It's long after dark outside the Giant Food supermarket at the Dorsey's Search Village Center in Howard County, and Kevin Zeese is in the parking lot looking for votes.
He spots three people standing around a car and makes his way over. Tracy Meyers and Mark Davis are visiting Giant worker Laura Riesett on her break. Zeese shakes hands, introduces himself and tells them he is running for the U.S. Senate.
"I've been opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning," he says. "I have a tax plan that will let people keep more of their money. I'm trying to address some of the issues that the two major parties aren't paying attention to."
Riesett calls the pitch "somewhat interesting." She hasn't begun to pay attention to the Senate race but says she would consider voting for a third-party candidate.
Zeese calls it "midnight campaigning" - late-night visits to businesses and workplaces, when he says customers and workers have more time to talk and listen. It's one way the 51-year-old attorney and activist is trying to build support for a historic challenge to the two-party grip on Maryland politics.
As an outsider trying to crash the close contest between Democratic U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin and Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele - experienced politicians both supported by their national parties --- Zeese doesn't stand a chance, analysts say. He has raised about $70,000 to his opponents' millions, and he has struggled to gain news media coverage.
"I don't expect him to poll more than 2 or 3 percent," says James G. Gimpel, a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park. "Maryland has never really had a third-party tradition. That makes it difficult, particularly when you've got an electorate that is pretty polarized between the two major parties."
And yet. Zeese is believed to be the first candidate anywhere in the country to win the endorsements of both the Green Party and the Libertarian Party (he also has the support of the Maryland's small Populist Party). Polls show broad support for alternatives to the Democratic and Republican parties. The proportion of Maryland voters registered to other parties or as independents has grown to more than 16 percent.
Zeese has won inclusion in at least some of the Senate debates - an apparent first for a third-party candidate in Maryland. His calls for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, national health insurance and a radical restructuring of the federal income tax drew cheers last week at the first debate, before the Greater Baltimore Urban League. He is campaigning throughout the state and aims to run advertisements on cable television.
