Ben Cardin knows a lot about Maryland.

During his farewell tour’s earliest days, the retiring U.S. senator talked spontaneously in Cumberland about municipal tax policy, broadband access for Crisfield and regulators who ignore New Windsor’s worries about power grid expansion.

He effortlessly shifted from joking with U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger about the Naval Academy to explaining that Grantsville is a good place to live as long as your name is Edwards — like almost everyone there.

“I’m a senator,” he said, brown eyes glowing with mischief. “Give me a platform and I’m going to speak.”

In January, Cardin will lose that platform. It’s a moment of transition for Maryland, one with far-reaching consequences.

Through 58 years as a lawmaker eager to find partners regardless of party, Cardin has crafted a statewide network of friends, allies and connections. It seems he knows everyone and is in every pressing issue.

Even in his waning days as a lawmaker, he’s talking about the Washington Commanders’ future as the NFL team considers a move from Landover back to D.C. It’s gotten tangled with the notion of shifting one of the district’s Air National Guard wings to Maryland, which is losing its airplanes in Middle River.

There are asks for just a little more Ben everywhere — another bill, another check, one more interview and maybe help with the state budget.

“I don’t have $2 billion in my pocket,” he said. “And it’s above my credit card limit.”

Even voters who reject his liberal principles say he has been a nonpartisan friend, a practitioner of civil discourse and a reliable channel who helps pay for local priorities.

His aides have a word for it: Cardinesque.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan confronted Cardin at one stop, lecturing him on the impact of a wind farm approved off the coast.

“Our concerns have fallen on deaf ears, but that doesn’t make them any less real,” he said.

Then he pirouetted to praise Cardin and a 50-year federal agreement to replenish beaches and asked Cardin to get it renewed.

“Sen. Cardin has been a terrific partner for Ocean City,” Meehan said.

So, what’s at risk? Money, sure.

If President-elect Donald Trump succeeds in cutting $500 billion in spending and half the civil service, the system Cardin played like a virtuoso for Maryland will exit a weaker Washington with him.

“It’s unpredictable,” Cardin said. “I think that’s one of the major concerns. It’s hard to figure out exactly how this is going to come about, but I don’t think any of us have realized what the potential changes can mean.”

Yet, it’s more than money.

Cardin personified government for so long that it will take years to redefine what “public servant” means once the smoothed vowels of his Baltimore lilt — “wooder,” not “water” — fade.

There are toasts — sparkling wine in a college conference room, beer in a Frederick brewery with the county executive, coffee by the fireplace of a mountain lodge.

It has been lighthearted, the gentle ribbing of the 81-year-old Democrat by a 59-year-old Republican who sits beneath the State House portrait of Cardin as the youngest Maryland House speaker in 1979.

“Wow, senator, you looked a lot younger,” Del. Thomas Hutchinson quipped.

There are cheers and selfies, casual for a lawyer who looks like he’s wearing a suit even when he’s in shirtsleeves.

It continues Friday in Annapolis and Columbia, where environmentalists will praise his work for the Chesapeake Bay and hope U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah Elfreth fills out his cape. More are planned. At 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, he’ll give a final address from the Senate floor.

Wherever he visits, he says how this spot seems special, how that place protects a special way of life. How he and his wife, Myrna, want to come back.

“I love spending time in Talbot County,” he told a crowd in Easton. “I can’t afford to live in Talbot County.”

Between chatting through a room decked for Christmas in Cumberland or listening to a rabbi give thanks in Easton, Cardin was working.

“I’ve been on the phone on foreign policy and the National Defense Authorization that is being negotiated,” Cardin, who chairs the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in Wye Mills. “I have 20 or 30 provisions in that bill, so we’re trying to keep them intact.”

He’s also negotiating a plan to end AIDS as a health threat by 2030 and pay for a new Francis Scott Key Bridge. He’s trying to Trump-proof the planned FBI move to Greenbelt.

Thinking he was done, I asked a new question only to learn his list won’t end until fellow Democrat Angela Alsobrooks takes the oath to replace him, becoming the state’s first Black woman senator.

“I’m not done!” he laughed.

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen will assume some of Cardin’s role, and Alsobrooks campaigned on continuation rather than disruption. Differences, though, will emerge.

Van Hollen split with Cardin over Israel’s wars; Alsobrooks will develop interests and networks of her own.

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s sole Republican in Congress, is ascendant, part of the Republican majority in Washington. It’s unclear how he’ll deal with local priorities he opposes — if he’ll be Cardinesque.

You can’t write about Ben Cardin without mentioning his work on human rights, including press freedom.

I was on the cover of Time magazine in 2018. It was one of four featuring journalists facing violence, and a portrait of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was on another.

When a gunman killed five of my colleagues in our Annapolis newsroom, journalist Wendi Winters died trying to defend them. Cardin asked Trump and President Joe Biden to award her a posthumous Medal of Freedom. Both declined.

When Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents four months later, it was Cardin who championed sanctions on then-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud — again blocked by presidential priorities.

It has been a constant theme for him, from sanctions on Russian officials who murdered dissidents to authorizing a memorial for fallen journalists to calling on Biden to certify that the Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified.

So, the measure of Cardin’s time is not just the projects he funded; it’s the lives he touched.

To find that, all you have to do is travel around Maryland.