For 16 years David Blumberg was the chairman of the less-than-mighty Republican Party of Baltimore - and was the target of joke after joke, mostly unprintable, for his sometimes lonely pursuit.
He wasn't even a teen-ager the last time a Republican lived in the governor's mansion. He had watched his party lose eight straight gubernatorial elections - a streak surpassed only by his partisans in Hawaii. He has never awakened on Election Day with his candidate in the lead.
The joke is no longer on Blumberg.
"I've never had this feeling before. I think I know what it is but I don't want to say it because I might jinx it," said Blumberg, 46, before the victory. "We'll finally be taken seriously. We'll have a seat at the table. We haven't had a seat at that table for literally over a generation."
The Republican Party - which has held the governorship in Maryland only a handful of times, most recently with Spiro T. Agnew, who was elected in 1966 and gave up his seat to a Democrat two years later to become vice president - spent yesterday convinced that this is the year.
Finally, after years of futility in campaigns for the state's top spot, the one that had eluded them for so long was theirs. Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., many said, is the best candidate they have ever had.
"I think if a Republican is ever going to win the governorship of Maryland, it'll be today," said Garry Anderson, an owner of two restaurants in Severna Park as he stood outside the middle school there.
The last two gubernatorial elections were close, most notably the one in 1994, when conservative Ellen R. Sauerbrey came within 5,993 votes of defeating now-outgoing Gov. Parris N. Glendening. But even some of the die-hard members of the GOP admit that they were taken by surprise that year. Sauerbrey also put up a fight in 1998, but lost momentum going into Election Day.
Yesterday, though, just felt different. On conservative talk show host Ron Smith's afternoon radio program yesterday, some of the callers were downright giddy. And those who couldn't quite forget the years of disappointment were admonished by the host.
Take Eric from Baltimore: "I woke up in the middle of the night with cold sweats with visions of Sauerbrey dancing in my head," he said.
"Do not fear," Smith replied.
When Elaine Pevenstein, Ehrlich's assistant campaign manager, was in college, she worked for Agnew in the Baltimore County executive's office one summer and then on his 1966 campaign for governor.
"I've been waiting for this for 34 years. From the beginning, I have believed that Bob could do this," said Pevenstein, fighting back tears. "Bob will win, but if something would happen and he does not, the Republican Party in the state of Maryland will suffer a tremendous blow.
"It is really important to become a two-party state."
Republicans have held other offices here and there - they've been elected to the U.S. Senate, they hold half of the state's seats in the U.S. House, they are minority members of the heavily Democratic General Assembly. But in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly two to one, the top state jobs have long eluded the GOP.
An Ehrlich victory "would be a major boost to Maryland Republicans," said Herbert C. Smith, political science professor at McDaniel College in Westminster, before the polls closed. "It would prove that it's not mission impossible.
"In Annapolis politics, it's like football - winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. The governor provides state jobs, patronage, government experience. You can really build up the equivalent of a farm team in four years."
That, in turn, could mean competitive races for years to come, not only for governor, but also for attorney general and comptroller, Smith said.
"Having control of the governorship allows us to do much more as a party," said Louis M. Pope, chairman of the Maryland Republican Party.
He pointed to the county election boards. Their chairmen are chosen by the governor, and Democrats are in charge of voting in all 24 jurisdictions. With a Republican in the governor's mansion, the GOP takes control. "That will help us get a little more fairness," Pope said.
Election Day is normally fairly quiet at the GOP's state headquarters on West Street in Annapolis. But yesterday was much busier, said Marcia Jicka, the office manager there for the past 16 years. "People are just going crazy. People are just so up on him - so ready for him to be governor."
There has been a lot of foot traffic in recent months, she said, visits from people who just drop in to see what they can do.
"It happened with Ellen but not on this scale," Jicka said. "I've had people come in and say, 'I didn't know there was a [Republican] party in Maryland.'"
At Ehrlich headquarters in Towson, 76-year-old volunteer Doris Ramsdell, a lifelong member of the GOP, was busy making copies, just as she has every day for months.
She and her late husband, Larry, had supported Ehrlich since he first ran for Congress eight years ago. Larry Ramsdell died about two-and-a-half years ago - and missed a defining moment for the party he supported for so long. "This has been a nice feeling to be able to do this for him," she said. "Right now, he would have been holding his breath, too."
In Baltimore, Blumberg had more volunteers to work the polls than ever before in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than eight to one.
"This is the most optimistic, hopeful we've ever been by far," said Blumberg, who served as local party chairman until 1998. "Bob Ehrlich could deliver us to the promised land. This Jew's been wandering nearly 40 years."