While Democratic candidates across the country struggle against a rising tide of GOP sentiment, running against President Obama’s national health care, stimulus spending, and a sour economy, polls indicate Maryland remains a safe port in the storm for liberal politicians.
“We recognize that Rome wasn’t built in a day,” said Jeanette Gordy, a retired public school principal and Democrat from Greenbelt. “We know the president needs time to fulfill the promises he made.”
Political analysts said Maryland offers a rare demographic haven for embattled Democrats, especially during an election that is seen as a referendum on the White House. One in four adults works for the government, and many are members of public sector unions that are a bastion of Obama support. The state has a large black population, and the president still registers stratospheric popularity numbers among blacks.
Incumbent Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer and Sen. Barbara Mikulski are considered shoo-ins for next month’s election. Although a couple of Democrats swept into Congress in the 2008 election might lose their seats, Gov. Martin O’Malley has been using Obama to push his campaign into a comfortable lead against former Gov. Bob Ehrlich.
“In the toughest of times, our president, Barack Obama, has given to us the very decisive leadership that we needed at a very critical time,” O’Malley told thousands of voters at a rally last week.
In 2008, Obama drove nearly 200,000 more African Americans to Maryland’s polls than in 2004. Obama won 62 percent of the vote in Maryland, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1.
“It’s not that O’Malley has to run away from Obama like some other Democrats,” said John White, politics professor at Catholic University. “The areas where O’Malley has to win are the areas where Obama is even stronger.”
White said Maryland’s black population — which, at 30 percent, is twice the national average — drives Obama’s high marks in the state. “There’s no question about it, African Americans are still supporting Obama in record numbers,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of government jobs provide another reliable class of Democratic voters, White said. The federal government employs more than 22 percent of Maryland’s work force.
Also, the Interstate 270 technology corridor attracts a high number of professionals with more than four years of college. One in five Maryland adults is college-educated, and one in six has a graduate degree, according to census data. That group is also trending Democratic, analysts said.
“We are just a government town,” said
Judy Robinson, president of the Prince George’s County Civic Federation. “It’s literally a profusion of government agencies and government-affiliated contracting firms.”
With government jobs come unions — and unions breed Democratic support, said Chris Hoffmann, a representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. “Support for Obama in Maryland lies in the high union density here,” he said. Hoffmann, of Fredericksburg, Va., said he has been campaigning with O’Malley for months.
He said Virginia — which voted for Obama in 2008 then elected a Republican governor in 2009 — gave up too easily on Obama. “Virginia bought into the idea of change. When that didn’t happen, they went right back to Republican rule,” he said. “People don’t understand you have to dig out of the hole before you can move forward. Here in Maryland, people are more likely to stay the course.”
