With three climactic weeks remaining in the fiercely fough Maryland governor's race, the candidates are scrambling for ways to attract undecided voters -- a segment of the electorate that could make all the difference come Election Day.
Their target is the truly uncommitted, a group within the broader electorate.
They number about 175,000 voters of the 1.5 million who are expected to vote this year. Add another 400,000 voters if the definition of undecided extends to those whose support for Democratic Gov. Parris N. Glendening or GOP challenger Ellen R. Sauerbrey is soft.
Many of the hard-core uncommitted may stay at home on Election Day. But a recent poll conducted for The Sun and other news organizations suggests many are looking for ways to connect with one of the candidates.
Polls show support hardening for both candidates as the Nov. 3 election approaches. The notion that a small number of swing voters might determine the election seems all the more alluring against the backdrop of 1994, a race in which Glendening beat Sauerbrey by 5,993 votes out of 1.4 million cast.
Veteran politicians and campaign professionals hold that even a race as closely contested as this one does not really begin until the last two or three weeks when voters begin to pay attention. Both campaigns are working to solidify their core support, skewer their opponents with TV ads and avoid a devastating gaffe at a time when every word will count.
So the voter with an open mind is a voter to be targeted -- a voter like Zelma Blue in Baltimore.
"I'm not sure," said Blue, the unemployed mother of an 8-year-old, who has some sympathy for Sauerbrey. "She's pretty cool right now. She seems like she could be pretty good for the children, for kids. I need to read up some more, get some literature."
The poll, conducted from Sept. 29 through Oct. 3, shows that most voters are not unhappy with their choices this year -- but some are undecided because both candidates have offended them.
"I don't like either one of 'em," said Adam Gisinger White of Westminster, a 23-year-old Republican who smokes and who fears Sauerbrey's downsizing of government could cost his father a job. "I don't like Sauerbrey because my father works for the state. And I don't like Glendening because of the cigarette rules," a reference to efforts to prohibit smoking in state buildings.
Some still seem open to either candidate.
Mildred Scheiner of Columbia, a 61-year-old nurse, said she doesn't know whom she will vote for or even how she will make her decision: "I just kind of listen to what they have to say. I think Glendening's a fine person. I'm just not overwhelmed with what he's done."
And as for Sauerbrey, Sheiner said: "She sounds OK."
With so much depending on voter turnout -- very low in September's primary -- neither candidate wants to seem merely OK. So the last weeks of the campaign will almost certainly see each candidate hammering at the other's perceived deficiencies.
That could be a perilous enterprise -- especially with the undecideds -- according to Keith Haller, president of Potomac Survey Research, which conducted The Sun's poll. As compared with the rest of the Maryland voters recently polled, undecideds tend to have a more favorable view of both candidates. "They've heard a lot of negatives," Haller said. "More of the same won't get at this group."
The poll findings suggest various strategic approaches for both candidates as they seek the undecideds' favor.
Sauerbrey, Haller suggests, "needs to stay with her game plan, the education themes. She wants to accentuate moderate approaches. She should highlight her tax cut idea for the elderly. It hasn't resonated there, but it has great potential."
"If she did have to question him [go negative, in other words], she should stay with the character-type issues," Haller said. "And she should remember the 1998 cardinal rule: Stay away from the Clinton-Lewinsky matter."
The polls suggests that Glendening needs to narrow the distance between him and many Marylanders.
"The voters are desperately wanting to know this man and his advertising is not letting them do that," Haller said. "Third-party testimonials, even those offered by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend don't work. He needs to speak personally from the gut, the heart."
The Democrat's campaign has tacitly agreed with that assessment. Glendening released a new ad late last week that has him speaking directly to his audience -- and focusing on the environment, a strong issue for him among the undecideds, Haller said.
Herbert C. Smith, a political scientist at Western Maryland College, agrees that Glendening has failed to communicate his strengths -- and his opponent's weaknesses. "He needs better bullets or an ad agency with a sense of humor," Smith said.
The Glendening campaign also agrees their man needs to confront his low positive ratings.
"You have to deal with realities," said Peter S. Hamm, the campaign's spokesman. "He doesn't deserve to have high negatives because he's done a terrific job as governor."
But selling the positives will be difficult with only three weeks to go, said Haller and various other political professionals. For that reason, the remainder of Glendening's campaign is likely to feature campaign commercials that will be called negative, though they are sometimes referred to euphemistically as "contrastive," "comparative" or "issue based."
In some cases, campaigning produces all the negative fodder either side needs -- whether the undecided voters want to hear it or not. Hamm said, for example, that Sauerbrey's true character is coming through as the campaign enters its decisive stage: "All of a sudden she's back, the real Ellen Sauerbrey is back, slinging mud and calling the governor a tax-and-spend liberal when he's put the state's financial house in order, cut taxes and hasn't had a single tax increase over four years."
Deviating from a so-far successful strategy would be a curious move for Sauerbrey, Haller says. "She's turned around her negatives," he said.
The Sauerbrey camp says it is only responding to attacks from Glendening.
The risk is in the tone: If it seems harsh, Sauerbrey could undo the work that went into improving her image, said Ronald A. Faucheux, editor of Campaigns & Elections, a national magazine for the political campaign industry.
"She has to defend herself, but she should go after him in a way that doesn't cause the Democratic base to rally around him," he said. "She should attack him for not being principled, being an opportunist."
The groundwork for that, Faucheux said, has already been laid -- by Glendening. "He will probably get the prize for the Democrat who mishandled the Clinton scandals worse than anyone."
He was referring to the governor's flip-flop-flip on Clinton's woes: After first supporting the president, Glendening called him a poor role model and then, with Clinton's rating soaring among core Democrats, altered his stance again to say the president had earned forgiveness.
"Blacks in the Democratic base aren't going to give Glendening much credit for his recent embrace," Faucheux said. "And those who may have been impressed by an act of principle, now have reason to be doubly upset. First he sells out Democrats and later he sells out the people he was courting."
Glendening now seems left making a plea for himself similar to the one he and others are making for Clinton. Referring to his decision to take generous pension benefits when he stepped down as Prince George's county executive -- a decision sharply condemned by Sauerbrey -- Glendening says that action was simply wrong.
"I've made mistakes, but look at her," he said recently in what might be a distillation of his campaign strategy.
How this shakes out for the undecideds may come down to the discipline of the two campaigns. Often, Haller said, professional campaign managers are "junkies who want to unleash the negative megatonnage" -- whether it's prudent or not.
Who are they?
According to a recent poll, as many as 175,000 registered voters report they are truly undecided about the governor's race. FTC Here's who they are:
Party affiliation: 69 percent are Democrats; 26 percent are Republicans; 5 percent are independents.
Political self-identification: 39 percent report they are conservatives; 39 percent say they are moderates; 16 percent describe themselves as liberal.
Demographics: 66 percent are women; 63 percent are white; 22 percent are black.
Regional breakdown: In line with its population, Montgomery County has the biggest share, 22 percent, of undecided voters, followed by Prince George's County, with 16 percent; Baltimore County, 16 percent; Baltimore, 15 percent; Anne Arundel and Howard counties, 12 percent; Western Maryland, 11 percent; and the Eastern Shore, 8 percent.
NOTE: The sample size of registered voters who report being truly undecided about the Maryland governor's race is so small -- about 100 voters among the 1,204 polled -- that the percentages can only be taken as a broad indication rather than a precise measure.
SOURCE: Poll taken of 1,204 registered voters who say they are certain they will vote, or probably will vote in the governor's election. Conducted Sept. 29 through Oct. 3 by Potomac Survey Research for The Sun, the Montgomery Gazette, WRC-TV and WTOP radio.
Pub Date: 10/11/98