Maryland Politics -- OHMIGOD, Steele Is a Black Man!!!

Meanwhile south of the Mason-Dixon line, things are heating up in Maryland's senatorial race.

The WaPo reports:

An internal document prepared by a top Democratic strategist warns that a majority of African American voters in Maryland are open to supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael S. Steele and advises the party not to wait to "knock Steele down."

The 37-page report says a sizable segment of likely black voters -- as much as 44 percent -- would readily abandon their historic Democratic allegiances "after hearing Steele's messaging."

"Governor Ehrlich and [Lt. Gov.] Michael Steele have a clear ability to break through the Democratic stronghold among African American voters in Maryland," says the March 27 report by Cornell Belcher, polling consultant for the Democratic National Committee....

Read it here.

The poll also finds that young urban blacks are far less loyal to the Democratic party than black suburbanites with college educations. That conforms to national poll results.

Verrrrry interesting. This explains why the Democrats in this race have gotten so nasty and so dirty so early.

The Baltimore Sun notes that the major beneficiary of this poll information is Kweisi Mfume, who can use it to support his argument that the Democrats have to run a black candidate to keep the black electorate steady in their column. Most Democrat leaders, though, have not bought that argument and are holding firm to Ben Cardin.

Read the Sun piece here.

Steele's sure shakin' things up. This is getting verrrrry interrrresting.

Stay tuned.

RELATED:

Betsy Newmark weighs in with this analysis:

Oops, the Democrats can't have this happen. Without that 90% support from black voters, they'd be in trouble in some tight races.

So, what's the solution? Well, badmouth Michael Steele as much as possible. If they can't find anything by going through his credit record, well, they'll just have to go back to the tried and true method. Demonize him for supporting President Bush. Call him the "hand-picked" candidate of Karl Rove and George Bush. As if the Democratic Party hasn't done its own hand-picking by trying to throw support away from Kweisi Mfume and to Benjamin Cardin. And, I just think that voters are going to be considering a lot more than whether someone supports Bush or not. Bush will only be in office two more years after the next Senate is sworn in. Voters are not so stupid that they can't think long term.

And now that Steele has received this report, every time the Democrats work to demonize him, he'll have his answer all ready. I can imagine that the campaign ads showing this Washington Post story are already getting planned out now at Steele headquarters.

If Steele wins, will he get the same rock star type attention that Barack Obama received? We know the answer, don't we?

Indeed we do!

Read Betsy's Blog here.

The Democrats major strategy against Steele is to try to portray him as a close associate of Bush and Karl Rove's hand picked man, but Steele is heading them off on that front. He fired two campaign officials who had been inserted into his campaign by Ken Mehlman, who heads the national Republican effort, and replaced them with former Democrats, one of whom is his new Deputy Campaign Manager. Read about it here. This open declaration of independence from the national Republican campaign and the White House can only stand him in good stead.