The open Senate Race in Maryland is getting complicated. The Republicans are running charismatic African American candidate Lt Governor Michael Steele. The Democrats fighting for the nomination are Baltimore Congressman Ben Cardin and Kwesi Mfume, former head of the NAACP.
At the moment, Mfume is leading Cardin in the polls but all the polling of a head to head between Steele and Mfume show Mfume losing or tied. A head to head between Cardin and Steele has Cardin winning by 10 points. The insiders are saying that Mfume is unelectable state wide while Cardin can draw from traditional democratic strongholds in Baltimore, Prince George and Montgomery counties to defeat Steele. Mfume is widely thought to have too many negatives to overcome a full throttle Rove/Swiftboat style campaign.
That spells trouble for the Dems looking to take over the Senate in November. Losing the open Maryland Senate seat would be a huge blow.
The hope is that enough progressive Dems come out in the primary to support the more electable Ben Cardin. There are many progressive down ballot candidates to satisfy them, such Tom Perez, a potential Elliott Spitzer style Attorney General and Peter Franchott who is running for the powerful Comptrollers position against Don Schaeffer, a conservative democrat who is rapidly becoming the Strom Thurmond of the Maryland party.
The big concern here in Maryland is that while all the focus is on other prominent national Senate races that they will let this one slip through their fingers by nominating an unelectable candidate.