Cardin, O'Malley Win in Statewide Democratic Wave

"Maryland is blue," said Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), the state's longtime Senate president.

Exit poll results suggested that national issues were moving Maryland voters, especially in the U.S. Senate race. Nearly two-thirds of Cardin supporters surveyed, for instance, said they were casting their vote to send a message to President Bush.

Cardin, 63, said in an interview that although the race was a referendum on such national issues, the choice in Maryland was in many ways about the candidates themselves and about what he said was Steele's unwillingness to engage on issues.

"It came down to the fact that voters know me," he said. "They know my record, and they felt comfortable with the way I make decisions."

In the governor's race, Ehrlich could not maintain the level of support he garnered in 2002 from the state's moderate Democrats. And in an unusual twist, his defeat did not appear to stem from any discontent about his performance; many who rated the state's economy as strong abandoned him.

"In fairness, I think Ehrlich governed as best he could under the circumstances," said Thomas F. Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. "The problem is he won in a very good cycle against a weak candidate and had to run for reelection against a very strong candidate in a bad cycle for Republicans. It shows how difficult it is in Maryland, even when you govern down the middle, to pull a rabbit out of a hat."

All four candidates in the marquee races crossed the state yesterday, trying to smoke out, cajole and, in some instances, deceive their way into every possible vote. The final hours of campaigning offered a dramatic climax for two of Maryland's most competitive and costly statewide contests.

At stake, beyond the individual races, was the fate of a Republican attempt to solidify the party's narrow foothold in Maryland, a state that has been dominated by Democrats for more than a century.

Four years ago, when Ehrlich was elected the state's first Republican governor in a generation, he declared, "Our time in the desert is over." His reelection and Steele's claiming of an open Senate seat were considered the next steps in establishing a real two-party system in Maryland.

The Senate contest put the spotlight on Steele, who employed off-beat ads, his Washington Rolodex and likable persona to mount one of the most vigorous challenges his party has offered in pursuit of a U.S. Senate seat.

He faced Cardin, a 10-term congressman from the Baltimore area and consummate political insider, whose campaign focused as much on Bush and the Iraq war as it did on his own agility with complex national policy questions.

During the campaign's closing weeks, the messages from all four camps grew increasingly coarse, as each candidate tried to break through in what polls were presenting as tightening contests. The vitriol played out largely on television -- with more than 15,000 ads at a cost of nearly $18 million airing in the Washington and Baltimore markets in the weeks since the Sept. 12 primary.