Maryland Democrats’ new math might not add up

Confident that the state is secure for Barack Obama, party leaders are concentrating their energies on the 1st and 6th congressional districts, the two of Maryland’s eight seats held by Republicans. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, insist that the party can make a clean sweep, putting 1 and 6 together to make 8.

“We are thoroughly committed to the races,” Van Hollen told The Examiner on Wednesday night at a raucous Democratic Unity Fundraiser attended by almost 1,000 people.

The highest hopes for the party rest in the 1st District, which includes most of the Eastern Shore and parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford counties. Democratic Queen Anne’s State’s Attorney Frank Kratovil faces Republican Sen. Andy Harris, of Baltimore County, who defeated nine-term incumbent Wayne Gilchrest in a fierce GOP primary. Hoyer called Harris “a fringe candidate.”

Van Hollen’s group has designated Kratovil to be part of the “red to blue” program, in which the party hopes to move a Republican seat into the Democratic column.

Steeper climb

Winning the 6th District is a steeper climb in the mountains of Western Maryland, despite the rhetoric.

Jennifer Dougherty, the former Democratic mayor of Frederick, faces eight-term Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett in the 6th District that stretches 150 miles along the Pennsylvania border from the western tip to the Susquehanna River.

Bartlett is 82, and in recent weeks has taken heat for failing to report $1 million in land sales on his financial disclosure forms. He refuses to release his tax returns to show whether he paid taxes on the profits.

This issue might represent an opening for Dougherty against a veteran who has been easily re-elected. “He doesn’t stand up for the district,” she said. “His constituents are really hurting.”

Andrew Duck, the Democrat who received 38 percent of the vote against Bartlett in 2006 and lost to Dougherty in the primary, said, “Never underestimate Jennifer Dougherty,” whom he described as a “considerable fighter.”

By the numbers

The numbers don’t look promising for the 1+6 equation. Neither race has ever been listed among the 64 most competitive races in the country by the independent Rothenberg Report.

First, the fundamentals: These two congressional districts were deliberately drawn by Democrats to concentrate Republican voters, and give Democrats a strong edge for the six other seats. President Bush and Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. both won the 1st and 6th by wide margins. (Ehrlich ran for governor partly because the redistricting had put him in the same district with Gilchrest.)

The Republican candidates have also raised more money. With the help of party leaders, Kratovil has inched up on Harris, but Dougherty has only $41,000 on hand, compared with Bartlett’s $336,000, and she has raised just $87,000 for the campaign. Kratovil has raised almost 10 times more than Dougherty.

Van Hollen’s committee has also not laid out cash to reserve discount broadcast time for the Kratovil race, as it has in dozens of other “red to blue” races. Van Hollen said that spending was “primarily to save money in areas where we expected to have really congested airwaves. In Maryland we’re not going to have the kind of congestion.” John McCain and Barack Obama are expected to spend little on broadcast ads here, and there is no Senate race to bombard voters.

Be that as it may, the only way to win a Republican-leaning district is by advertising and direct mail that attacks the records of Harris and Bartlett, making conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans voters think twice about electing them.

Prospects in Pennsylvania

Prospects are so good for Obama in Maryland, that Wednesday night, Gov. Martin O’Malley said, “We can send troops to Pennsylvania, we can send troops to Virginia, we can send troops to West Virginia.”

At the rally, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell - like O’Malley, a Clinton supporter now urging party unity - told The Examiner that winning his state is “not going to be easy. McCain’s the most attractive candidate the Republicans have fielded for Pennsylvania in 25 years. But in the end I think we’ll prevail for no other reason that the Obama folks are great at expanding the voter base.”

They added about 200,000 for the primary, which Obama lost to Clinton, and they might add 80,000 or 90,000 more voters, which might just be the margin of victory, he said.

“It’s going to be close but we’re going to win,” Rendell said.