During his four years as Baltimore County executive, Roger Hayden was quite possibly the ideal person for the job. Faced with a recession of unanticipated tenacity, perhaps only someone like Mr. Hayden, a former business manager who professed not to care about politics, could have had the toughness to balance the budget by ordering the first layoffs and government downsizing in county history, as he did in February 1993.
His critics argued that he cut too much too fast. Mr. Hayden himself has claimed that the reductions made him a loser in the Nov. 8 election because they drove angry residents and county unions into the camp of his opponent, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who will be sworn in as the new county executive on Monday.
There's some validity in Mr. Hayden's assessment. There's fatal irony, too. Tough anti-pol that he was, he seemed to lack either the willingness or the ability to make his moves in a way that would not cause himself considerable political damage. Mr. Hayden would boast, as he did even in defeat on election night last month, that he was a businessman and not a politician. That was true enough, and it cost him. (His political standing was also hurt by the ceaseless whispering about his allegedly tumultuous personal life.)
Still, an honest appraisal of Mr. Hayden's performance would have to give him credit for a number of accomplishments, in addition to his getting the county through its time of fiscal crisis. For example, he found useful ways to privatize public services. He pushed for the revitalization of the county's aging urban communities. He helped the county obtain major properties for its land preservation program. After his economic development office stumbled for two years, he worked to right it and then took steps to reform the regulatory process that had impeded business growth. Moreover, his surprise victory in 1990 played a big role in launching the ascendancy of the Republican Party in Baltimore County -- not a bad feat for a non-pol who had joined the GOP mere months before he first ran for executive.
Mr. Hayden can take pride in these achievements, and in the fact that he was only the second Republican elected to the executive's office since the county implemented charter government in 1957. And he can take solace from this fact: Just one Baltimore County executive, Donald Hutchinson, was ever re-elected, which suggests county voters are fickle or have high standards.
On the basis of his managerial skills, Roger Hayden might have joined Mr. Hutchinson on that list. But throw in his political and personal shortcomings, and he appeared destined to be a one-termer.