Habern W. Freeman Jr., a household name in Harford County politics, says he is sad that he was voted out of the state Senate last week.
"On the other hand, I have a sense of relief," said the 53-year-old former county executive. "I feel like I'm reborn in a way. . . . It's the first time in probably 30 years I can actually apply for a job."
Even though he has fond memories of his long political career, Mr. Freeman, a conservative Democrat from Joppa, said he does not intend to look back.
He said he will not seek elected office again.
Instead, he said he will seek ways to parlay his small physical therapy practice into an administrative position in a health field. "I probably won't just settle in to practicing physical therapy," he said.
In addition, Mr. Freeman said, he will press "for some kind of conservative voice" in the Democratic Party.
"Somehow, I'd like to be active in that, but I don't know how. . . . The Democratic Party on the local front and nationally just cut us out." Mr. Freeman, who said he was treated as an outcast by his own party in Annapolis, lost Tuesday's election to Republican David R. Craig, a state delegate and assistant school principal. The margin in the 34th District race was 54 percent to 46 percent.
Mr. Craig attributed his victory to hard work and support from voters who know and respect him in Havre de Grace and Aberdeen, as well as from newer residents who did not have an allegiance to Mr. Freeman.
Mr. Craig, 45, was a former city councilman and mayor in Havre de Grace. He is a confidant of gubernatorial candidate Ellen R. Sauerbrey, another Republican state legislator. She trounced Democrat Parris N. Glendening in Harford, receiving 65 percent to his 35 percent, in Tuesday's voting.
The Craig-Freeman race was civil and low-key, and both men wanted it that way.
Mr. Craig spent twice as much money as did Mr. Freeman, advertised more and knocked on nearly 4,000 doors in the last four days of the campaign.
"There's a place for Habern Freeman to stay in Harford County politics," Mr. Craig said after last week's vote. "He's been around. He has a history."
Politics aside, Mr. Freeman is regarded by many as direct and unpretentious. His fiscal conservatism on the County Council and as a two-term county executive won him points with Democrats and Republicans alike.
Mr. Freeman said he is one of a group of Maryland politicians -- including former Baltimore County Executives Donald Hutchinson and Ted Venetoulis -- whose heyday was in the 1970s and early 1980s.
"You said what you meant," Mr. Freeman said, not what the voters wanted to hear.
"I think I come away from it with credibility and generally well thought of. . . . I think of myself as being a good person who stayed that way."
Mr. Freeman was regarded in the Harford legislative delegation and in the Senate as something of a lone wolf who would challenge certain school-related budget items and other issues considered sacred by his colleagues and local leaders.
To Habern Freeman, his policies were based on defending the taxpayer and challenging what he considered bloated local and state budgets. "I actually just ran for the Senate to stay in" politics, Mr. Freeman said. "I was never ambitious as a politician."
He said he finds campaigning "embarrassing," that he would "cringe if somebody called me 'Senator.' " He never picked up Senate license plates for his car.
And, he does not seek the company of other politicians. "I don't find the company that rewarding," he said. Still, Mr. Freeman said, he will leave public office with fond memories of his days in local government.
He said he and other leaders laid the groundwork for many of the programs and policies that today form the foundation of Harford government: land-use and zoning policies, preservation of Harford's rural northern sector, protection of the Gunpowder River corridor on the Baltimore County border, Harford's fast-track program for attracting new industry, a procurement system designed to guard against favoritism and corruption, and more.
Despite his pride in his accomplishments, a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. And, he said, despite feeling abandoned by his own party, he will remain a Democrat like his father and his grandfather.
He said he thinks the party could still be more sensitive to the basic needs of common people.
If the politician many locals know simply as "Habern" no longer aspires to elected office, his son, Habern Dean Freeman, does. At age 27, the son received more votes -- 27,496 -- than any other Democrat running for Harford County Council in the general election.
The younger Mr. Freeman, also a Democrat, lost to Republican Susan B. Heselton in District A, by 54 percent to 46 percent.