By a thimbleful of votes, Democrat Parris N. Glendening seemingly has stitched together a victory in the race for governor, but his ability to run the state will be shaped by the anti-government message of his Republican rival, Ellen R. Sauerbrey.
The narrow margin by which he will apparently prevail -- a fraction of a percentage point -- will also affect his ability to implement his pre-election agenda, which included new spending for education, law enforcement and job creation and fresh infusions of aid for beleaguered Baltimore.
In addition, the three-term Prince George's County executive will limp to Annapolis in January reliant for support on three populous subdivisions -- his own county, Baltimore City and Montgomery County -- because Mrs. Sauerbrey carried all the rest of the state.
On taking office, moreover, he will be greeted by a General Assembly still controlled by the Democrats, but not necessarily Glendening Democrats, among them an old and powerful rival from Prince George's County politics -- State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.
The legislature will also contain a larger number of Republicans, who made sizable gains in the Senate and the House of Delegates. And two out of every five lawmakers will be new.
One thing is sure. Unless they're tone-deaf, the legislators -- leaders, veterans and newcomers alike -- will take their seats with Mrs. Sauerbrey's call for lower taxes and smaller, leaner government ringing in their ears.
"The point has been made so loudly that voters don't want new programs and new spending," said state Del. Robert H. Kittleman, a Howard County Republican. "They want the opposite. . . . This campaign has had a profound effect on what [Mr. Glendening] will be able to do."
Mr. Glendening has acknowledged as much, saying again yesterday that he understands voters want an efficient and effective government, have concerns about taxes and want the new governor to look for ways to lower them.
He says such goals can be balanced with his own desire to "invest" tax dollars in schools, crime prevention and jobs.
Nothing is going to be easy for Mr. Glendening. He must now begin staffing his governorship, naming the men and women who will hold the crucial Cabinet and subcabinet positions that will define his administration, as well as putting together a legislative program for a session just two months off.
But he must do so against the static of Mrs. Sauerbrey's vow to challenge the election result in court if a team of volunteer investigators finds evidence of voter fraud.
Mr. Glendening has another problem. Unlike Mrs. Sauerbrey, who ran on a pledge to slash personal income taxes and scale back spending, he had no defining issue or compelling message in his campaign. Taken together with his slim victory, he cannot convincingly claim a mandate from the voters.
Mr. Glendening, 52, ran as a proven executive and prudent fiscal manager committed to streamlining government so that more state resources could be directed toward schools, public safety and environmental protection.
Attacked in the primary and general election alike for his county's high crime rate and poor record of school performance, he responded by saying he has done well managing a racially diverse, fast-developing county facing many of the same problems found in more urban settings.
But it appears that many of those who voted for him did so as much in response to his attacks on the GOP standard-bearer -- especially on the issues of abortion, gun control and the environment -- as to his credentials or positions on issues.
Mr. Glendening spent $2.5 million in the short eight-week general election battle alone, most of it on a barrage of television ads that portrayed 57-year-old Mrs. Sauerbrey, a four-term delegate and House minority leader, as a right-wing extremist.
In the end, the money may well have salvaged his candidacy. His blistering television attack ad campaign drove her unfavorable rating among voters into the 30 percent range in the final days of the campaign.
Day after day he attacked her as out of step with mainstream Marylanders, someone who would turn back the clock on gun control and abortion rights and who would allow her chums in the business world to poison the environment.
Playing the class card, he called her a "millionairess" and suggested that the well-to-do would benefit most from her proposed tax cut. The weekend before the election, he put the finishing touches on her demonization by labeling her a disciple of television evangelist Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition.
It wasn't all name-calling. He relentlessly challenged her pledge to reduce taxes, calling it a political gimmick and warning that the loss of revenue would severely curtail essential state services and force local jurisdictions to compensate by raising property taxes.
In the end, the scare tactics worked, if just barely.
Now, rather than a mandate, Mr. Glendening has promises to keep, roughly $300 million worth, possibly more. That's the tally of commitments in new state aid he made during the primary campaign to Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and Montgomery County Executive Neal Potter when they endorsed his candidacy in April.
Both men have since said that they do not feel that Mr. Glendening has to redeem his promises immediately, that the assistance they anticipate may have to be phased in over four and possibly eight years. But they do expect him to follow through.
Mr. Glendening also said during the campaign that he supports collective bargaining and binding arbitration rights for state workers, a stance that won him overwhelming support from labor organizations that represent public employees.
But his stance also contributed to a perception -- fostered by his Democratic primary rivals as well as Mrs. Sauerbrey -- that he is overly beholden to special-interest groups.
That perception was heightened by Mr. Glendening's ferocious campaign fund raising. He banked an estimated $6 million, which easily eclipsed the then-stunning $3.5 million raised by William Donald Schaefer in 1986.
And yet, despite all that money, despite a 2-to-1 Democratic advantage in voter registration and despite a campaign four years in the making, Mr. Glendening's election depended on the black vote in the city and Prince George's County.
He could not have won without black voters, whose turnout in the city was encouraged by a half-dozen daylong phone banks and a precinct-by-precinct system that monitored the polls, then sent teams to "flush out" Democratic voters who had yet to show up.
On the surface, Mr. Glendening managed to win an election that savaged Democrats all over the country.
"We survived a national tide," he said yesterday.
In Maryland, however, the tide broke only over Mr. Glendening among the Democrats running statewide. All the others won comfortably, including Paul S. Sarbanes, one of the most liberal members of the Senate, an endangered species elsewhere.
Mr. Sarbanes beat former U.S. Labor Secretary Bill Brock by 18 percentage points, 59 percent to 41 percent. Mr. Glendening, by contrast, beat Mrs. Sauerbrey by an eyelash. So the margin had something to do with him. Or her.
Republicans, meanwhile, buoyed by Mrs. Sauerbrey's showing and gains throughout the state, are riding high, talking tough and barely able to conceal their enthusiasm for the next battle.