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May 09, 2005

NRSC Urging Steele to Run for Senate in Maryland

From the Baltimore Sun:

North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole and her staff at the candidate-recruiting National Republican Senatorial Committee have met with Michael S. Steele three times, attempting to persuade him to enter the race for U.S. Senate.

Steele also has been contacted by Karl Rove, the master strategist credited with engineering President Bush's election wins.

"No stone has gone unturned," Dole said last week. "I am a huge Michael Steele fan."

National Republicans are waging an aggressive campaign to launch Maryland's lieutenant governor into the race to replace retiring Democratic incumbent Paul S. Sarbanes, as party leaders sense their best chance in decades of gaining a Senate seat in the traditionally Democratic state.

Their effort to persuade Steele to seek national office -- which appears on the cusp of success -- could trigger the costliest and most competitive series of election contests the state has ever seen, Republican strategists say. The national party would make sure Steele had the $15 million experts say is needed for a serious run.
...
Although Steele has said he wants to run for governor in 2010, after a possible second term for Ehrlich, the prospect of an open Senate seat in a state where Republicans held little chance of making gains before Sarbanes' unexpected announcement seems too juicy to pass up.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in Maryland about 2-to-1, and Ehrlich was the first GOP candidate to win a governor's race since Spiro T. Agnew in 1966. So far, major Democrats in the Senate contest include Kweisi Mfume, the former congressman and chief of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, the 10-term congressman from Baltimore County. In a hypothetical match-up against either man, Steele is neck and neck, a poll for The Sun found last month.

Posted by Max at May 9, 2005 10:53 PM

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