He was the favorite four years ago of more than 446,000 Marylanders, who thought he would make a better governor than William Donald Schaefer. Now, Republican William S. Shepard says he wants to "finish the job" he began in 1990.
Starting this morning on the courthouse steps in Oakland, in the far reaches of Western Maryland, Mr. Shepard begins the first of 24 appearances in five days -- in Baltimore and in each of the 23 counties -- to kick off a campaign that really began the day after he lost to Mr. Schaefer by 60 percent to 40 percent.
He says he is confident he can again win Maryland's Republican primary, scheduled for Sept. 13, and then return the Maryland State House to the Republicans for the first time since Spiro T. Agnew was governor.
But as the retired diplomat from Montgomery County scours the state for votes this time around, he faces a substantially 'N changed political landscape.
No longer are desperate state Republican officials begging him -- or anyone else with passable credentials -- to get into the race. With Mr. Schaefer barred from seeking a third term, Republicans believe 1994 offers them their best chance in decades to turn Maryland into a competitive, two-party state, and they seem fearful of leaving the task in the hands of a man who has never held elective office.
As his reward for sacrificing himself against a powerful Democratic incumbent four years ago, two better-known Republican officeholders -- Rep. Helen Delich Bentley and Maryland House Minority Leader Ellen R. Sauerbrey, both of Baltimore County -- are trying to wrest away a nomination Mr. Shepard once thought might be his for the asking.
After winning 12 of 23 counties against Mr. Schaefer, the 58-year-old retired Foreign Service officer is still looking for his first big-name endorsement in this election.
Money troubles
Potentially most damaging, he has been able to raise precious little money. This is the first year in which Maryland gubernatorial candidates can have part of their campaigns paid for with money contributed years ago by taxpayers, but Mr. Shepard has raised so little that he may not be able to tap into the financial assistance he so desperately needs.
He acknowledges that he unwittingly raised the bulk of the $88,000 he reported to state election officials last November prior to Sept. 1, 1993. That was the beginning date for candidates to raise money that subsequently could be matched by the state with $1 for every $2 raised.
According to his last report, he raised less than $17,000 in qualifying contributions after Sept. 1, and had only $922 in cash on hand as of Nov. 1. He spent the rest on printing, postage and fund-raising activities.
Mr. Shepard will not say how much he has raised since then, but says he is "meeting expenses," has a pair of fund-raising letters out and plans fund-raising events this summer.
But he concedes that he may not raise the minimum $149,670 in qualifying contributions required by a July 15 deadline to receive matching money for the primary. Ever the optimist, Mr. Shepard says that if he does not qualify for the public funds in the primary, he will try again for the funds in the general election.
In contrast, two of the leading Democratic candidates, Prince George's County Executive Parris N. Glendening and Lt. Gov. Melvin A. Steinberg, have each raised more than $1 million and are aiming at a $3 million goal.
Partly as a result of his money problems -- and partly because of the more genteel style that the erudite, multilingual world traveler brings to the race -- the Shepard candidacy has few of the trappings of a traditional statewide campaign.
He has no entourage, no press spokesman, no hangers-on. He drives himself to his own political events, writes his own newsletters and often answers his own phone.
He has hired no professional consultants and no political pollsters. In fact, he has no paid campaign staff. He educates himself on issues by sitting in the audience at hearings just like any other member of the public.
He seems to love campaigning, even as he appears awkward doing it. Tall and a bit stiff, with black hair and bushy eyebrows, he displays a hard plastic placard in his breast pocket that declares his name and candidacy for governor for anyone who may not recognize him.
Mr. Shepard, whose postings have included Saigon, Singapore, Athens, Budapest and Bordeaux, has a reserved, almost formal manner of speaking. But his pale blue eyes sparkle when he talks politics. He clearly enjoys the game. Yet he seems almost confused by the inherent unfairness of politics, that it is somehow unsporting.
A graduate of Harvard Law School with experiences ranging from helping to arrange the Paris peace talks during the Vietnam War to negotiating international disarmament agreements, he is clearly not naive. Yet he confidently presses on despite obstacles that would have dissuaded a less committed candidate. One of his passions is the candidates debate, partly because he enjoys the intellectual exercise of discussing the issues but also because such forums give him about the only public exposure he can afford.
He tried in vain to get Governor Schaefer to debate him in 1990, and complains now that Mrs. Bentley is ducking the issues by failing to show up at many of this year's events.
Late last week, he released a 60-some page book of his ideas titled "A Moderate Revolution -- A Vision for Maryland." Among his thoughts: Refocus the state's attention on Baltimore from the Inner Harbor to the inner city.
Of the title, he says: "I want to change Maryland's politics -- that's the revolution part . . . and what I'm proposing is moderate, not radical."
At forums, he typically talks about the need for fiscal constraint, all but saying the words "I told you so" concerning his 1990 predictions that the Schaefer administration was headed for budget deficits and tax increases.
He says he would do more to stimulate the economy and create jobs. He says he would revamp the state's economic development department, promoting exports abroad (he and his wife run an export consulting business) and making the agency more easy to use for Maryland firms at home.
He opposed the use of taxpayer money to build the Camden Yards baseball stadium; has taken a restrictive view of legalized abortions; has called the death penalty "a regretable necessity"; believes Maryland should move from an annual to biennial budget process; and says the state needs to consolidate its Cabinet structure to make government more efficient.
"He's well-versed on all the subjects, all the issues. He's kept up with it," said Alice Wright, a cosmetologist and farmer's wife who heads Mr. Shepard's effort in Kent County. "He's just a very fine-caliber person."
At campaign stops, he reminds listeners of the 40 percent of the vote he won in 1990, and has long insisted that most voters were choosing him, not merely opposing Mr. Schaefer.
Voters' short memories
But in February, a telephone survey of Maryland voters conducted by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research Inc. of Columbia showed Mrs. Bentley with 46 percent of the GOP vote compared with only 9 percent for Mr. Shepard and 7 percent for Mrs. Sauerbrey.
"He is still largely unknown to most state voters, even though he ran against Governor Schaefer four years ago," said Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon's president. "He did not run a high visibility campaign [in 1990]. He benefited basically from being the other person opposite Schaefer.
"Obviously, a lot of those people don't remember who they voted for, just that they voted against Schaefer," he said.
Still, Mr. Shepard insists he can muster enough grass-roots support this year to win. He has doggedly attended every Lincoln Day dinner local Republican committees have thrown, and he counts among his supporters county officials and members of local Republican Central Committees.
He suggests that Mrs. Sauerbrey may be hard to beat because she appeals so strongly to conservatives, who are considered most likely to vote in the primary. But her politics, he warns, might not help her -- or the GOP -- in a state in which Democrats still retain a 2-to-1 voter registration advantage.
As for Mrs. Bentley, he questions whether she is truly committed to the race. He again notes her absence from candidates forums and her slowness in putting together a campaign team, and raises the specter that she might decide by the July 5 filing deadline to run again for her old congressional seat.
Mr. Shepard and Mrs. Bentley have clashed before. It was Mrs. Bentley who recruited perennial Republican warhorse Ross Z. Pierpont to oppose Mr. Shepard in the 1990 primary after Mr. Shepard picked his wife, Lois, as his running mate.
"I don't know where Helen Bentley stands because she's not out there," Mr. Shepard says. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if at
some point Helen Bentley doesn't read the tea leaves in the general election and have second thoughts about going ahead."
Even if she stays in the race, Mr. Shepard thinks Mrs. Bentley and Mrs. Sauerbrey will split the primary vote in the Baltimore area. If that happens, he says, and if he runs strong in his home district of Montgomery County, where a fifth of Maryland's Republicans live, and if he can hold his 1990 base among the Republicans in rural Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore, he could win it.
But when the straw votes were counted at a 500-person Lincoln Day dinner in Montgomery County in March, the GOP's 1990 standard-bearer finished a distant third.