If Hillary Clinton is to succeed in the Maryland presidential primary - and in her quest for the Democratic nomination - it might be because of people like Carma Wilson and Marcia Massey.
Both women were standing in the entrance tunnel to a Montgomery County Metro stop before sunrise this week, shaking off the cold as they shook hands for Hillary Clinton. Both women, who are in their 50s, said this was the first time they have been actively involved in a campaign.
"I've just known all along from the time she was first lady that someday she was going to be president," said Massey, 59, of Aspen Hill. "It's been fun. It's been inspiring."
Though Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has surged in the polls in recent weeks, he has not cracked Clinton's bedrock of support among women of her generation, the first for whom the idea of a woman becoming president was more than just a fantasy. It's an advantage her supporters in Maryland - both men and women - are seeking to capitalize on.
"I'm looking forward to the day my daughters and everyone can say the words, `Madam President,'" Gov. Martin O'Malley said to cheers at an Annapolis rally yesterday, where he was surrounded by women officeholders supporting Clinton.
Evidence of her appeal to women is hard to miss, wherever she appears.
When Clinton spoke to a crowd of students this week at Lee High School in Arlington, Va., women outnumbered men so much that reporters scoured the bleachers of the school's gymnasium looking for the odd male.
Stephanie Wong, 32, stood along a railing with her daughter, 3-year-old Iris, and husband, Joe, to watch the speech. "I was a Hillary supporter long before" the speech, Wong said. "But there's just such an energy to seeing her live that you don't see on television."
Many analysts expect Obama to best Clinton in the Maryland primary Tuesday, but there have been no recent public polls. The most recent one, conducted for The Sun in early January, showed that he enjoyed more support among women at the time than she did, with 39 percent for him and 29 percent for her.
But that was on the heels of his big win in the Iowa caucuses and before her comeback in the New Hampshire primary. Since then, said Annapolis pollster Steve Raabe, who conducted The Sun's survey, the New York senator has been corralling a greater share of women's votes, even as Obama firmed up his support among African-American voters.
