By Robert Barnes and Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 7, 2006
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.
Montgomery County political neophyte and businessman Josh Rales is the only candidate who has begun an ad campaign in the expensive Washington media market; he is prepared to spend millions of dollars of his personal fortune on the race.
And there are 14 others on the ballot, including former Baltimore county executive Dennis Rasmussen and perennial socialist candidate A. Robert Kaufman.
Despite glaring stylistic differences among the candidates, no one has surfaced as someone with a highly distinctive set of ideas, and no one has launched a withering negative campaign. All the major Democratic candidates have voiced strong opposition to the war in Iraq, called for better access to affordable health care and demanded ethics reform on Capitol Hill.
"There's no conflict between these guys," Clements said.
Antipathy toward Washington has been a theme, most notably from Rales, the real estate mogul and former supporter of President Bush who has spent more than $2 million on a television advertising blitz that touts him as an outsider.
"I've seen your commercials," a firefighter told Rales as the candidate approached last week in an Olney parking lot that was literally blistering in the heat. But he was another undecided voter and said he had "to look at all the issues" when Rales asked for his support.
Lichtman, too, has tried to run an anti-establishment campaign but says he has found it a challenge to get his message to penetrate. He has increased his visibility somewhat by finding openings to criticize Cardin and Mfume, but he acknowledged in an interview last week, "To win this election, probably something more dramatic is needed."
Lichtman and Rales have announced plans for statewide bus tours that will start next week. And Lichtman says he'll be advertising his campaign on 20 to 25 billboards. But in a race that for months was overshadowed by a heated Democratic primary for governor -- a contest that ended abruptly with Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan's withdrawal in late June -- it has been hard for anyone to break out of the pack.
And for those trying to catch up to Cardin and Mfume, that could continue. The only scheduled televised debate, typically a prime opportunity for long-shot contenders to gain notice, was set up under rules that would allow only candidates with support from at least 15 percent of the electorate in independent polls. Right now, only Cardin and Mfume fit the description.
As the two front-runners move into the campaign's final five weeks, they will be following strategies as different as their speaking styles.
For Cardin, these weeks will be spent trying to reach the large pool of undecided voters, most of whom are white, through his television campaign, telephone calls and mailers.
"People are just now starting to get interested in the race. . . . Every indication we have is that my record will resonate with those undecided voters," he said.
For Mfume, the effort will focus more on trying to bring out those already inclined to support him. His strategists are, to some degree, counting on help from candidates in down-ballot races.
Isiah Leggett's campaign for Montgomery county executive, for instance, could increase the black vote that is the base of Mfume's support. And contested primaries for County Executive Jack B. Johnson and Rep. Albert R. Wynn could do the same in Prince George's.
John N. Bambacus, a former Republican state senator who teaches politics at Frostburg State University, called it a "reverse coattail effect" and said there is reason to believe that "some of these local elections could actually drive the outcome of the top of the ticket."
But the same effect could help Cardin as well. There are eight Democrats running for Cardin's former congressional seat, and the voters they are courting are most likely ones who have supported Cardin in the past.
Sandy Rovner, a Democratic activist who lives at Leisure World in Silver Spring, said there might be considerably more focus on the Senate race "if you had a good guy and a bum." But she said that after hearing from both Cardin and Mfume, people she knows consider the race a tossup.
"It's a real tough call," Rovner said. "Yes, Mfume has some personal baggage, we concede that. And yes, Cardin is not very flamboyant. But they both have been good congressmen and have been very solid Democratic votes.
"This one," she said, "is going to be hard."
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