The junior senator from Maryland is Ben Cardin, a Democrat elected in 2006 who is one of the Senate’s workhorses. An unabashed wonk with an agreeable personality, he evinces curiosity about a wide range of legislative topics. Read More

The junior senator from Maryland is Ben Cardin, a Democrat elected in 2006 who is one of the Senate’s workhorses. An unabashed wonk with an agreeable personality, he evinces curiosity about a wide range of legislative topics.

Cardin is one of the many bright politicos who came from the Jewish neighborhoods of northwest Baltimore, the son and nephew of state legislators, a man who was elected to the state House at the age of 23—as soon as he was eligible to run. After serving four years as Ways and Means chairman in Annapolis, he became House speaker in 1979, at age 35. He had an interest in running for governor; but when Barbara Mikulski, now Maryland’s senior senator, left her 3rd District House seat to run for the Senate in 1986, Cardin jumped into that race and was easily elected. In his second term in the House, Cardin got a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, where he was able to be a productive and creative legislator. He supported the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement despite strong union opposition, backed a cap on medical-malpractice damages despite trial lawyers’ opposition, and voted for normal trade relations with China after securing a rider designed to crack down on international dumping of subsidized steel in U.S. markets.

More than any other Democrat on the powerful tax-writing committee, he worked skillfully on bipartisan legislation at a time when few were sufficiently clever or independent enough to pursue such initiatives. The Baltimore Sun called him a “master of bipartisan lawmaking.” Along with then-Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Cardin co-sponsored the 1998 Internal Revenue Service reform law and the 2000 bipartisan legislation to expand 401(k) savings and other retirement plans. In 2001, when Congress enacted the Bush tax cut, it included Cardin’s provision to increase the limits for maximum IRA and 401(k) contributions.

Maryland Senate seats don’t come open very often, so when one did, Cardin and 17 other Democrats filed to run. An experienced campaigner and fundraiser, Cardin began as the front-runner even though his earnest, somewhat bland demeanor raised questions about his viability as a statewide candidate. His toughest primary opponents were former Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who resigned his House seat in 1996 to chair the NAACP, and millionaire businessman Joshua Rales. Mfume and Cardin were friends—they were both elected to Congress in 1986—but Mfume and other black leaders warned that the state Democratic establishment’s support for Cardin could breed resentment among African-American voters. The primary was expensive: Cardin, Rales, and Mfume together spent more than $12 million. Cardin outspent Mfume by nearly 4-to-1, but Mfume had a compelling life story and loads of charisma, especially compared with the low-key Cardin. Rales spent heavily from his own pocket but barely registered in the polls. Cardin won 44%-41%, carrying all but two counties and Baltimore City. The win was powered in part by Cardin’s nearly 2-1 advantage over Mfume in suburban Washington’s Montgomery County, the state’s most populous county.

The Republican nominee was Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the first African-American statewide officeholder in Maryland and a candidate exceptionally well-positioned to exploit Cardin’s weaknesses. Steele combined his talent for retail politicking with quirky, unconventional ads designed to highlight his outsider status. Democrats, including Mfume, coalesced around Cardin and portrayed Steele as an inexperienced lightweight. Republicans criticized Cardin as a career pol who was closely tied to big-money special-interest groups. Without a legislative record, Steele made for an elusive target, so Cardin sought to link him to President Bush and criticized Steele for his support for the Iraq war. Cardin won 54%-44%, in what was a tough year for Maryland Republicans. Steele won 18 of 23 counties, carrying the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland, but Cardin carried all of the key suburban counties: 52%-47% in Baltimore County (which doesn’t include the city); 54%-45% in Howard; 67%-32% in Montgomery. African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Cardin. Two years later, in early 2009, Steele became the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee, where he became known for several well-publicized gaffes until his ouster in 2011.

A rock-solid Democrat, Cardin was tied for most-liberal senator in National Journal’s 2010 vote rankings. In 2008, he unsuccessfully called for ending the use of a secret court—which gave President Bush broader surveillance powers in cases involving suspected terrorists—by sponsoring legislation that would allow the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to “sunset” in four years instead of six. Many in Congress believed that the secret surveillance constituted a threat to civil liberties. Based on his recent campaign experience, Cardin sought to make it a crime for candidates to use misleading tactics against opponents. His priorities included incentives for teachers at poorly performing schools, and Chesapeake Bay cleanup, a tried-and-true issue for Maryland lawmakers. During the final weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign, Cardin made numerous appearances for Barack Obama in Jewish neighborhoods in battleground states, where he had strong credibility as a Jewish U.S. senator with a solid record of support for Israel.

With a seat on the influential Finance Committee, Cardin was at the center of the big legislative battles shaping up in the 112th Congress (2011-12). He introduced a bill with Chairman Max Baucus in January 2011 to repeal the so-called “1099” provision to the health care law, which called for businesses to submit forms to the Internal Revenue Service for all purchases above $600, a requirement that many agree was overly burdensome for small businesses. During the 111th Congress (2009-10), Cardin was able to get a guaranteed dental benefit included in the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. He included an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers in the massive economic stimulus law of 2009.

Cardin had less success in getting a Chesapeake Bay cleanup bill passed that would expand the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over fertilizer and animal-waste runoff. He also struck out in going to bat for the beleaguered newspaper industry, introducing a measure in 2009 that would treat newspapers as 501(c)(3) nonprofits that could accept charitable contributions. Industry officials expressed fears about the measure leading to government control of the news. He has worked on expanding mass transit in the Washington-Baltimore region, especially as Maryland stood to gain an influx of employees at several military facilities in 2011 as a result of the 2005 BRAC base-closure process.

Cardin’s prodigious appetite for work extends to foreign policy. He co-chairs the U.S. arm of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission, which monitors human rights issues. Cardin in April 2010 urged the State Department to block visas for 60 Russians who reportedly were linked to the death in jail of a lawyer for what was once the country’s top equity fund. He later introduced a bill to impose financial sanctions as well as visa bans on the officials. “My name is well-known in Russia, some places better than in Maryland,” he said.

With Maryland an overwhelmingly Democratic state, Cardin is likely to face little trouble getting re-elected in 2012. A Public Policy Polling survey in late 2010 showed that his disapproval rating was just 28%, lower than any other incumbent senator.