While most of the national media’s attention has been focused on the history-making Democratic and Republican presidential primaries playing out in Maryland (and Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Pennsylvania) today, there’s another potentially history-making primary going on as well: the Democratic primary for the Senate seat currently held by retiring Senator Barbara Mikulski.
The race between two sitting House members, Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards, is only potentially history-making because of Edwards: If she wins the Democratic primary in the heavily Democratic state of Maryland, she’ll almost certainly be only the second African American woman to ever serve in the US Senate come 2017.
The race hasn’t been an easy one for either candidate, though they are, by all accounts, remarkably similar on the issues. Van Hollen, who district starts in the center of the (wealthy) Washington, DC suburbs in Montgomery County, Maryland, and, since the redistricting in 2013, stretches up towards the Pennsylvania border is considered one of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s political proteges; Edwards was elected from the western (and majority African American) DC suburbs in Prince George’s County, Maryland after a long career as a liberal political and then anti-domestic violence activist.
Van Hollen, the son of a US ambassador and a CIA officer who holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard and Georgetown and spent much of the 90s serving in the state legislature, was described by Maryland senate president Thomas Miller in his endorsement as “a leader who has been born to the job”. Edwards, a single mother for whom non-profit work was a second career and public service a third, took exception to the statement (in a fundraising email, of course): “The fact is, our country’s systems and institutions have largely been led by people who have always looked like that senior elected official, not like me … I don’t believe anyone in this country was born to anything.”
The most potent criticism Edwards has faced has been about her Congressional office’s track record with constituent service, which perhaps has more resonance in a state, like Maryland, with so many federal workers. But polls have been variable: A month ago, she was way up; last week, she was very, very far down.
One thing that has remained consistent though: Black women voters tend to back Edwards (most recently, by more than 50 points), while white male voters tend to lean Van Hollen. And EMILY’s List controversially backed Edwards in the primary, despite Van Holen’s strong record on women’s issues: The organization, which is dedicated to electing pro-choice women to office, said that they backed her because of her record and because she would bring “a voice and perspective that are rarely heard on the Senate floor.”
In other words, perhaps, because she wasn’t born to the job.
