Md. Democrats Look to Seize Senate Race's New Spotlight

The Maryland Democrats running for the U.S. Senate this week begin a five-week sprint to primary day, with Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin launching his first television advertising campaign and Kweisi Mfume concentrating his limited resources on building a network to get his supporters to the polls.

With Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley set as the Democratic challenger to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), the overlooked Democratic Senate primary takes center stage. Media polls taken in June and July showed that more than a third of the state's Democrats -- and even more in the vote-rich Washington suburbs -- had not settled on a Senate favorite.

The Sept. 12 primary will be a crucial moment for a party that knows that retaining the seat being vacated by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes is essential to any strategy for regaining control of the Senate.

President Bush and the national Republican leadership have anointed Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele as the best hope for the first GOP Senate victory in the state since 1980 and a symbol of an attempt to begin to repair the party's fractured relations with African Americans.

A busload of Democrats has signed up for the race. In a state that likes to call itself "America in miniature," the cast is reminiscent of some of the most memorable storylines of recent U.S. political history: the unknown professor whose grass-roots campaign shocked the establishment in Minnesota; the millionaire businessman who spent his way to victory in New Jersey; the possibility that two African Americans represent their parties in a historic campaign, as was the case in Illinois.

And yet . . .

"Does the race have a pulse? Not that I noticed," said Daniel Clements, a Democratic Party insider who once headed the state trial lawyers' political action committee.

Others concur, including former governor Harry Hughes, who ran for Senate in 1986, the last time an incumbent retired. "It's been so long since there's been a real, contested race in Maryland," Hughes said. "I think people just may not be used to a Senate race."

It's easy to see why. Sarbanes, the longest-serving senator in Maryland history, has never gotten less than 57 percent of the vote in any of his five campaigns. His Democratic partner, Barbara A. Mikulski, received 61 percent when she won 20 years ago and has only increased her margins since.

So although some candidates have been running since Sarbanes announced his retirement plans 17 months ago, the public has been slow to catch on. Polls conducted for The Washington Post in late June and for the Baltimore Sun in mid-July showed there were more undecideds than there were supporters of any individual candidate. More than a third of Democratic voters could not say who they would support. That rate jumped to more than four in 10 in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, home to the largest numbers of Democrats.

The campaigns ramp up this week. Cardin will begin spending the millions of dollars he has raised on a media campaign aimed at portraying his quiet, decades-long political career as a natural continuation of the quiet, decades-long service of Sarbanes. Former NAACP president Mfume, seeking to become the first African American nominated by Maryland Democrats in a statewide race, will step up his fundraising efforts at events partly designed to show supporters that his underfunded campaign is capable of rousing his supporters to the polls.

Cardin and Mfume are clearly the leaders, but there is an aggressive pack behind them. American University political science professor Allan Lichtman doesn't wait for folks to make the connection to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D) of Minnesota; he's bought a school bus to travel the state to make the comparison himself.