MD-SEN 2006: Steele vs. Cardin (Kerry midterm)

[Suburbia]

Longtime Democratic Sen. John Sarbanes retires in 2006, Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele wins the MDGOP nomination and Rep. Ben Cardin wins the MDDP nomination to face off in November 2006; President John Kerry has a 45% approval rating, 50% disapproval rating.

Who wins?

[Suburbia]

Steele 52%-46%

Erlich wins as well

[If my soul was made of stone]

This would be a nail-biter. Cardin's attempts to tie Steele to Bush were already ineffectual against Steele's focus on policy and courting Black voters who weren't enthused about Cardin (gee, I wonder what in recent memory this reminds me of?), and surely would fall flat even more with Bush out of office. Kerry presumably would be far more popular in Maryland than nationwide, but Cardin's modest suburban gains compared to 2004 would probably be neutralized here by the national environment and Kerry's presumed failure to blunt the trends of the "national security mom" demographic; Steele's gains on the Eastern Shore would be compounded by hostility among the more conservative Democrats of that region to Kerry as opposed to the fellow Southerners that the Dems had ran in the last three elections. Of course, Cardin's great failure was his massive underperformance in the state's two majority-Black county equivalents, and it's easy to imagine some further slippage here. However, Steele wasn't capable of capturing quite the same instinctive appeal to the interests and aesthetics of white suburbanites as Ehrlich or later Hogan, and this along with nationalization is what makes this race different from those.

IOTL, Cardin won by about ten points. Given Kerry's relative popularity here compared to, say, Obama in 2010, and modest nationalization, I still think that Cardin would squeak by; it would be quite humiliating, however. The closest analogue is probably Parris Glendening's 1994 win, in which he only carried Montgomery, Prince George's, and Baltimore City (all by anemic margins), though naturally some shifts under the hood would occur such as Charles County voting more Democratic due to demographic change. Cardin may elect to retire earlier here due to holding such a weak mandate, although he'd face no real trouble in 2012 or 2018.

Obviously, Ehrlich would cruise to re-election on the same ballot.

[Schiff for Senate]

The race was Cardin+10 in real life. While that might be too close for comfort given how blue 2006 was, I'm going with Cardin still narrowly wins.