So, once again, black folks in Maryland got chumped by the Democratic Party.

Think of it as a quadrennial tradition. In 2002, Maryland’s Democratic Party chumped black folks. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, then lieutenant governor of Maryland who was running for governor as a Democrat, overlooked dozens of qualified black Democrats to choose a white running mate.

She lost.

Republican candidate Robert Ehrlich, then a congressman, chose Michael Steele, a black Republican, as his running mate. Ehrlich is now governor of Maryland, running for a second term. The first black candidate elected to statewide office in Maryland — lieutenant governor — was a black Republican, not a black Democrat.

This year, two black Democratic candidates ran for statewide office. Former congressman and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume ran for a U.S. Senate seat. Stuart Simms, a former Baltimore state’s attorney who headed both the state departments of juvenile services and correctional services and public safety, ran for attorney general of Maryland.

Last week, both Mfume and Simms lost, rejected by the majority of Maryland’s Democrats. And what were the Republicans doing? What the Democrats failed to do in 2002: Making history.

This time, Republicans elected a black candidate as a party nominee for a statewide office. That was Steele, who is making his own run for the U.S. Senate. That overshadows the selection of Del. Anthony Brown of Prince George’s County as Mayor Martin O’Malley’s running mate. O’Malley, the mayor of Baltimore, is running for governor. He selected Brown, whose mother is white but whose father is Afro-Cuban, to run as lieutenant governor.

By this time, Republicans are saying “been there, done that” regarding putting a black candidate on the gubernatorial ticket. They’ve moved on to making a black candidate running on his own the party’s nominee for a statewide office.

And what are Maryland Democrats doing? Like I said before, chumping black folks.

The rejection of both Mfume and Simms should provide Maryland’s black Democrats with some food for thought and prompt some questions. And the first question should be why white Maryland Democrats don’t vote for black Democratic candidates for statewide office in the same proportion black Maryland Democrats vote for white candidates for statewide office.

In fact, blacks do that at the municipal level in Maryland. O’Malley is the white mayor of predominantly black Baltimore only because enough black folks voted for him -- against two qualified black opponents, by the way -- in 1999. One of those candidates, former Baltimore City Council President Lawrence Bell, was actually more qualified than O’Malley.

For decades in Baltimore, the unwritten rule was that the path to the mayor’s office was to run for first city council, then president of the city council and then for mayor. Bell’s credentials were his professionally and competently running the Baltimore City Council for four years. He got rejected by both black and white Democrats.

Mfume’s credentials were roughly equal to those of his leading opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin, who won the nomination. But Simms’ educational and career credentials were clearly superior to those of his opponent, Montgomery County State’s Attorney Doug Gansler, who won the Democratic primary for attorney general.

And Simms didn’t have Gansler’s baggage. Gansler has been accused of being such a publicity-seeking glory hound that some media folks have complained that it’s not a case of his being unavailable for comment. Some media folks lament that Gansler is “unavoidable for comment.”

Gansler’s the guy who had Montgomery County drag convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad up from Virginia for a trial in Maryland that did nothing for justice but was costly to taxpayers. Critics charged Muhammad’s trial was a publicity stunt designed to get votes for Gansler.

Simms had no such criticism when he ran the state’s attorney’s office in Baltimore, the much tougher job by any measurement. Simms is also a graduate of a prestigious Baltimore prep school and Dartmouth College. If he’s not an ideal candidate for statewide office, what black Democratic candidate is?

Mind you, at least one white Democratic Party leader implied Steele was an Uncle Tom four years ago. That’s mighty big talk coming from a guy who leads a party that has yet to elect a black candidate to a statewide office. But blacks have played the Uncle Tom/Sambo/Oreo cookie card on Steele too.

But if Steele can get elected to statewide office by Republicans while being an Uncle Tom/Sambo/Oreo cookie, what do we call black Maryland Democrats who got chumped by their party for the second straight election?