As friends tell it, E.J. Pipkin was like a relentless force when he exploded onto the political scene in 1999.
Democrats across the state had quietly given their support to an effort to dump silt dredged from shipping channels at a site off Kent Island, and Pipkin, a former Wall Street bond trader, would have none of it.
He bankrolled an advocacy group and was known to stay up all night long reading dense impact reports from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies, looking for holes he could poke in methodology or ways to zing some of Maryland's most popular politicians, including Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes and Gov. Parris N. Glendening.
Eventually, with the help of environmental groups, the effort was defeated, and numerous participants in the campaign credit Pipkin as their cause's driving force.
"If it wasn't for him, it wouldn't have been stopped," said Wayne Beall, who helped lead Pipkin's advocacy group. "He is the one individual that has more energy than anybody else I've ever known in my life."
Although he won celebrity for taking on powerful Democrats and winning, Pipkin, a state senator since 2003, has lately been dogged by the opposite problem: accusations that he's too liberal to represent Maryland's 1st Congressional District.
Racing against the clock after joining the Republican primary later than his chief opponents - state Sen. Andy Harris and nine-term incumbent Wayne T. Gilchrest - Pipkin has struggled to counter swipes at his conservatism, particularly his vote last year for Gov. Martin O'Malley's fiscal 2008 budget, which increased state spending by 5.3 percent.
Pipkin is generally pro-choice and has taken some populist stances, such as his outspoken criticism of how Maryland deregulated electricity markets. He has been among the leading backers of efforts to re-regulate.
In an interview, Pipkin said he has been frustrated by the extremely negative tone that the race took on early - though his television ads and direct-mail pieces are as negative as any - as well as by the difficulty he has faced getting past 30-second sound bites during the campaign.
"I lived through the stock market crash of 1987, the recession of 1991 and the panic of 1998," said Pipkin, who made millions on Wall Street before retiring to the Eastern Shore at age 42. "We will be facing some difficult times ahead, and fiscal issues will be taking center stage in Washington in the next two years. I'm the right person at the right time to take on those issues."
Pipkin, 51, lives with his wife and three children in Elkton, where he moved recently to accommodate the training in Delaware of his daughter, a nationally ranked figure skater. The son of a Bethlehem Steel electrician and a cafeteria worker who grew up in Dundalk, he said he's sensitive to the plight of working people who are less able to make ends meet.
But he said he has had few opportunities to talk about these issues on the campaign trail in the district, which includes all of the Eastern Shore and parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Cecil and Harford counties. Instead, he has spent most of his time bickering with Harris and, to a lesser extent, Gilchrest in debates and in TV, radio and direct-mail advertisements.
Pipkin begins each day before 7 a.m. with a two-hour round of sign waving in various parts of the district before heading to Annapolis to attend to his duties in the Senate. He has spent nearly $1 million of his own money on the race, according to the Federal Election Commission, which was used mostly to saturate the airwaves.
He has poured money into his political campaigns before, beginning with his successful bid to unseat Democratic state Sen. Walter M. Baker, the powerful chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee. He won by 24 percentage points in 2002. He spent more of his fortune two years later to take on Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski but lost badly.
This time around, he hopes things will go differently.
bradley.olson@baltsun.com