Cardin Kicking it Up a Notch

In a much earlier post, I chastized Rep. Ben Cardin's mysterious absence from the Washington metro area. I wondered how this Baltimore representative expected people in the Washington metro area to get to know him.

However, I think we can now safely say that the man, who has after all been in politics for forty years, has some idea what he is doing. His "Barbecues for Ben" successfully helped generate buzz for the candidate. He is running television advertisements which will continue until the primary. The bottom appears to have fallen out of the small support for Josh Rales since Cardin began running his advertisements.

Most impressively, his supporters were out in force door knocking around Montgomery today. I was knocking on doors for the District 18 slate in Woodside and ran into people who had already knocked on most of the precinct's doors for Cardin. When I arrived home about four miles away, I discovered that someone had knocked on my door while I was out. An enviable degree of organization in a county that, while receptive to Cardin, is hardly his home base.

Let's hope Cardin has the general election as methodically planned out. Lite Gov. Michael Steele is running very good advertisements that would make you think he is an independent reformer rather than a flip-flopping shill for Bush who has never won office in his own right. Cardin's commercials nicely emphasize issues and his experience but hardly break the mold. Click on the links in this paragraph to watch for yourself and see what I mean.