GRANTSVILLE — GRANTSVILLE - As she quietly begins another re-election run, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski has a $1.2 million campaign account and no challenger anywhere in sight.
"How 'bout that?" she exclaims.
Election Day is still a year and a half off, but the biggest event in the campaign might have taken place already: Mikulski's decision to seek a history-making fifth term. Her move, yet to be formally announced, disappointed would-be successors in both parties who spent the past few years fanning rumors that she would retire.
"Right now, as you can see, I believe the best campaign is the one you don't have to have," the senator said in an interview during a recent two-day swing through Western Maryland. "I believe in what I call a deterrent strategy, which is to get out there and do your job, so that people continue to think you ought to be there, and then have the financial resources to be able to get your message out."
Mikulski raised $442,000 in the first three months of the year, tangible evidence of her intentions. More than $2 of every $5 came from political action committees, according to Federal Election Commission records.
The special-interest contributions reflect her place at the center of one of Washington's biggest fights in years: the overhaul of the nation's health care system. PACs representing insurance and pharmaceutical companies, podiatrists and chiropractors have donated to her re-election fund. Organized labor, defense contractors and Washington lobby firms gave.
Mikulski, 72, would become the longest-serving female senator in the nation's history if she won another term, and completing it would tie her with former colleague Paul S. Sarbanes for the record as Maryland's longest-tenured senator.
"We're looking ahead to 2010," she told supporters at a reception in Cumberland. "We're going to be very active and do all that we can" for the Democratic ticket.
Four decades ago, as a community activist, Mikulski got started in politics by blocking the extension of Interstate 83 through Fells Point and her Highlandtown neighborhood.
These days, she gives local officials step-by-step advice on securing federal dollars for road-building and other projects.
At a meeting held, aptly enough, in the town of Grantsville, she handed out new education funding from the federal stimulus package for the western end of the state. Discussing the economic wants of an area with close to double-digit unemployment, she told a largely Republican group of county commissioners how to lobby Washington for money that could turn a twisting rural highway into a north-south interstate.
