Attorney General Nod to Gansler; Mishaps at Polls Slow the Returns
By Matthew Mosk and John Wagner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Maryland's Democratic primary voters gave Baltimore Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin a commanding lead over former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume last night in the race to be the party's candidate for U.S. Senate, but chaos at polling sites delayed final results for that and other key races.
In Montgomery County, Isiah "Ike" Leggett maintained a strong lead over Steven A. Silverman to become the party's nominee for county executive, even though hundreds, possibly thousands, of provisional ballots sat uncounted at election headquarters in Rockville.
And Montgomery State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler defeated Baltimore lawyer Stuart O. Simms to be the party's nominee for attorney general.
As returns trickled in, they showed a surprisingly close contest for Prince George's county executive, with incumbent Jack B. Johnson holding a slight lead over former state delegate Rushern L. Baker III with half of the votes counted. Johnson declared victory about 1 a.m., but Baker told supporters that he wasn't ready to concede.
Also tight was a race that became a referendum on the patriarch of Maryland politics, William Donald Schaefer, the 84-year-old comptroller and former governor, who was on the verge of seeing his five-decade career come to an abrupt end. His fate awaited returns in Montgomery, where rampant voting problems slowed a final count.
Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens and Montgomery Del. Peter Franchot both held leads over Schaefer at times yesterday. Last night, Franchot predicted the uncounted ballots in Montgomery could determine the outcome.
"It has been an exciting election day with lots of twists and turns," he said in a statement released early this morning. "This election will not be over until every vote is counted."
All morning, confusion reigned as outraged voters were turned back from voting sites in Montgomery County because an election worker failed to provide key cards needed to make the electronic voting machines functional.
The snags reportedly included voting machines with no power cords at one Baltimore precinct, provisional ballots issued only in Spanish at a Silver Spring site and poll workers who arrived hours late in Anne Arundel County. At Piney Branch Elementary School in Takoma Park, officials quickly ran out of paper ballots and began telling voters to use scraps of paper. The impediments to voting prompted legal challenges and resulted in court orders to extend voting by an hour in Montgomery County and Baltimore.
Those votes, as with many cast while machines were down, were recorded on provisional paper ballots that won't be counted until Monday. While Republicans had only a handful of contested races, Democrats who reached working voting machines encountered a primary ballot that included a new generation of candidates.
Veteran Democrat Rep. Albert R. Wynn faced a spirited challenge from Donna Edwards but maintained a solid lead. Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Steny H. Hoyer easily won their nominations.
Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and his Democratic competitor, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, ran unopposed yesterday -- the first time in years that neither party's nomination for governor was contested. Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) pulled out of the race in June.
With questions swirling about disruptions to voting, Ehrlich appeared at a Prince George's County church wearing a white polo shirt with "Ehrlich for Governor" stitched on the front and immediately pointed the finger at Democrats. He said the party's aggressive pursuit of changes to the state elections apparatus left local officials befuddled.
He refused to accept an apology from Nancy Dacek, the former Montgomery County Council member he appointed to the county's top local elections post. Democrats fired back. House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said if the governor "wants to blame somebody for this, he should look in the mirror."
State Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), who had no primary challenge, compared the elections official who forgot to include the electronic voting cards to "someone going to work with no pants on."
"It's a hideous mess," Frosh said.
Cardin and Mfume supporters hunkered down at locations four blocks apart in downtown Baltimore all evening. Shortly after midnight, Mfume briefly appeared before a crowd of supporters to say the race wasn't over. Mfume political adviser Walter Ludwig said that though Cardin's lead was sizeable, the Mfume team still saw "a path to victory" because so many votes in Baltimore remained uncounted.
After a day spent darting from one polling station to another, Cardin returned to Capitol Hill in the evening to cast votes in Congress before heading to the hotel where his supporters mingled in a large ballroom dominated by a pair of projection-screen TVs.
A victory by either candidate will set up what looks to be one of the most costly and combative Senate races in Maryland in a generation. The winner will replace Paul S. Sarbanes (D), who is retiring.
From the outset, Mfume lagged far behind Cardin in raising money. Cardin had spent $3.8 million on the race as of Aug. 23, more than four times the roughly $800,000 Mfume spent, according to campaign finance reports. In the end, though, the matchup was between Cardin, a steady legislative technician with 40 years in public life, and Mfume, an electric orator who had led both the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP.
Now the Democratic nominee faces Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who had nominal primary opposition. Steele was pulled into the campaign by a who's who of national GOP leaders, but he has distanced himself publicly from his deep party roots, instead investing heavily in an effort to convert fence-sitting Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
Steele took the unusual step of visiting both Johnson and Baker's election night parties. After visiting Baker's hotel suite, Steele told a reporter he was there as a "Prince Georgian" and he firmly believes "you can't let the party line blur the friendship."
Steele has also hoped to capitalize on unease among some black voters about how sincerely the Democratic Party has valued their longstanding allegiance.
Four years ago, Steele became the first African American to be elected statewide in Maryland, and now he makes no secret of his strategy to peel away black votes from the Democrats.
But Johns Hopkins University political science professor Matthew Crenson said Democrats may have "ducked a big bullet" on the subject of race, because Mfume and Cardin have assiduously avoided the issue, focusing instead on the war in Iraq, the plight of the nation's uninsured and ethics reform in Washington.
When the two debated during the final days of an 18-month contest, the toughest swipe Mfume took at Cardin had to do not with race but with the special interest and lobbyist money invested in his campaign.
"The big worry of the Democrats and the big hope of the Republicans was that the [primary] campaign would become racially polarizing," Crenson said. "But it's been a fairly muted and mutually respectful campaign."
Democrats have planned a series of "unity" events for this week, and party leaders have pledged to bring Cardin and Mfume together onstage in an effort to help soothe any concerns about racial division. But the party will have to address primary results that show a ticket dominated by white men.
Unity may be tougher for those involved in some of the primary's more bitter contests, including the race for state comptroller, in which Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens and Montgomery Del. Peter Franchot both threw some hard punches at Schaefer.
Schaefer, who began his public life in 1955 on the Baltimore City Council, sought one more term. But his close ties to Ehrlich and controversial remarks on immigrants and women have not endeared him to the state's mostly liberal Democrats. Franchot focused his assault on Schaefer's unabashed praise of the Republican governor, claiming to be the only "real Democrat" in the contest. Owens emphasized Schaefer's age .
Schaefer was the only statewide official on the Democratic side who sought reelection. Gansler, the Montgomery County state's attorney, and Simms, a former Baltimore state's attorney, battled over the seat being vacated by veteran Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. (Montgomery County Council member Tom Perez's name appeared on the ballot, but the state's high court ruled him ineligible to compete for the post.)
Simms had signed on to be Duncan's lieutenant governor candidate, but when Duncan left the race, Simms and others, including those who believed the Baltimore region should not be without a candidate for attorney general, encouraged him to shift his target. He drew a number of high-profile supporters, but his campaign was hindered by a lack of money and a late start.
Gansler, by contrast, has been planning his campaign for years. He has a Web site filled with proposals on combating gangs and pursuing polluters, and he has raised almost $2 million. Frederick County State's Attorney Scott L. Rolle ran unopposed on the Republican side.
Two other vitriolic contests were centered in Prince George's County, where winning the nomination usually means election. Incumbents Wynn and Johnson faced aggressive challenges.
Wynn battled Edwards, who mounted a challenge from the left, accusing the seven-term incumbent of coddling business interests and knocking him for voting to support the Iraq war.
Edwards put Wynn on his heels at a caustic NAACP debate, which ended with a Wynn supporter being arrested on suspicion of striking an Edwards volunteer during a skirmish over campaign signs. Wynn campaigned as someone who could deliver projects to his district, rattling off a long list of improvements that were financed with federal aid.
Johnson, meanwhile, ran hard for a second term by emphasizing an economic boom and rising property tax revenue, which have brought added services and school construction money.
But Baker, who lost to Johnson in a five-man race four years ago, took after the incumbent, saying he ignored the county's rising crime problem and knocking a series of county contracts Johnson handed to friends and campaign supporters.
Nothing that dramatic occurred during the Montgomery county executive contest, which largely focused on the question of which candidate could be better trusted to ease traffic and check the efforts of developers.
Leggett said that he would do a better job of controlling growth and standing up to developers who have been generous to Silverman's campaign. Silverman, in turn, has cast himself as the more decisive leader and said he would be more aggressive in funding road projects and the proposed Purple Line.
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