Maryland Senate Race May Hinge On Ethnicity

"I still consider myself running from behind," says Kweisi Mfume (D), who trails others in fundraising. (Lucian Perkins - Twp)

Cardin has not been advertising on television, but he made a $680,000 down payment to reserve airtime in the Washington and Baltimore television markets for the two weeks leading up to the primary.

Where Cardin does hold a significant advantage is in the race for dollars. As of April, he had raised $3.6 million -- nearly seven times as much as Mfume's $520,000. Steele had raised $2.4 million.

Beyond money, Mfume's challenge will be to gain a bigger share of the Democratic vote, particularly among whites, said David Bositis, who studies black voting patterns for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

"Even with his lead, he's still at least 10 points from where he needs to be to win the primary," Bositis said. "And most of the undecided voters are white."

Mfume said he is not "running around as the black candidate. I'm running as the candidate for all of the state. There are communities where I may not know people, but I go there reaching out."

For his part, Steele must find a way to draw support from more blacks to win in a state where Democrats hold a nearly 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration. And he must maintain the backing of a national GOP establishment that is not playing well with black voters.

Opposition to Bush

---

Although black Marylanders have largely the same priorities as whites -- education and crime rank as the top issues regardless of race -- African Americans show a staggering distaste for the war in Iraq and for Bush, according to the poll.

When asked whether the war has been worth fighting, nearly nine in 10 blacks answered no, and the vast majority registered their opposition "strongly." White voters were evenly split on the war.

Even more stark is the antipathy black voters in Maryland feel for the president. Four percent strongly approve of the job Bush is doing, while 75 percent said they strongly disapprove.

Steele has quietly voiced support for the war and Bush but has worked to avoid both subjects. The issues page on his campaign Web site, for instance, lays out his position on eight topics, including "innovation in agriculture" but not Iraq.

There is one issue on which the views of black voters and conservative Republicans coincide: same-sex marriage.

Nearly two-thirds of African Americans in the state oppose both same-sex marriage and civil unions for gay couples, the poll shows. By contrast, 57 percent of white voters favored civil unions. On the question of same-sex marriage, 44 percent of white voters favored it, while 53 percent were opposed.

Bositis said he did not expect Steele to make too much of the issue, though, because by doing so "he would risk associating himself with the same conservatives that he has to distance himself from."

The risk of Steele being tied too closely to Bush is considerable: Seventy-nine percent of black voters in the poll said they would be less likely to support a candidate who had Bush's backing.

Hans Kaiser, a pollster with the national Republican firm Moore Information, said that number is "obviously not a plus" for Steele. But he said Steele has been wise to try to steer the campaign to issues that play better with his potential supporters.

"If the campaign is only about George Bush supporting a candidate, that number would be alarming," Kaiser said. "But there are a whole lot of other things being discussed in the campaign."

Staff writer Richard Morin contributed to this report.