State Del. Leslie Hutchinson, whose political career was blighted by a series of unpaid debts, motor vehicle law violations and ethical missteps, will not seek a second term.

Sharply diminished re-election prospects and family considerations led to the decision, the 32-year-old legislator said last week.

Instead, she will concentrate on rearing her son, completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Baltimore and continuing her search for a job.

"I don't think it's fair to my constituents to do this on their clock," she said.

The election of 1994 once seemed within the grasp of this daughter of a prominent Baltimore County political family. But after her well-publicized travails, supporters and opponents told her she faced immense difficulties in her Essex district.

"Friends said it would be the toughest race in the state, but it could be won. I'd have to knock on 12,000 doors. People are forgiving. I have apologized and come to grips with the reality of my life. I've done my best to take care of things," she said.

She contended she did a good job as a first-term legislator, solving constituents' problems and helping bring projects to the county. But she said she did a poor job of managing her personal affairs and, on that score, she agrees with those who say she does not deserve re-election.

"It's hard when you've done what I've done to go and face people."

During a three-year period after her election in 1990, Ms. Hutchinson:

* Drove her car without proper registration or insurance and put discarded 1970 license plates on her car.

* Was fined $1,500, given a suspended jail term and put on probation for three years for driving with a suspended license and without insurance.

* Failed to appear in court seven times.

* Left her job at the Baltimore County Police Department in 1992 after learning she faced disciplinary action for driving on a suspended license and failing to make good quickly on a bad check.

* Wrote a security deposit check against a defunct political campaign account.

* Failed to pay bills in Annapolis, where angry creditors tried to recoup by billing the state.

* Failed to pay 1991 state income taxes.

* Failed to make car payments, leading to the garnisheeing of her legislative wages.

* Tried to start a business by improperly using her connections as a legislator. That business effort collapsed, she said.

In an interview last week, Ms. Hutchinson discussed her self-inflicted wounds. She said commentators were right when they called her a "flagrant scofflaw." And yet, she said, she was not deliberately putting herself above the law.

Her personal life was "out of control," she said.

Her fall began soon after she was elected. Congratulations poured in. People invited her to make speeches. She was being appointed to important-sounding posts in the General Assembly.

Family of politicians

Her grandfather was Del. Preston A. Hutchinson, a steel worker who used his tavern as successful political base, and her uncle is Donald P. Hutchinson, a former state senator and former Baltimore County executive.

When she left her house in Essex as a child, she said, her parents told her, "Don't forget who you are."

Suddenly, she was an elected official, a winner like her uncle and grandfather. She was a member of the House of Delegates.

"The high was overwhelming. I had grown up in politics so I knew what to expect, but I was completely taken by surprise by the rush of it all," she says. Once in office, she found she could "move the bureaucracy," help people and become a legislative star -- the best ever, she hoped.

Her slide started with pride. Then pride kept it going and made it worse.

At 29, she was the youngest woman elected to the House of Delegates. But she and her son, now 11, were living with her grandmother in a house on Lorraine Avenue in Essex.

"I thought, 'My gosh, how could my constituents possibly respect someone who was still living at home.' My political upbringing taught me that in politics, perception is reality."

She said she wanted people to say, "Look at Les. She's got it together.

"So I went and I moved. That's when everything began to unravel." She took a $650-a-month apartment at Villa Capri, an apartment and condominium development. Within four months she was falling behind on her rent, but she did not move for four months.

She missed automobile insurance payments.

She said she got no child support from her ex-husband. However she had her legislative salary of $28,000 a year and, for a time, income from a job with the Baltimore County Police Department. Despite that, she said, she accumulated debts of about $25,000: child care, automobile payments, clothing, "going here, going there."

"It cost a little money to be a legislator," she said.

To be a big shot?

"If you will," she replied.

Still has debts

She still owes $13,000 to family members who bailed her out. She's back living with her grandmother, hoping to land some work helping candidates with campaign plans.

At the depths of her denial, she divided her life in distinct and contradictory halves.

"I had this public life of being very together, this up-and-coming mover and shaker, but my personal life was going to hell in a handbag."

But she woke up in the middle of the night, wondering when she would collide with the reality she was creating.

She said she had headaches and broke out in hives. Then she would pretend -- even in the face of pressing trouble with the court -- that the bad half of her life would go away or that her problems didn't exist.

"It was just totally not happening," she said.

Lost credibility

She knows by now that nothing -- not denial, not lost mail, not lack of training in financial management -- suffices as an explanation. If she says that some court notices and some insurance bills were lost in the mail, people laugh. She said she doesn't blame them.

She knows her critics say she was deliberately irresponsible and thought she could get away with it.

But she said, "I never felt I was above anything. I just couldn't deal with it as a rational person."

When an investigator from the Motor Vehicle Administration took the license plates from her car, her reckless patching and filling moved to another level.

She said she had a speaking engagement that night and, rather than cancel it or get a ride, she went to the attic to fetch plates used 20 years earlier by her Uncle Donald.

That ruse went undetected during the 1993 session, in part because, as a legislator, she had an underground parking spot in Annapolis and seldom moved her car. But by April the authorities were at her door in Baltimore County, confiscating her uncle's old tags from the car outside.

Missed opportunities

Looking back, she said, there are any number of points when she might have saved herself.

After she was cited for driving without a license and failing to quickly make good on a bad check, she faced only a three-day suspension from her Police Department job. Other sanctions might have come as a result of the traffic violations, but her income might have been preserved.

Rather than face embarrassing questions in the political half of her life, she left the $20-an-hour job with what she said were assurances from the department that the voters of Essex would never know.

"In retrospect, had I come clean, cried uncle, paid my bills, none of this would have happened," she said.

And she didn't ask for help.

"I was too proud, too embarrassed to say, 'Look guys I'm over my head.' "

Her degree will be in political science, but she has lost the opportunity she once had to test and perfect the theories she is learning.

"I paid a big price," she said.