Poor Ben Cardin.
Both Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) campaigned for the Maryland Democrat during his 2006 Senate race. Both helped him raise money.
{mosads}Both have since served with him on Senate committees. Both are now running for president and want the first-term senator on their side. Badly.
“I’m getting a lot of interest,” Cardin said. “But I’m uncommitted, and both campaigns know where I am. Their priorities are my priorities. I think they would both be great presidents. Both came to my rescue in my campaign. Both are my friends.”
As Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. voters go to the polls Tuesday, Cardin is among 51 senators who so far are staying out of the presidential endorsement scramble. Remarkably, this late in the campaign season, there is still a slim majority of senators who are either staying neutral on purpose, holding out to make a point — or truly torn with indecision.
The 51 undecided senators — excluding Clinton, Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) themselves — include 27 Democrats who are being watched especially closely due to the tight nature of the Democratic race. The GOP contest, by comparison, is now generally believed to be secured by McCain.
The upcoming primary races mean those senators still unaffiliated are now some of the biggest prizes left on the map. Besides Cardin’s would-be support in Tuesday’s Maryland primary, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) is staying neutral in Virginia’s primary contest. Their local colleagues, meanwhile, have already jumped into the race — Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) has endorsed Clinton, while Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) supports McCain.
Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) has yet to offer an endorsement ahead of Hawaii’s Feb. 19 caucus, and Wisconsin Democratic Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold are undecided ahead of their state’s primary on the same day.
Likewise, two of the most valuable upcoming primaries — the 161-delegate Ohio primary March 4 and the 188-delegate Pennsylvania primary April 22 — are putting the heat on Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) to make up their minds.
“There is a lot of friendly pressure being exerted back and forth,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), an Obama supporter. “One of us who endorsed Obama will be talking to Sherrod Brown, and then you’ll turn around and someone who endorsed Sen. Clinton is talking to Sherrod Brown. I think the people who are receiving the most attention are [the] more than half of the senators [who] are still on the sidelines and haven’t made a call one way or another.”
So far, both Brown and Casey remain stuck on the fence.
“Both candidates campaigned for the senator, he feels both are qualified, and he likes both of them,” said Casey’s spokesman, Kendra Barkoff.
They probably can’t stay stuck forever. The tight nature of the Democratic race has heightened the superdelegate role of all 535 members of Congress, all of whom will vote for a candidate at their respective parties’ conventions this summer.
If the Clinton-Obama contest is still dragging on, superdelegates will find themselves even more in the spotlight.
Many say endorsements are particularly problematic in the Senate, where alliances can be critical in a close vote and endorsing one candidate of course means snubbing another.
“You serve on committees with these other senators. You work with them. You need them,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who supports Clinton. “You don’t want to go out of your way to make — not enemies, but not friends.”
The same tensions are in play on the Republican side, although some say delayed timing can help. By waiting to endorse McCain until just four days before Florida’s Jan. 29 primary, for instance, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) said he was able to preserve relationships with McCain’s opponents as long as possible.
“I waited because of the same reason I think many senators do — you don’t want to get into the middle of it.,” Martinez said. “You’ve got friends on all sides of the campaigns. Someone for Romney. Someone for Huckabee. Someone for McCain. You pick one, and you make everybody else mad. It’s a gamble. It’s a risk.”
The undecided senators include Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) — who plans to support the eventual Democratic nominee but is not a superdelegate— but not Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who has endorsed McCain.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) won’t be wading into the race either. Spokesman Jim Manley said Reid has no plans to endorse either Clinton or Obama before the convention opens on Aug. 25 in Denver.
“He has two colleagues running for president,” Manley said.
Cardin has tried to tread carefully, giving advice to both campaigns, taking calls from the highest levels of each and avoiding any timetable for an endorsement either way. But that hasn’t stopped the flood of calls from constituents to his D.C. office, asking him to endorse one candidate or the other.
Cardin brushes off talk of personal tensions over endorsements, describing it as part of the job of being a U.S. senator.
“This is a political arena, and every day we get into debates about supporting some people over others,” he said. “You have to make choices. Ultimately, I have to make a choice too.”
Manu Raju contributed to this article.