Washington - Barack Obama liked to describe his run for president as a gamble that the country was ready for change. The bet just paid off spectacularly for him.
Elijah Cummings made an Obama bet, too.
Twenty months ago, he said yes when Obama called, asking if Cummings would head his campaign in the state. And when Obama won the presidency, the congressman from West Baltimore won big, too.
Elijah E. Cummings is now the man to see if you want something from the incoming administration.
Catching his breath in his Capitol Hill office near the end of an epochal week, Cummings said he hadn't had time to sift through all the e-mails coming in.
"People want to be on the transition team, and they want jobs," he said. "They see me as a link to those opportunities."
His emergence as a Maryland go-to guy for the president-elect is politics at its most elemental: What Cummings did for Obama has made him an obvious conduit.
Over the past two years, he traveled to Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas, Virginia and Florida to campaign for Obama. He spent last weekend, two days before his own re-election (he won with almost 80 percent of the vote), spreading the Obama gospel at black churches in Toledo, Ohio.
Cummings said he always had a feeling this would happen.
"I go with my gut a lot. I just knew he was going to win," he said.
It would be easy, in the afterglow of Obama's victory, to play down Cummings' decision to go with him - except that, in doing so, Cummings was bucking the state's Democratic establishment, which was already in the process of lining up heavily behind the front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski was a national Clinton co-chair. Gov. Martin O'Malley got out front early for her, too.
It might also seem obvious to expect an African-American congressman to support the first serious black presidential candidate. But prominent black Democrats, such as Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, decided initially to back Clinton, whose husband enjoyed enormous popularity among black voters. Other senior black elected officials, such as Rep. James E. Clyburn, a high-ranking member of the House leadership, chose to stay on the sidelines until the nomination was decided.
Politicians are notorious for having long memories, especially when it comes to who was for them - and against them - especially when it mattered most.
