An interesting postscript on the Maryland Senate race: Exit polls suggest that the "white lie" phenomenon, in which more white voters tell pollsters that they'll vote for the black candidate than actually go through with it in the end, may have helped doom black Senate candidate Michael Steele. This is a phenomenon more often noted against Dems, of course, since African-American candidates are Democrats much more often than they're Republican, but in this case, it may have harmed GOPer Steele as well.

Steele lost by 10 points — a higher spread than some pre-election polls suggested. Exit polls show that white voters split their vote evenly between Cardin and Steele, well short of the percentage of whites that ordinarily back the GOP candidate in seriously contested races in Maryland. In pre-election polls, meanwhile, respondents were promising to vote for Steele at a higher rate: a Baltimore Sun poll from five days before the election had Steele leading Cardin among whites by seven points. So the Republican candidate may have been victimized by the "white lie" after all.

As Atrios would say, Bye Mike. CNN and NBC call it for Dem Ben Cardin. Dems have held on to the two at-risk Dem seats -- Jersey and Maryland. Now that Dems have knocked off both Ohio Senator Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, that means Dems are four seats away from taking the Senate.

The new SurveyUSA poll shows a tied race between Ben Cardin and Michael Steele. The key: black voters. Steele has made inroads with them, and if he wins one-third of the blacks, he could just pull off a win. Steele's charismatic approach has helped him make big inroads in this blue state, and if it were any other year he'd be well on his way to victory.

In this cycle it's pretty rare that a nonpartisan analyst shifts his or her rating of a race in favor of the GOP, but Charlie Cook has now downgraded the contest between Dem Ben Cardin and GOP candidate Michael Steele from "Leans Democratic" to "Toss Up." Cook notes that the race is "closer than most observers expected it to be." Check out all the polls of the race here.

Yesterday the DSCC hit Michael Steele It only took one day, but Steele already has a reply up, dismissing their effort as "nasty ads from the Washington crowd." The ad has Steele promising straight talk and then pouncing on Dem nominee Ben Cardin as "more of the same." Steele might seem like the last person who should run an anti-establishment message—his candidacy is a frontline effort for the national GOP's black outreach, and he's received extensive fundraising thanks to Bush. However, the ad itself could actually be well-aimed at historically Democratic Maryland, and it strangely manages to be both hard-hitting and friendly all at once. Check it out here.

Remember GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele's recent "puppies" ad? In it, Steele envisioned hypothetical attacks from Dems saying that he hated puppies, and concluded: "For the record, I love puppies." Now the DSCC has hit back in a fun new ad. After laying out a bunch of Steele positions likely to gall Maryland's predominantly Democratic electorate, the ad concludes: "Michael Steele: he likes puppies; but he loves George Bush." Okay, it's light—but it's still worth a watch. View the ad here.

Uh-oh -- Steele is softening. Dem Ben Cardin has opened an 11-point lead over GOP candidate Michael Steele, according to a new poll in the Baltimore Sun. Other findings: 49% of respondents think a Dem will do a better job of solving the state's problems; and Cardin has a three-to-one lead among black voters, despite efforts by Steele, who's African American, to make inroads.

What party does Michael Steele belong to? His newest campaign sign features the word "Steele" over the word "Democrat." Anyone seeing the sign in a window would probably conclude that Steele is a Dem. But they would be wrong — he's the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. So what gives? His campaign told the Baltimore Sun that the sign is meant to identify the person holding or displaying it — that is, a Dem who supports Steele. The campaign insists it's not meant to mislead people about Steele himself. But Dems aren't buying it. Says DSCC spokesman Phil Singer: "Michael Steele is trying to hide the fact that his campaign is funded and directed by George Bush and the Republican party." Judge for yourself.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Republican. That's the startling claim made in a new radio ad being aired in Maryland by a new group called the National Black Republican Association in its latest attempt to attract African Americans to the GOP. The ad — which can be heard here — features a dialogue between two women who are apparently African American. Among other things, they tell each other that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan and that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican — a curious assertion immediately dismissed by King experts. Quotes from the ad and more after the jump.

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President Bush dropped into St. Mary’s county in Maryland yesterday to give a Labor Day speech. But the state's two top Republicans -- Gov. Robert Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele -- were both very conspicuous no-shows. The response from the state Democratic Party: "This Labor Day, Ehrlich and Steele are afraid to be seen with the most anti-working-class president since Herbert Hoover, even while they gleefully count his checks for their campaign."

The Democratic Senate primary debate saw some explosive rhetoric and a genuine confrontation — just not from the candidates. The two candidates, Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume, agreed on the vast majority of issues, with Mfume presenting himself as somewhat more forceful and slightly to Cardin's left, as expected. The real surprise came from American University Professor Allan Lichtman, a candidate who was not invited to participate due to his ratings in the polls being too low; in fact, many polls have not even included him.

According to the Washington Post:

Thirty minutes before it began, police arrested one Democratic candidate -- American University professor Allan J. Lichtman -- who was locked out of the Maryland Public Television studio in Owings Mills. After a 15-minute standoff, Baltimore County police dragged Lichtman and his wife in handcuffs away from the studio's front door. He was charged with criminal trespass.

"This is Democracy?" Lichtman shouted repeatedly. "Let the voters decide."

GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele's efforts to win black voters -- which some predicted would fizzle given his party affiliation -- may have just gotten a big boost: He's just won the prized endorsement of media mogul Russell Simmons. This appears to be only the second time Simmons has backed a Republican -- the first was Mike Bloomberg -- and this one's particularly surprising, since this race could help decide whether Dems win the Senate.

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GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele has just released his first TV ad -- and it never once mentions the GOP, whose logo is nowhere to be seen. "Instead of the spin, I’ll talk straight about what’s wrong in both parties," Steele says. Watch the ad here.

Ben Cardin has won the endorsement of the The Washington Post over his primary opponent, former NAACP head Kweisi Mfume:

For the state's Democrats, the Sept. 12 primary is an embarrassment of political riches: Both candidates are substantive, serious and broadly experienced; either would make a fine senator; and each dwarfs the other candidates on the primary ballot. Our choice is Mr. Cardin, whose mastery of public policy, pragmatic bipartisanship and even-keeled determination have made him a superb lawmaker.

Read more about this electrifying and important race here and here.

Don't miss the Washington Post's long piece on the different career paths followed by Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume, who arrived in Congress on the same day in 1987 and are now duking it out for the Dem nomination to succeed retiring Senator Paul Sarbanes.

Cardin has his eye on a classic insider's power-post on the Senate Finance Committee, while Mfume is contemplating the national fame -- see Obama, Barack -- that comes with being a black Senator. Primary on Sept. 12.

Michael Steele -- you remember, the embattled GOP Senate candidate who anonynomously denounced President Bush then got outed for it -- continues to hold a grudge against the Baltimore Sun, Maryland’s top local paper. Steele’s displeasure started in 2002 when the paper’s Editorial Page wrote that Steele, then candidate for Lt. Gov., brought “little to the team, but the color of his skin.”

Steele remains so ticked off, in fact, that, why, he'll...he'll...he won't answer the paper's candidate questionnaire! Take that, Baltimore Sun. Yes, today Steele announced in an e-mail to supporters that he has refused to return the Sun’s Editorial Page candidate questionnaire. Instead, he posted his answers to the questions on his web site -- in order to provide voters directly with the answers, “unfiltered and without bias.” You can take a look at Steele’s “unfiltered” answers here.

The Maryland Dem primary -- the contest to see who gets to take on Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R) for the seat being vacated by Paul Sarbanes -- is kicking into high gear, and man, is this race worth watching.

It's got more than 15 candidates and over a third of Dem voters undecided with five weeks until primary day; it's the first contested Senate race in Maryland in decades; and the prize is a Senate seat that absolutely must be retained by Dems if they're going to have any hope of taking control of the Senate.

It was a blisteringly hot day, but not even that could get Senate candidate Michael Steele (R) to divulge his views about global warming.

At an outdoor press conference yesterday in 100-plus-degrees heat, a reporter asked Steele whether he agrees with business groups who oppose the Kyoto Protocol. Responded Steele: "God bless them." When reporters then pressed him for his views on global warming -- a question being pushed by local Dems -- Steele literally walked away while reporters gave chase, finally snapping: "When I'm ready to talk about it, I will," before shutting the door of his energy-guzzling SUV.

Read more about the bizarre episode on the Washington Post’s Maryland Moment blog.

Is democracy off limits at upscale organic grocer Whole Foods?

On Saturday morning, Maryland Senate candidate Rep. Ben Cardin (D), who's in a tight primary race with former Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D), arrived at the Whole Foods in Silver Spring, MD to shake patrons’ hands and do a little harmless campaigning. He was accompanied by Jon Ward of the Washington Times.

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Here's a funny -- or perhaps poignant -- postcript to the bizarre saga that unfolded this week around Michael Steele, the "mystery" GOP Senate candidate who bashed Bush and the GOP anonymously to Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank and was subsequently outed for it.

Steele's strange stunt got him roundly roasted in news outlets all over the country. So what was Steele's reaction? He's come out and in a radio interview actually praised the communications director who got him into the whole mess in the first place by offering to sign off on his anonymous quotes for use and thus helping ensure that they ended up in print.

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Michael Steele, the hapless GOP Senate candidate who got outed yesterday for hammering President Bush and the GOP anonymously to reporters, tried to exercise a bit of clumsy damage control today. He claimed that the conversation with reporters that got him in all this trouble was off the record.

But that looks like it's, well, completely false. Paul Kiel of TPM muckraker has gotten hold of an email from a Steele flack to Post reporter Dana Milbank, and it shows pretty clearly that Steele is fibbing. A fittingly perverse coda to an unsightly political burlesque.

Michael Steele, who slammed George Bush anonymously to reporters and was outed for it yesterday, is now looking to repair relations with Bush by referring to the President as his "homeboy." From the Associated Press:

Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele on Wednesday called President Bush his "homeboy," reversed course on having the president campaign for him and said he was joking when he described his Republican affiliation as a scarlet letter.

The Maryland lieutenant governor, under fire for his comments, told WBAL radio that his remarks were supposed to be off the record with a handful of reporters...

"I've been quoted as calling the president my homeboy, you know. And that's how I feel. ... It's a term of affection and respect for his leadership of our country in a difficult time," Steele, who is black, said in the radio interview.

That should patch things up.

Now that the news has leaked out that yesterday's mystery “Republican Senate candidate” is Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R), D.C.'s political classes have already concluded that it was all a deliberate ploy to gain national attention for his candidacy. The big question now: Will it do him any good?

Two camps are already forming: those who believe Steele’s leak was “a great move” and those who call it a “foolish attempt to play the national media.” The dueling politicos follow after the jump.

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