Whose Congresswoman?

Make no bones about it: the Fourth District is a Beltway constituency, full of people who identify with the nation’s capital before the state of Maryland.

Certainly Donna Edwards doesn’t. Just more than a week after her defeat of eight-term incumbent Al Wynn in the primary, she’s going national – and making it known.

Earlier this week, Edwards posted a video on the liberal blog Daily Kos, thanking them for supporting her campaign, but also saying, “We have to go farther than this.”

“We’ve got to identify other progressives to go into the United States Congress sworn in in January 2009, so we really can build a solid progressive coalition in Congress that has some backbone.”

Edwards said she would commit herself to supporting these other candidates to “shore us all up so that we can actually turn our backs on all the K Street lobbyists that – believe me – are already calling, trying to get in.”

“We don’t want them in. We don’t want them touching us, and that’s why we need you.”

So it appears Edwards will make good use of her 11-month House recess, raising money and spending it to buy herself more allies and better committee placements.

It’s also unclear what her relationship with her employers, the Arca Foundation, will be like in the months ahead, but it should be interesting to watch.

And last night, she appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews to counterbalance Indiana Rep. Dan Burton on American policy towards Cuba during the Castro-to-Castro transition.

This is an issue Edwards purportedly takes great interest in, having traveled to Cuba in the past. But her district does not include any major Cuban enclaves, nor is it particularly Hispanic for an urban vicinity, at five percent below the national average.

True, Burton’s district isn’t Hispanic either, but he is a 25-year House veteran, the third in-line Republican on Foreign Affairs and ranking member of its Western Hemisphere subcommittee. His constituents understand why he’s up there talking about Cuba, and while you could make the case that it affects the entire country just as much, you could also say there are many others who are already sitting members of Congress who could also speak to the issue.

Which she kind of acknowledged in her Daily Kos video, saying, “I’ve got to get to November.”

Maryland already has several influential members of Congress with national identities, like Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen and, to a lesser extent, long-serving Sen. Barbara Mikulski. Those public identities and the proximity to Washington D.C. are possibly the reasons why Marylanders accept that our representatives are “legislator-leaders,” if you will.

But Edwards has a long way to go, and if she gets too far ahead of herself, her new constituents won’t just lose sight of her; they may never get a glimpse at all.