Democrats plan a race-based campaign against a candidate who aims to be Maryland’s first black man elected to the U. S. Senate, according to a confidential Democratic Party campaign document obtained by The New York Sun.

The target of the emerging smear campaign is Michael Steele, the Republican nominee for a seat vacated by Paul Sarbanes, a liberal Democrat who has represented Maryland in the Senate for 30 years.

With the help of life-size cardboard silhouettes of Mr. Steele and the slogan “Make History,” Mr. Steele became Maryland’s lieutenant governor in 2002 – the first black man ever elected to statewide office in the state. Now he hopes to make history again.

Mr. Steele has long been a focus of Democratic fire. In previous campaigns, Mr. Steele has been pelted with Oreo cookies for allegedly betraying his race. Two Democratic campaign staffers resigned last year when they illicitly obtained copies of Mr. Steele’s financial records.

Now a confidential report, prepared for the Maryland Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee calls for “aggressive” and immediate action against Mr. Steele.

The Republican has “a clear ability to break through the Democratic stronghold among African American voters in Maryland,” the report predicted.

Democrats’ victory calculus has long relied on capturing virtually all of the black vote. Now a 37-page report, based on a telephone survey of 489 black likely voters and presented by Cornell Belcher, a pollster handpicked by Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, suggests that some of that support may be slipping away

“At this time, a majority of African-American voters are open to supporting Steele, particularly younger voters,” Mr. Belcher concluded.

“Steele’s messaging to the African American community has clearly had a positive effect – with many voters reciting his campaign slogans and his advertising,” the report found. Younger black voters, especially men, as well as churchgoers and single mothers, tended to be “very open to Steele’s value messaging.”

Mr. Belcher recommended strong action. “Democrats must be aggressive, Steele is a unique challenge,” he wrote. “Democrats can not afford to wait until after the primary election to knock Steele down. A persuasion campaign should start as soon as possible to discredit Steele as a viable candidate for the [black] community.”

Mr. Belcher spelled out how to discredit Mr. Steele: “Connecting Steele to National Republicans, especially on issues such as Medicare reform and Social Security privatization, can turn Steele into a typical Republican in the eyes of voters, as opposed to an African American candidate.”

“This report is solid proof that Michael Steele’s opponents are obsessed with their partisan, race-based attack strategy aimed at dividing Marylanders instead of uniting them behind any positive idea of their own,” said Steele campaign spokesperson Melissa Sellers.

Oren Shur, spokesman for likely Democratic nominee, Congressman Benjamin L. Cardin, failed to return repeated calls made by the Sun.

Attacking Mr. Steele’s connections to the black community could backfire, warns District Heights, Maryland Mayor Carol Johnson. Mayor Johnson, who is black, represents a predominantly black town in the Prince George’s county, a key battleground.

“I was shocked and then I was angry,” she said, when she was shown the report. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It shocked me that they would go so far to smear Steele’s identity.”

Mayor Johnson represents precisely the kind of black voter that the Democrats are now concerned about. A lifelong Democrat and member of the city council as a member of the party, she decided to switch to the GOP and run for mayor in 2003. She was surprised by the lack of negative reaction among her overwhelmingly Democratic neighbors.

“I was expecting that I was going to be called a traitor or something like that. But, when people called me, they just said they wanted to know why I did what I did. That was it. I was surprised.”

Then she won the election.

Mayor Johnson believes that younger black voters are increasingly open to Republican candidates – and that Democrats will fight tooth-and-nail to hold minority votes. The report is “telling me that they are afraid. I think it [the 2006 Senate race] is going to get ugly. No telling what else they will pull out of their hat.”

And, she said, “It tells me what the Democrat Party is about.”