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Steele: White Republicans are scared of me By Jordan Fabian - 11/09/09 03:12 PM ET Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele, who is known for making controversial statements, on Sunday said that white Republicans are afraid of him. Steele also took aim at some in his own party last week as well, saying that he would "come after" centrist Republicans who support healthcare reform. The Republican chairman appeared on NewsOne's "Washington Watch" this weekend, a new Sunday polititcal talk show aimed at a black audience. The host, Roland Martin, asked Steele how could Republicans could reach out to black...

I've not come to them as a Republican or a Democrat, as an African-American, or anything other than who I am, and that is someone who believes in public service, who wants to go to Washington to try his best to make a difference in a town that has forgotten where people live and how they live and what they go through every day. So that's not color. That's not party affiliation. That's real life. And I've been speaking to real life for the last year and a half, and the people of my state are responding to it. .....

.....If there's racism, including a past pattern of racism, it falls entirely on the Democratic doorstep. And the trend hasn't stopped; Steele's white opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin, is white, and virtually the entire Democratic establishment in the state backed him in his successful primary race against former Rep. Kweisi Mfume. Blacks were told, in effect, not yet, and many of them are understandably asking, "How long, O Lord, how long?" ... at 29.1 percent almost two and a half times the national average of 12.4 percent, the fact that blacks have been shut out of real leadership in the party...

There are now just four days until Election Day and a brand new poll shows the top races in Maryland are closer than ever. Our SurveyUSA poll, conducted exclusively for 9NEWS NOW, shows Democrat Martin O'Malley leading Republican Bob Ehrlich in the Race for Governor, but only by one point. That’s within the survey's 3.8 percent margin of sampling error, meaning the contest is a tie. Men are rallying to Ehrlich. Ehrlich trailed among men by 3 on 9/20, led by 6 on 10/18 and leads by 18 today. O'Malley leads by 18 among women. That’s up from 17 points...

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele said yesterday that Democratic attacks on his U.S. Senate candidacy have not hurt him but have sparked interest in his status as a black Republican. "I hear it from people who come up to me who are angry themselves. They are sick of it. They are tired of it. It's like, 'Why are they coming after you?' " Mr. Steele told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "The commercials that they have run have really not resonated the way I think they thought they would. It is not scaring people away from me....

A ranking Democrat in the House of Representative is apologizing for saying an African-American Senate candidate "slavishly" supported the Republican Party. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said he meant no offense when he made the remark about Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the GOP nominee for the seat being vacated by longtime Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes. In a statement issued Tuesday, Hoyer said, "I should not have used those words." Hoyer was speaking to a largely black audience at a campaign event for Steele's Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Ben Cardin, when he made the comment. Steele's spokesman, Doug Heye,...

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is promoting his return to the ring, but he's campaigning for Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele at the same time. In Strongsville, Ohio Tuesday, Tyson wore a white and blue Steele for U.S. Senate T-shirt and said he used to believe black Republicans were "sellouts." The 40-year-old Tyson said "We have to open our eyes more." Tyson's former manager, Don King, campaigned with Steele on Monday in Maryland.

In Maryland, Senate Race Now Deadlocked In Maryland's U.S. Senate race, a new SurveyUSA poll finds Ben Cardin (D) and Michael Steele (R) in a statistical tie, with Steele holding a 48% to 47% edge that's well within the survey's margin of error. Key finding: Steele, who is black, gets 54% of white vote and 33% of the black vote, more than twice the support among blacks than fellow Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R) in his race for governor. Meanwhile, in the gubernatorial race, Martin O'Malley (D) leads Ehrlich by 7 points, 51% to 44%.

In the latest Rasmussen Reports poll of the competitive U.S. Senate contest in Maryland, Republican Lt. Governor Michael Steele slightly trails each Democratic contender. Congressman Ben Cardin (D) leads Steele 47% to 42%. Former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume (D) leads the Republican 46% to 44% (see crosstabs). This sets the stage for a closely fought general election no matter which Democrat wins the September 12 primary.

With a month to go before primary voters head to the polls to choose Senate nominees, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin kicked off yesterday a weeklong effort to highlight his congressional record and vision on health care by making the mother of all campaign promises - to cure cancer. Cardin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, gathered with cancer survivors and doctors in Lutherville to detail his efforts to expand cancer screening and his plans to fight the disease. "We are going to lick cancer by 2015," Cardin told a group of 15 people at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls...

Democratic Congressman Ben Cardin still leads Republican Lt. Governor Michael Steele, but no longer by double digits in this tightening race. Cardin now leads Steele by just six points, 47% to 41%. In February he had led Steele by fourteen points, which by April had dropped to a ten-point lead (see Crosstabs). Steele is neck-and-neck with Democratic NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, with Steele nominally leading, 45% to 44%. In April Mfume led by four points, after the two had been neck-and-neck in February, Steele 42%, Mfume 41%. The main change for this match-up is that more voters have made up...

Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, the likely Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, affirmed his allegiance to Roman Catholic teachings yesterday as he addressed a conference of Catholic families at the Baltimore Convention Center. "You will find that you cannot divorce your faith from your public service," Steele said, as the audience, primarily composed of parents who home-school their children, applauded. "There can be no conflict between God's will and my duty as a public servant." Steele, who spent three years in the early 1980s in an Augustinian monastery, has stated publicly that, unlike Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., he opposes...

When I was a kid and played football, I was somewhat dismayed to hear a cheer, broadcast hoarsely by a crowd at a tough city school we played–"hit ‘em high, hit ‘em low, come on boys, hit ‘em hard ‘n low." Today, thanks to its interception by a free safety at the New York Sun, we are beginning to get an idea of the kind of low blows and guerilla warfare to be waged against Michael Steele, Maryland’s current Lieutenant Governor, the first black man ever elected to a statewide office, as he begins a run for the US Senate....