Cardin Won't Seek Reelection, Announces Theater Tour
Maryland’s Senior U.S. Senator, Ben Cardin, announced today he will not seek reelection in 2025. “After more than a half-century of public service, it is time for me to sit back and focus on family, community and pursuits abandoned long ago,” Cardin said at a Baltimore press conference.
While Cardin may be leaving public service, he won’t be leaving the public spotlight. “I am reigniting a passion let I smolder for five decades, my love for theater and the performance arts,” Cardin told reporters. The Baltimore native starred as Arvide Abernathy in Guys and Dolls at the former Royal Theater in 1963 and performed in summer stock in the Catskills during law school. Cardin dropped his acting pursuits in 1967 when he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates.
Maryland Republicans are rejoicing over Cardin’s announcement but perhaps none more so than Robin Ficker, perennial political candidate and fervent Cardin critic. “This is a moment I have been waiting fifty years to see happen, and nobody is more thrilled than me by what’s coming next,” Ficker said.
What’s next is that Toby’s Dinner Theater in Columbia announced Cardin and Ficker, both 79, will appear together on stage in January 2025 in a remake of Neil Simon’s 1965 play The Odd Couple. Cardin will play neurotic neat-freak Felix Ungar while Ficker takes the role fun-loving slob Oscar Madison.
Ficker is well-known and loved in Maryland’s theater circuit. He was a Baltimore Sun Onstage Award nominee for outstanding male performance in 2001 for his portrayal of Tevye in Baltimore’s Oregon Ridge Dinner Theater production of Fiddler on the Roof and won the prestigious award in 2012 for his role as Angel Dumott Schunard in Rent at the Iron Crow Theatre.
Cardin and Ficker have been sparring for over sixty years – they first met on the stage of It’s Academic in 1961 while representing their respective high schools. “Playing Felix and Oscar just seems perfect,” Cardin said. “We’ve been crossing swords one way or another for three quarters of a century.”
Tickets for The Odd Couple go on sale in January 2024.
