Credit NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via flickr

The retirement of Senator BarbaraMikulskiis causing seismic shifts in Maryland’s mostly Democratic Congressional delegation as members jockey for position to succeed her.

So far, only one Maryland House member has announced he’s in the race—Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County--and one has ruled himself out. That’s Southern Maryland’s Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip.

That makes one thing clear: Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee is retiring from the House because he has to give up his fairly safe seat there to run for the Senate. It also means the man many saw as a potential future VanHollen. A progressive, says he’ll “certainly miss the House” because it’s “a great institution.” 

But he isn’t expected to be the only progressive in the race. Donna Edwards, whose fourth district looks like a weird boomerang looping through parts of Prince Georges and Anne Arundel counties, almost gave herself away as she started to answer a question. “I’m going to run because,” she began before catching herself. “If I decide to run it's going to be because I believe that I have a vision and a commitment to people who get up and go to work every single day.”

But many analysts don’t think Maryland voters want a progressive after just putting a Republican in the governor’s mansion. Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, whose district touches Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel counties, is a centrist, which he thinks bodes well for a statewide race. “That's an issue we're looking at,” he said. “I mean, I've already had conversation with my pollster and media people. That's who I am. That's what my record is.” 

Then there’s the question of statewide name recognition. Congressman John Sarbanes, the son of Paul Sarbanes, the longest serving senator in Maryland’s history has that. But does he want to follow in his father’s senatorial footsteps? The younger Sarbanes, who is in his fifth term in the House, says he doesn’t “really think about it that way.” Instead, he says, he’s “trying to do good work” to “maintain a legacy of constituent service and thoughtfulness in the job. And hopefully that would be compelling.”

Maryland’s newest Democratic Congressman, John Delaney, is also rumored to want to hop in the Senate race. His district touches West Virginia and Pennsylvania before stretching into Montgomery County. And he’s also loaded. Estimates of his net worth having him sitting on more than a hundred million dollars. He could easily spend a fraction of that on a statewide contest. While that could scare off some potential candidates,Ruppersbergersays members of the delegation are wrestling with a different problem. They’re “all friends and we respect each other.”

Mikulski, of course, remains in office until the end of next year. So he has plenty of time to “raise hell,” instead of money, as she put it in the news conference announcing her retirement. She’s still “Senator Barb.” But with the loss ofMikulski– the longest serving woman in Congressional history – and at least a powerful House member or two, or even three, Maryland is going to lose clout in the next congressional session. 

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