High Hopes for New GOP Face

When Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele muses in public these days about his political future, friends and Republican allies tell him he sounds as if he has made up his mind.

“Can’t imagine why they think that,” Steele said as admirers crowded around him during a recent business meeting at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Last month, Steele took the preliminary step of forming an exploratory committee to weigh a run next year to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes. But he is projecting the ambition of a declared candidate, as he confers with GOP leaders and presses for fundraising pledges around the state.

GOP officials at the White House and Maryland’s Capitol talk excitedly about grooming Steele to be the Republican Party’s most visible black elected official -- and its best shot at wresting away a Senate seat in this predominantly Democratic state.

In recent months, Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political advisor, has urged Steele to run, as has Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.). At a hunting dinner last fall on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a group of GOP senators, including Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, asked repeatedly about Steele’s chances, said Robert A. Pascal, a Maryland Republican who ran for governor in 1982.

“I told them he’s got a good chance,” Pascal said. “He has a stature about him; he believes the right way. If he can get in front of enough audiences, he’ll do well.”

Steele is scheduled to appear this month at a Washington fundraiser that will be headlined by Rove, another sign that the lieutenant governor is likely to run for the Senate.

GOP strategists, eager to chip away at the Democratic Party’s solid black voting base in the South and in the nation’s big cities, have been promoting the genial, upbeat Steele since last year’s Republican National Convention, where he delivered a prime-time speech.

Steele’s Roman Catholic background and pro-business outlook, GOP strategists said, could draw support from traditional Republican enclaves and from Maryland’s black voters.

“There’s a wide entrepreneurial streak in the African American community that would respond to his message of free enterprise and cultural conservative issues,” said former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who has joined Steele on an RNC panel aimed at broadening the party’s message to black voters.

Steele, 46, said he would not make his decision until the fall -- and would run only if Republicans made good on pledges to fully bankroll his campaign.

But the first black Republican elected to statewide office in Maryland already talks about the role he might play if he runs and wins, insisting he would make a “different kind of senator.”

A former seminarian, Steele said he would attract black voters as a “morally grounded” candidate who opposed abortion and the death penalty. “I don’t do well at litmus tests,” he said.

A political novice who had not won a major race until three years ago -- when he became running mate for Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., the winning gubernatorial candidate -- Steele’s rise as a GOP star since then has been meteoric.

His political leanings came naturally, he said, imbued by a “no-nonsense” mother. “She raised me with conservative values,” Steele said.

After getting his law degree from Georgetown University, Steele spent three years at an Augustinian seminary in preparation for the priesthood. But he veered back into law, practicing several years abroad before plunging into Republican politics in Prince George’s County, Md., the Washington suburb where he was born.

Steele’s first stab at statewide office was a disaster. In 1998, he ran for Maryland comptroller and did not survive the primary.

But his appointment in 2000 as Maryland’s GOP chairman brought him to Ehrlich’s attention. Insistent on playing a visible role as lieutenant governor, Steele said, “I told the governor we have to make this real. He agreed. We entered into a contract, and he’s delivered.”

Although Steele caught the eye of the national Republican Party since his election, he had limited visibility in his home state. In his three years as lieutenant governor, a post given mostly to ceremonial duties, Steele has spent much of his time making speeches and heading state commissions. Political veterans in the state capital of Annapolis said he had almost no role as a policy-maker.

“He gives a good speech, but it’s Ehrlich who’s making the day-to-day decisions,” said Democratic state Sen. Lisa A. Gladden.

Steele travels the state, appearing at political barbecues and church breakfasts. He is Ehrlich’s voice on commissions on education and the death penalty, and he heads a panel to promote minority businesses.

Last year, Steele led a trade delegation to South Africa and Ghana, following up last month as host at a summit of African business delegates in Baltimore. Attendees applauded, but Steele also found himself ignored at times inside the cavernous convention hall. Trying to speak over clattering utensils, he finally chided his audience, “When I’m done, you can talk.”

In making his rounds across the state, Steele also has been courting black professionals and clergymen. That effort might have been marred this month when Ehrlich acknowledged hosting a fundraiser in June at a Maryland country club that had barred blacks throughout its 127-year history. Despite criticism from Gladden and other black legislators, Ehrlich dismissed the controversy. Steele similarly expressed no concern, telling Associated Press: “I don’t know that much about the club, the membership, nor do I care, quite frankly, because I don’t play golf. It’s not an issue with me.”

If Steele hopes to make inroads among minority voters, he will have to impress ministers like Bishop Harry Jackson, a Prince George’s County pastor with GOP leanings. In 2002, Jackson said, Steele “didn’t really connect with our African American clergy. But if he runs on a strong moral values platform, I think he would go quite well this time.”

Steele’s possible rivals in a growing Democratic field include Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and onetime head of the NAACP, and current Democratic Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin. Both Democrats, unlike Steele, have proven election track records.

Political observers said that a contest against any well-funded, entrenched Maryland Democrat would require as much as a $20-million commitment from GOP financiers. Cardin announced last week that he had more than $1 million in campaign funds.

Steele is now assessing what funds he might have available for the Senate race. Ehrlich and Steele have $5 million on hand for the 2006 gubernatorial race -- an indication, Steele’s supporters said, that he could match, if not surpass, the Democrats.

“A Republican entering this race has to see it as an uphill battle,” said James G. Gimpel, a former Senate GOP staffer who is now a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. “The party’s never had much of a ground game in Maryland.”

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 55% to 30% in Maryland, a daunting prospect for the GOP, which has not elected a U.S. senator here since 1980. But black Democrats said the Ehrlich-Steele ticket depressed turnout among some black voters in 2002 because state party leaders did not offer their own slate of African American candidates.

“Those mistakes won’t happen again,” said Josh White, executive director of the Maryland Democratic Party. “We take his candidacy very seriously.”

The Republican team won about 15% of Maryland’s black vote in 2002 -- a significant figure, but one that would have to increase by another 10% before Steele would have a serious chance of cutting into Democratic totals, Gimpel said. “Even then, I’m not sure it will be enough,” he said.

Steele shrugs off any concern about vote totals -- at least for now.

“I don’t know what percentage of the black vote I’d get,” he said, “but I’ll guarantee that it’ll be at least 1% more than the other guy.”