http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-pe.senate20mar20,1,2268530.story
Steele could have an edge
Senate: In a face-off with Mfume, the Republican might draw more of the
needed white votes.
By David Lublin and Thomas F. Schaller
Special To The Sun
March 20, 2005
Sen. Paul Sarbanes' pending retirement raises the tantalizing
possibility that Maryland will soon become only the fourth state ever
to send an African-American to the U.S. Senate.
Former congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume has declared
himself a Democratic candidate. Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele is the most
likely contender for the Republicans. A battle between two
African-Americans for Maryland's first open Senate seat in 20 years
would make for a major national political story in 2006.
Who would be favored in a Mfume-Steele matchup?
Maryland is a blue state where no Republican Senate candidate has
broken 41 percent since 1980. Yet, despite many Democratic advantages,
including the overwhelming support of African-Americans, Steele would
be the favorite. The reasons why have less to do with either man's
qualifications than with the dynamics of racial voting.
Democrats have dominated Maryland for so long because crossover
politicians like Sarbanes, Barbara Mikulski and William Donald Schaefer
have been able to satisfy the liberal and moderate wings of their
party. Parris N. Glendening's narrow win in the 1994 gubernatorial race
revealed the first cracks in this winning coalition, and his 1998
re-election during a surging economy masked these underlying tensions.
By 2002, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's failure to reach well
beyond the liberal wing based in Baltimore City and the nearby
Washington suburbs paved the way for Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to become
Maryland's first Republican governor since Spiro Agnew.
So, the first probing question Democrats should ask Mfume is this: How
will you repair that breach to build a winning majority?
Retired from electoral politics for nearly a decade, Mfume developed a
national profile by reviving the NAACP. Although his NAACP presidency
comforts liberal Democrats predisposed to his candidacy, that resume
item will appeal far less to moderate Democrats and might even hurt
him. Surely, suburban and exurban voters - not to mention more rural
Democrats from Western Maryland, Southern Maryland and the Eastern
Shore - will be a tough sell for Mfume, who has yet to prove he can
attract votes beyond his West Baltimore base.
The Republicans have run a black candidate for the Senate from Maryland
to little avail. Former Ambassador Alan Keyes ran unsuccessfully
against Mikulski in 1992 and Sarbanes in 1988. Although 1988 was the
last time a Republican presidential candidate carried Maryland, Keyes
won only 38 percent of the vote that year .
Republicans hope Steele can do better - not because he will attract
more African-American votes, but because he can draw more white votes.
"Republicans have a race problem," Faye Anderson, a former vice chair
of the Republican National Committee's minority outreach committee,
told The Washington Post in April. "The white swing voters will not
support a party that appears harsh, so they use black and brown faces
to appeal to white voters."
In 2002, the Ehrlich-Steele ticket performed unimpressively in
Baltimore City and Prince George's County - Maryland's two
majority-black jurisdictions. Although Steele hails from Prince
George's, Ehrlich-Steele received a smaller number and percentage of
votes there than unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate Ellen
Sauerbrey did in either 1994 or 1998. In Baltimore City, they did no
better than Sauerbrey in 1994 and improved only slightly upon her
weaker, 1998 showing - and that tepid success surely redounds more to
Ehrlich, who represented parts of the city in Congress, than Steele.
As for his experience, Steele is vulnerable to precisely the
lack-of-qualification attacks Ehrlich used against Townsend.
"Lieutenant Governor, with all due respect, ma'am, you've never been
elected to anything at any time on your own," said Ehrlich during the
lone 2002 gubernatorial debate. "This is serious business. You've never
voted on war or abortion or tort reform or the budget or anything."
Steele's resume now is thinner than Townsend's was then. After dropping
out of seminary, Steele became an associate in a Washington law firm
specializing in financial investments for Wall Street underwriters,
before heading the Maryland Republican Party. In terms of voter
turnoffs, Washington lawyers, Wall Street financiers and party flacks
are tough occupations to beat. Steele has been all three.
If Steele ran against a formidable centrist Democrat - that would
probably mean a white candidate - in the general election, he would
struggle, especially if that Democrat came from the Baltimore area, the
suburbs of which contain most of the state's swing voters.
Against Mfume, however, Steele has a real chance to win because he can
peel away significant numbers of moderate white voters wary of voting
for a liberal, black Democrat. Meanwhile, as a Republican, Steele is
insulated against the wariness some white voters exhibit toward black
Democrats.
But 27 percent of Marylanders are African-American, most of whom vote
Democratic. Isn't that enough for Mfume? Hardly. The share of eligible,
voting-age African-Americans is smaller, and the percentage of
registered African-Americans who turn out is smaller still. Subtract
the smattering of black Republicans, and African-American Democrats
might constitute only 20 percent of the general electorate. Mfume must
find another 30 percent of the electorate to win. Put another way, he
needs to attract about two out of every five of the remaining, 80
percent nonblack voters. Though Townsend ran a bad campaign, Mfume
would have to inspire moderates and independents who voted against her
to vote for him.
Which returns us to our original question: How will Mfume bridge the
Democratic Party's internal divide to build a winning majority? Though
Mfume cannot be blamed for the party's intramural tensions, he will
have to offer solutions. If there's a contested primary, as most
expect, he'll need to make that case in order to be nominated. Or
perhaps he won't: If the field is crowded with multiple white
candidates, a unified block of black voters would make Mfume tough to
beat.
Some state Democrats are fine with that, believing that a Steele
candidacy means the Democrats must respond by nominating an
African-American. As counterintuitive as it might seem, the reverse
strategy might be better. Because Steele could very well convert enough
centrist white voters to compensate for the additional African-American
voters Mfume might mobilize, a white Democrat has a better chance to
defeat Steele.
Though it's impolite to say so publicly, race remains a powerful factor
in the electoral calculus of many citizens. In the NAACP-sponsored
debate with Ehrlich in 2002, Townsend acknowledged this reality. The
debate was held at Morgan State University, where she played to the
immediate audience with racial histrionics that only generated sympathy
for Ehrlich among white voters.
Having Mfume and Steele battling it out for the Senate in 2006 would
put race squarely on the ballot - exactly where the Republicans want it.
David Lublin is an associate professor of political science at American
University. Thomas F. Schaller is an associate professor of political
science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun