Hoist With Her Own Petard!
The Boston Globe enlightens with RFK daughter's Md. race hinges on black votes:

It is a sweltering day as Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend descends the stairs of the ''Great Blacks in Wax Museum'' and enters the mock belly of a slave ship. ...

Surrounded by the leading African-American politicians of Maryland, and trailed by television crews, Townsend would seem to be in her element. ...

Yet, in a twist that threatens to undermine her campaign strategy, the African-American voting bloc has become hotly contested.

The likely Republican opponent, US Representative Robert Ehrlich, has picked a black man, GOP state chairman Michael Steele, as his running mate. Townsend, meanwhile, has been the subject of widespread second-guessing for her selection of a white Republican, Navy Admiral Charles Larson, as her pick for lieutenant governor. On a recent day of campaigning, Larson was not given a speaking role when Townsend addressed black leaders at the wax museum, an absence that Townsend later attributed to a lack of time.

All of this has become crucial because the Townsend campaign has calculated - and analysts agree - that she will probably lose if she fails to secure less than about 80 percent of the black vote. Normally, that would not be a problem, but the GOP strategy of putting Steele on the ticket has ensured this is not a normal election. The most recent polls show that the race is statistically tied, a sharp turnaround from just a couple of months ago, when most observers suggested she would achieve a blowout.

Now, such talk is over. A number of Townsend's top supporters, especially those in the African-American community, met privately with her in recent days to tell her bluntly that she needs a major shift in her campaign, and Townsend agreed. Her campaign chief, Alan Fleischmann, said yesterday that Townsend is searching for the ''greatest lieutenants'' available, saying, ''We are at war.''

Ehrlich, a former Princeton quarterback, clearly has thrown the Townsend team off balance by picking Steele. The strategy of the Townsend campaign has been to attack Steele as a clone of his friend, US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, another black Republican. But Steele bristles in response that Townsend too often hides behind the Kennedy name - and says that name is something he knows about.

Steele said that his father was a gardener for then-Senator John F. Kennedy in the 1950s, that his stepfather once drove a limousine in the 1960s for then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and that he remembers watching the funeral train of Townsend's father rumble through Washington. He mocks the notion that Townsend is ''the great white hope for African Americans,'' saying many blacks, who make up about one-fourth of the electorate, have not benefited from the state's prosperity.

An incredible antidote to the "Kennedy mystique". What a hoot! And it's an encouraging sign when blacks don't feel locked in the pocket of the Democrat party. But I wouldn't underestimate the political machines of the old time black Democrats. They may "raise the dead" on election day.

Townsend, who once considered becoming a nun, has been portrayed as a different sort of Kennedy, more cerebral but less comfortable than most family members on the political stage. With her soft voice and diminutive stature, she has labored for years to project herself verbally and physically, pumping her fists and raising her voice with regularity.

The effort was clear on a recent day of campaigning, when US Representative Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, a rousing speaking with a booming baritone, introduced Townsend at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum by saying that people shouldn't pay attention to critics who don't like how she looks or talks. ''I don't care if she stutters!'' Cummings said as he ended his introduction. To which Townsend said, awkwardly: ''Amen, Elijah! Hallelujah!''

Cerebral! Sorry pal, she's dumber than a bag of hammers and demonstrates it regularly.