politics is often intensely personal.

Last week, Duncan made his third appearance on a radio show hosted by Edward T. Norris, a former police commissioner who returned to the city after serving a prison sentence and who is no longer on speaking terms with O'Malley. It was one of two dozen appearances Duncan has made on Baltimore radio stations in the past three months.

Before going on the air, Duncan told Norris that more people in Baltimore recognize him after "all the TV and radio" that showcased the county executive questioning whether violent crime in the city has decreased as rapidly as O'Malley claims.

Duncan's efforts to insert himself into debate on Baltimore issues "is as good as anything else for a guy who's mostly unknown here," said Carl Stokes, a former Baltimore City Council member who ran against O'Malley in the 1999 mayoral primary. "No one's paying attention to dry policy statements right now. It doesn't resonate."