The dust had barely settled on Election Day 1990 when Parris N. Glendening, affirmed by the voters for a third term as Prince George's County executive, knew the time had finally come to take his ambitions onto more challenging terrain.
Typically, he left nothing to chance. In the next four years he put together a campaign organization that has marched with military precision across Maryland's political landscape, its objective the State House.
Along the way, the Glendening organization has set a new standard for Maryland politics in terms of discipline, fund raising, planning and execution. Not to mention attention to detail, which the wooing of Darryl A. Jones amply demonstrates.
More than a year ago, as Mr. Glendening tells the story, Mr. Jones was preparing to step down as the head of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police, an organization that represents nearly 14,000 law enforcement officers across the state.
Before he was able to submit his resignation, he received a call from Mr. Glendening, whose office was in the county government complex in Upper Marlboro, not far from FOP headquarters. Mr. Glendening's message to Mr. Jones was brief. Stay on another year. Introduce me to the local lodge presidents, help me getthe FOP endorsement. Mr. Jones, who had worked && with Mr. Glendening as head of the Prince George's FOP lodge, agreed to do so.
In April, when the race for the Democratic nomination for governor was still competitive, Mr. Glendening won the backing of the FOP. Mr. Jones cast a key vote on the procedural motion that cleared the way for the endorsement.
There were other courtships, more details to attend to, constant planning. On primary day, Sept. 13, his army in fighting trim, Mr. Glendening rolled over three reasonably strong opponents, flattening his closest rival by 36 percentage points.
He was now ready to finish the job, to unleash his battle-tested troops on the lone obstacle between him and the Governor's Mansion -- U.S. Rep. Helen Delich Bentley. Except that when he peered across the partisan divide someone else was brandishing the GOP standard.
Ellen R. Sauerbrey, the Republican leader of the Maryland House. Down 13 points in the polls just days before the primary, she never seemed a threat -- until election night, when she beat Mrs. Bentley by an eye-popping 14 points.
Ellen Sauerbrey. The one thing Mr. Glendening didn't plan on.
A role for government
To his critics, Mr. Glendening, 52, is a latter-day New Deal liberal whose political philosophy entails big government and throwing money at social problems. His detractors further insist that he is a captive of the special interest groups who have endorsed him and contributed heavily to his campaign.
"I think he's well-intentioned," said Republican John A. Cade, an Anne Arundel state senator, "but I don't think he will have the discipline required to take Maryland forward in a responsible way in terms of revenues, expenditures and economic development." Glendening's champions see him differently, as a proven leader who has shepherded an ethnically diverse county through good times and bad for more than a decade, displaying fiscal restraint, expanding business opportunity and offering thoughtful approaches to difficult urban problems.
"He is a man who has a very clear vision for Maryland, and that vision includes creating jobs," said state Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat. "He is not a liberal. He is conservative on fiscal issues. . . . This is a very steady hand that is ready to lead us into the next century."
Mr. Glendening, without question, believes in government. As a student at Florida State University, he studied it, earning a doctorate in government and urban politics in 1967. That same ** year, he began teaching it as a professor at the University of Maryland College Park.
For the past quarter-century, he has been a practitioner as well. In 1972, he was elected to Hyattsville's City Council; in 1974, to the Prince George's County Council, serving eight years, two as chairman.
In 1982, he was elected county executive for the first time.
Some detractors say he's been lucky, others that he never faced tough opposition. Such carping pales considerably, if not totally, in the face of a striking political fact. In all his races in Prince George's County, primary and general, he never lost a precinct.
To Mr. Glendening, government can and should be a positive force in the lives of its citizens. He has been an activist county executive and seems determined to continue that activism as governor.
His top priority is education. Reared in poverty, he credits education with his success. Unlike Mrs. Sauerbrey, who would give $2,000 taxpayer-funded vouchers to parents who send their children to private schools, he promises to beam additional resources at public schools. In the process, he wants to reduce the reliance of education funding on property taxes.
Over the past several months, as fiscal storm clouds have hovered over Annapolis, he has made a number of other, potentially expensive promises, notably to Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and County Executive Neal Potter, of vote-rich Montgomery County.
He told the mayor that he would assist the city with new police aid, support a jobs program and take over the costs of the local Circuit Court system.
Mr. Potter received a pledge that the state would resume paying the employer's share of Social Security for teachers, community college workers and librarians, a $170 million-a-year program of which Montgomery was the greatest beneficiary. The subsidy was terminated two years ago when the state was in the throes of a fiscal crisis.
Mr. Glendening has also said that he favors collective bargaining for state employees, which helped win him the support of labor organizations representing those workers.
His primary opponents jumped on those promises and a few others. Melvin A. Steinberg called him the $300 million man, the lieutenant governor's estimate of the cost of the promises, a figure with which Mr. Glendening has not quarreled vehemently. Baltimore State Sen. American Joe Miedusiewski upped the ante, placing the cost at $760 million. Mrs. Sauerbrey, whose promised tax cut would result in a cumulative revenue loss of $2 billion over four years, has set the price of the Glendening promises at $600 million.
In response, Mr. Glendening said that his promises always depended on the availability of revenue and that it might take four, possibly eight years to fulfill them. Mr. Schmoke and Mr. Potter agreed, saying they did not expect him to bankrupt the state to redeem his pledges.
During the tempest surrounding his promises, Mr. Glendening asked the rhetorical question -- often repeated -- that may well define his candidacy: "If you're not going to invest in education, public safety and jobs, then why are you running for governor?"
Mr. Glendening has portrayed himself throughout the general election campaign as a "mainstream moderate," though his Democratic primary opponents called him a tax-and-spend liberal, a theme Mrs. Sauerbrey has since taken up.
In trying to shake the label, he has portrayed himself as a fiscal conservative -- saying that he supports prudent, controlled spending. At the same time, his choice of lieutenant governor running mate -- Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, whose fabled family is synonymous with liberalism and government spending to ease social ills -- deepened the liberal hue.
There is nothing remotely radical in Mr. Glendening's platform, contained in a slick, 51-page booklet entitled "A Vision For Maryland's Future." Nothing all that sexy, either, certainly nothing to compare with Mrs. Sauerbrey's pledge to cut personal income taxes 24 percent over four years. But it is an ambitious, coherent and at times innovative blueprint for taking the state through the next four years without increasing taxes, something he said during the primary season that he had no plans to do
and has since hardened to say he would not do.
He offers instead leaner, more efficient government, asking voters to take as their model his three terms as county executive, during which he steered Prince George's through troubled fiscal times while steadily increasing spending for education and law enforcement.
Even so, he is vulnerable on those two issues. After Baltimore City, Prince George's has the lowest student scores on standardized tests and the highest crime rate in Maryland.
On education, he says he has little control because his only statutory role is to fund the schools. He has had frequent disagreements with the school board, which is elected, not appointed as in Baltimore, and with the current superintendent.
As for crime, he says that the problem exists everywhere, especially in urban jurisdictions such as Prince George's, which borders some of Washington's most impoverished areas. At the same time, he notes that he has increased police funding by 40 percent, established community policing and employed other novel anti-crime measures.
He has been occasionally dogged by allegations of cronyism in connection with county actions, including the sale of county-owned buildings and the awarding of county legal business. Mrs. Sauerbrey recycled some of those charges this week, citing old newspaper stories, but adding no new elements.
On the attack
This is what it's come down to for Mr. Glendening. After carrying Baltimore City and all but one of the state's 23 counties in the primary, his chances depend on turning out voters and piling up huge victory margins in the city and Prince George's while taking at least 55 percent of the Montgomery vote.
According to the most recent Mason-Dixon poll, published last week, those are the only jurisdictions in which he is leading Mrs. Sauerbrey, whose tax cut pledge seems to have triggered a quirky, anti-establishment response in voters.
The magnitude of that reaction will not be known until Election Day, Nov. 8, but Mr. Glendening moved quickly to dampen Mrs. Sauerbrey's post-primary celebrity, launching what has been a sustained carpet bombing of her public persona almost as soon as the results were known.
Mr. Glendening and his surrogates have denounced her as a high priestess of the radical right, as if a mirror image of Jesse Helms has been lurking in the Maryland General Assembly for the past 16 years.
Employing a 2 1/2 -to-1 advantage in general election funding, Mr. Glendening has also bombarded the airwaves with attack ads to highlight Mrs. Sauerbrey's opposition to abortion rights, gun control and legislative efforts to improve the environment.
The decision to go negative marked a dramatic departure from the primary contest when Mr. Glendening campaigned as a proven, experienced leader with a detailed plan for Maryland's future.
He seemed during the summer a Gary Cooper-type figure, riding tall in the saddle, always letting his opponents draw first, returning fire more in sorrow than in anger.
Now he's a gunslinger himself, attack ads and scare tactics his ammunition, an arsenal underwritten by the most staggering exhibition of political fund-raising in Maryland history -- an expected $6 million when it's all over, including about $2.5 million for the general election.
Marathon first, then spring
Of the change in strategy, Mr. Glendening explains that the primary campaign was a marathon, with plenty of time for voters to determine for themselves the assets and liabilities of the candidates.
But the general election, he says, is a sprint, eight short weeks from the starting blocks to the tape, so the voters need help in educating themselves -- on the issues, certainly, but most assuredly about Mrs. Sauerbrey, and the dark forces he says she represents.
It is axiomatic in politics that negative campaigning may hurt the target, but some of the mud splashes back on the attacker. The Glendening campaign -- organized, disciplined, savvy -- clearly has decided that the risk is worth taking.
As of the most recent public poll, now more than a week old, the charges hadn't taken an obvious toll. After more than a month of relentless verbal and electronic attacks, Mrs. Sauerbrey gained two percentage points to Mr. Glendening's one. He led 48 percent to 42 percent, with 10 percent undecided.
In the past few weeks, Mr. Glendening has begun doing what many fellow Democrats believe he should have been doing from the start -- challenging the foundations of Mrs. Sauerbrey's tax-cut proposal and highlighting his view of its impact on schools, public safety and a host of other governmental services.
So far, it seems, he has not drawn blood. At a labor rally Wednesday, he called Mrs. Sauerbrey's contention that she can cut taxes without causing pain "an outright lie."
The uncharacteristic outburst seemed to symbolize frustration. Like a mortar team gunner, he continues to bracket his elusive target, getting closer and closer, but not yet close enough to fire for effect. And time is growing short.
CANDIDATE PROFILE
PARRIS N. GLENDENING
Age: 52
Home: University Park, Prince George's County.
RTC Family: Wife, Frances Anne. One son.
Education: B.A., M.A., Ph.D., government and urban politics, Florida State University.
Experience: Hyattsville City Council, 1973-1974. Prince George's County Council, 1974-1982, including two years as chairman. Prince George's County executive, 1982 to present. Associate professor, University of Maryland College Park, 1967 to present.
Running mate: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former deputy assistant U.S. attorney general.
POSITIONS ON ISSUES:
ABORTION: Supports abortion rights. Would lift current restrictions on government-funded abortions for poor women.
CRIME/GUN CONTROL: Supports the death penalty. Would require violent offenders to serve mandatory minimum sentences before becoming eligible for parole. Would create additional prison space by moving nonviolent offenders to boot camps and other "lower-cost facilities." Promises increased state aid for law enforcement. Supports requiring a license to buy a handgun and limiting handgun purchases to one a month. Would ban all assault weapons and so-called "cop-killer" ammunition.
EDUCATION: Says education would be his top priority as governor. Would provide increased funds for schools, targeting some of the new money to poorer jurisdictions such as Baltimore. Supports state school reform efforts, including recertification of teachers and state takeover of failing schools as a last resort, but would give teachers greater role in guiding reform. Opposes any schemes to funnel public money to private or church schools.
TAXES/BUDGET: Pledges no general tax increase and says he would review business taxes with an eye toward cutting them. Would cope with state's fiscal problems and fund his campaign promises to increase investment in education and law enforcement by streamlining government, enhancing economic development activities and shifting priorities.
ENVIRONMENT: Has strong support from environmental groups. Says that economic growth and environmental protection can go hand-in-hand. Using tax breaks and state funds, would encourage local subdivisions to direct growth into areas where roads, water and sewer are already in place. Envisions a revolving, low-interest loan fund and other measures to help farmers meet voluntary goals on limiting nutrient runoff into the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries by 1997, but would consider making those goals mandatory after that.
STADIUMS: Supports retaining state funds for a Baltimore football stadium. Opposes building a Washington Redskins stadium in Laurel, even with team owner Jack Kent Cooke footing the bill for construction. Supports state participation in building a new arena to keep the Washington Bullets basketball team and the Washington Capitals hockey team, both of which play at USAir Arena in Largo, from moving to Washington.