Bowie, Maryland
THE STEELE PARTY started off jubilantly, if a little slow. Supporters began trickling into Bowie’s Comfort Inn around 9:00 p.m. and took up seats near the two massive projection screen televisions to watch poll results. Every time a Republican was shown to be ahead, a small cheer went through the faithful. There were very few cheers last night.
When the first results in Maryland’s Senate race were shown and Steele was seen to be leading Cardin by 10 points, people got excited. There were whoops of victory, hearty clapping, and only one small problem: the yellow checkmark next to Cardin’s name. “They didn’t see the fact that they’ve called it for Cardin,” one member of the press sniffed.
The second time around, Steele’s volunteers had clearly gotten the message. Some turned to drink–the cash bar was getting plenty of business. The many children in attendance began to lose interest as well. One pair went up to the DJ and learned the intricacies of scratching records. The rest began to line the halls outside the ballroom, forgoing the business-as-usual politics of Washington to discuss the politics of teenage love.
Among the adults, however, there was stunned disbelief. Some simply refused to believe the call by the networks, which had come suspiciously early (around 9:20 p.m., with only a few percent of the districts having reported). A middle-aged, white haired woman screamed at a television reporter. The reporter’s crime? Telling the true believer that the race was over. “If the networks told you to jump off a cliff, you’d probably do it!” the woman yelled as she was dragged out of the party for a time out.
Around 10:00 p.m., Steele’s campaign manager came out to rally the troops, and did a pretty fair job. As the night dragged on, and it became clear that, at best, no winner would be declared and, at worst, Steele had lost, partygoers became more distraught. When the lieutenant governor took the stage at 10:50 p.m. to great fanfare, he informed those in attendance that he’s “not going to give up this fight just yet.” There was a glimmer of hope when the Washington Post rescinded its call for Cardin but that was little more than a mirage–on Fox News, Brit Hume and Michael Barone were making a convincing case that the race was over.
By 12:15 there was still no concession speech and the gap continued to widen: with more than 70 percent of precincts in, Steele was down by more than 60,000 votes. The party finally brakes up just after 1:00 a.m. The campaign manager retakes the stage, telling those left standing that “We’re going into overtime” and that there are “key areas that still need to be counted.” He points to Anne Arundel County, which still has 70 percent of its votes to be counted, and Baltimore City, which still has 50 percent of its vote out. In addition, he reminds the faithful, 200,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted.
THE MORNING AFTER couldn’t have been a welcome sight for any of those involved in last night’s party. Anne Arundel county is now in, and it did go for Steele, but by not nearly enough votes. Steele was destroyed in Baltimore county, a traditional Democratic stronghold, by better than three to one.
In the end, the national mood and his inability to draw in new, primarily African-American voters, proved Steele’s undoing. Exit polling shows that blacks broke for the lieutenant governor’s white opponent by a three-to-one ratio. While Republicans anywhere else in the country would be thrilled to get 25 percent of the black vote, Steele desperately needed to peel off more black votes if he was going to have a shot at winning in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by two-to-one.
While there has still been no official concession by the Steele campaign, it’s only a matter of time now. The votes simply aren’t there. The only question left is, “What’s next for Michael Steele?”
Sonny Bunch is assistant editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
