By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 15, 2006

The 4th Congressional District race between Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-Md.) and Donna Edwards may not be decided for several days, but political observers say Edwards's spirited campaign demonstrates a significant erosion of firepower for the seven-term congressman.

With all precincts reporting from Tuesday's Democratic primary, Wynn led Edwards yesterday 50 to 46 percent -- one of the narrowest margins of Wynn's 24-year political career. But thousands of provisional and absentee ballots have yet to be counted with fewer than 3,000 votes separating the two candidates -- enough, Edwards said, to potentially give her the victory.

"You talk about wake-up calls," said Ronald W. Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland. "If you have someone come from nowhere, and it gets this close, it means there's something flawed with his agenda."

The 4th District includes parts of Prince George's and Montgomery counties; the former had more than 5,000 absentee and provisional ballots to count, and the latter had between 16,000 and 18,000 remaining yesterday. It was unclear how many of the ballots were from the areas of the two counties that make up the 4th District.

Edwards, a newcomer to Maryland politics, said she will not concede until every vote is counted.

"This has been a battle, and I think it's my obligation to see it through," the bleary-eyed candidate said Wednesday while waiting for returns outside Prince George's Board of Elections office.

Wynn, who was on Capitol Hill yesterday, would not address questions about the results. He said he would "be happy to respond after they finish counting the votes. I'm more concerned about finding out what went wrong with the electoral process."

Edwards's bid to unseat Wynn had been considered by many political observers to be insurmountable.

She was virtually unknown in the congressional district. Wynn, on the other hand, was a former state legislator for Prince George's who had served 10 years in the General Assembly and 14 years in Congress.

Wynn has trounced his challengers in past primary and general elections, returning to Congress with no less than 80 percent of the vote since first elected in 1992.

But Edwards, a lawyer and the director of a District-based foundation who worked for Wynn when she first got out of law school, said she had become so disappointed with Wynn over his voting with the Republican majority in favor of authorizing the war in Iraq, phasing out the estate tax and strengthening bankruptcy laws that she asked several elected officials to run against him.

No one was willing to challenge him, she said; everyone was afraid of "his machine."

On Wednesday, when asked what message her campaign should send to Wynn, Edwards beamed. "What machine?" she said.

Wayne Clarke, a political consultant, said Edwards's numbers prove that there is a "new day in Prince George's County. There's a change of the guard in the county."

Since his first term in Congress, Wynn has been criticized for meddling in local issues and not paying enough attention to his work on Capitol Hill.

When he strongly supported Beatrice P. Tignor (D) for county executive in 1994, many saw it as his first move toward trying to become a "kingmaker" in the county.

Wynn started in politics by working on the campaign trail for Prince George's first black political power broker, former state senator Tommie Broadwater Jr. (D).

Yesterday, Broadwater said Wynn will be a "lucky man" if he is able to fend off Edwards. He said Wynn needs to recognize that voters were reprimanding him for betraying his base by voting with Republicans on certain issues and he needs to mend a few fences.

"You pick up a lot of enemies trying to be a broker," Broadwater said. "If he continues to go the way he's going, [Edwards is] going to be our next congresswoman. . . . He's got to change his ways. He's going to have to spend more time working his district and voting the way his constituency wants."

Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.