Wynn’s race too close to call

Congressional District 4

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2006

U.S. Rep. Albert Wynn’s (D-Dist. 4) race for re-election was too close to call at press time Wednesday, with challenger Donna Edwards giving Wynn the toughest competition he has faced since taking office in 1992.

District 4 covers Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, and early returns showed Wynn leading. But that lead narrowed as results trickled in from Montgomery County, where Edwards was beating Wynn by a margin of nearly two to one.

By Wednesday afternoon, Wynn was four points ahead of Edwards, but the results were incomplete.

Wynn was ahead by 17 points in Prince George’s, his home county — but Montgomery still holds one-third of the voters in that district.

‘‘We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Wynn spokesman Alon Kupferman.

Edwards, an attorney from Fort Washington and a first-time candidate, matched that optimism.

‘‘I feel great,” Edwards said yesterday afternoon. ‘‘We really are not going to have any results in this election until after Monday.”

Provisional ballots, which became a factor in Montgomery County because of computer problems, will be counted on Monday. The Montgomery Board of Elections reported that roughly 4,000 total provisional ballots were still outstanding. Absentee ballots will be tallied today.

This is the tightest race Wynn has faced since he was first elected. He has come away with between 80 and 90 percent of the vote in every primary since 1992.

David Bositis, political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in the District, said the narrow race was a sign of both Edwards’ credibility and Wynn’s vulnerability.

‘‘There’s an old saying: ‘you can’t beat a horse with no horse.’ You’ve got to have somebody who’s a credible alternative, and [Edwards] is credible,” he said. ‘‘Even if [Wynn] pulls this out ... he really has to look at this as, ‘OK, I squeaked by this time. I’m really going to have to do something different.’”

The war in Iraq became a major focal point in this race, as Edwards criticized Wynn for initially supporting the war. Although Wynn later said his war vote was a mistake, Edwards stressed that the incumbent had sided too many times with the Bush administration.

Wynn had also voted for an energy bill that gave millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives to energy companies, and had opposed the estate tax, which taxes the property of the wealthy after they die.

Edwards’ message gained resonance after anti-war candidate Ned Lamont defeated Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut primary.

Edwards then entered the media spotlight after a fight broke out between Wynn’s workers and one of her volunteers on Aug. 16 at a debate in Largo.

Meanwhile, Wynn has run on his record of securing millions of federal dollars for local transportation projects, and being active in the community by hosting annual job fairs and other events.

The winner of this race will face Republican candidate Michael Moshe Starkman in the general election.

E-mail Judson Berger at jberger@gazette.net.