Parris N. Glendening has been an elected official for 25 years, a teacher longer still, and yet he still turns bright pink when he has to speak in public.

He was pink when he stood next to President Clinton at a Montgomery County elementary school last week. He was pink at a recent Hard Rock Cafe fund-raiser, as he clutched a beer and fumbled through what should have been a zippy one-liner. He's even pink when he visits elementary schools to read to children, a setting where he feels sufficiently relaxed to take off his jacket and sit on the floor.

Those who have known him for much of his public life seem taken aback by this observation. "I think it's a high-blood pressure thing," one demurred. "I'm turning red just thinking about that question," said another. "Maybe it's like the actress, I think it was Helen Hayes, who said she vomited before she went on stage," offered one of his oldest friends.

But the governor has no problem admitting to something that is as plain as the (red) nose on his face. "I don't know if you've noticed this," Glendening volunteered during a recent interview, "but sometimes I blush."

"Parris Pink" is simply the most visible sign of what might be called the Parris Paradox. Every time the governor ventures into the glad-handing arena of the campaign trail, he must overcome his shy, reticent nature.

Glendening, 56, is a career politician who has won every election in which he's run since 1973 yet is still perceived as a nonpolitician or outsider. He is a self-described policy wonk who has a taste for back-room deals and fund raising. He has many allies, but few friends. He is a smart man who sometimes does dumb things.

And he is a Democratic incumbent in a traditionally Democratic state, who has pushed through an array of popular initiatives, only to find himself locked in one of the tightest gubernatorial races in the country.

"He is not a political animal," said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a one-time Glendening adversary who has become one of his allies, "and that is why this election is as close as it is."

Said Glendening: "I am who I am."

Who he is

Nothing seems to motivate Glendening as much as the word no. From his neglectful mother, who expressed surprise that her son was smart enough to win a college scholarship, to Prince George's County's Byzantine political scene, he has delighted in being the overachiever.

But that doesn't mean he has been known for his finesse in his public campaigns. Although he is said to have improved over 25 years, no one has ever accused Glendening of making politics look easy.

"Parris has always been a nervous campaigner," said Lance W. Billingsley, chairman of the University of Maryland Board of Regents, one of Glendening's friends and the man who first recruited him to run for office. "But as the going gets tough, he gets less nervous, his powers of concentration become more focused."

From the beginning, it was "ABP -- Anyone But Parris," recalled Tim Ayers, Glendening's director of communications after he was elected Prince George's County executive in 1982. Glendening hadn't been expected to keep the Hyattsville City Council job to which he was appointed in 1973, yet he did. And he certainly wasn't expected to win the county executive's job.

"That was when Prince George's was really rough and tumble, and there was just no way they were going to have this professor, this Ph.D., run for county executive," Ayers said. "They just thought, 'No way.' And then they thought, 'Well, no way will he get re-elected because no one ever had won two terms.' The third time, they resigned themselves to it."

According to Glendening, his dream of running for the governor's office took shape when someone remarked that it was impossible for a candidate from the Washington suburbs to win that office. After all, there hadn't been a governor from Prince George's County since Oden Bowie took office in 1869.

"Someone said, 'No one ever gets elected from this side of the state; you have to be from Baltimore,' " he said. "It became a bit of a challenge, it really did. If you set your mind to it and you know what you're doing, you can do it. Notwithstanding the flaws in my personality, as some would say, for the political game."

Here, opinions diverge as to whether Glendening's a skillful politician or simply a lucky one. It is undeniable that he caught a break in the 1994 primary when Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke decided not to run and the campaign of former Lt. Gov. Melvin A. Steinberg foundered.

But, with his razor-thin victory over Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey, he took office under the shadow of a court challenge. He then made a series of political missteps, gaffes that affect his approval ratings to this day.

The pensions

Glendening had been governor less than a month when it came to light that he and three top aides had left Prince George's County with generous pension plans because, technically, they had been "involuntarily" separated from their jobs.

The new governor reacted slowly to the outrage over what appeared to be double-dipping. Today, no one defends his drawn-out, inept defense of those pensions -- not even Glendening, who has acknowledged the issue is at least one of the reasons for his relatively high negatives in recent polls.

"We made some mistakes," he said recently. "Let me make it clear. We didn't. I did I made a mistake. I should have thought about it, but I did not."

Keith Haller of Potomac Survey Research, which has been tracking Glendening's ratings in the polls, said the pension mess, along with some other maladroit maneuvers on the governor's part, points to a schism in his public persona that might disturb voters.

"There are hundreds of examples in American politics where the noncharismatic politician resonates with voters," he said. "It's been more of a problem presenting the other side of the governor, as being caring and doing the right thing for the right reason. In a sense, he's not the nonpolitician, because he does the political stuff somewhat."

The successes of the Glendening administration -- his swift response to the Pfiesteria problem in the Chesapeake Bay, his decision to pump millions of dollars into programs for the disabled and health care for poor pregnant women and children -- are more recent than his best-known missteps. His only recent gaffe was his off-again, on-again relationship with President Clinton. So why has he proved to be a Velcro leader, to whom everything sticks?

"The pensions would stick to anybody. The average working person just doesn't get generous pension benefits from private industry," said Miller, who nevertheless believes Glendening has had the best four years of any [Maryland] governor in this century."

But Glendening also is dogged by a more general mistrust, a reputation for endless flip-flops that have burned other politicians. Schmoke, for example, has made it clear he felt betrayed by the governor on the issue of slot machines. Now voters seem to have picked up on the same theme, although that's a bit of a mystery as there's little evidence of Glendening breaking promises to them.

Former Prince George's Del. Timothy F. Maloney, a vociferous Glendening critic, says it's simple: Voters just don't like the governor. "I think people have never felt comfortable about him on a gut level. You ask yourself, 'Would I want this guy dating my sister?' "

Yet Maloney, one of several Democrats to endorse Sauerbrey this year, also said Glendening "has, ironically, greater intellectual gifts than just about anyone I've met in politics. He has extraordinary analytical abilities, which may make up for some other deficits."

Too smart?

Asked if that very intelligence ever trips him up, Glendening insisted that he's not a particularly smart politician. He says he's not as smart as state Sens. Walter M. Baker or Brian E. Frosh, for example. He's nowhere near as intelligent as Adlai Stevenson, one of his first political heroes.

"Of course, he lost," the governor said, almost as an afterthought.

Yes, he understands that it is curious he has chosen two professions -- first teaching, then politics -- that require him to conquer his shyness on an almost daily basis. Yes, he sees that many find it perplexing that he would not capitalize on his rags-to-riches story until local newspapers essentially outed his impoverished childhood.

But in recent weeks, he has started talking more about the brother who died of AIDS and the one who was once institutionalized for developmental disabilities. Aides say such speeches show Glendening at his best. But the governor still seems vaguely uncomfortable doing that. "The bottom line is that every family has its tragedies," he said.

During a recent speech at a predominantly African-American church, he found himself describing what it was like to eat stewed tomatoes for dinner for four or five nights straight.

"It was interesting. There were a number of people in that audience who immediately related to what we were saying," said Glendening, who has a habit of speaking about even his personal life as if it were a policy favored by his administration. But he began to warm to his subject and described that old menu in unusually vivid detail.

"You go down to the farmers' market, when it's closing, and in the back, they used to have these bushels of tomatoes. Bruised, in some cases, with mildew on them. It used to be 25 cents a bushel. I don't know what it is today. You toast the day-old bread, you put it on top of the tomatoes.

"It's not bad at all as a side dish but my mother had an addiction, I guess you'd call it, to bingo, and sometimes, as little as there was, she'd lose the food money. So that's why I'm just not going to yield [on slot machines].

"A couple of people have said to me, as recently as the last few days, 'Just say you'll consider it and a lot of voters will be there.' And I said, 'I'm not going to do it. It's the most addictive form of gambling and it will put hundreds, thousands of families through the same thing I went through.' "

But now the personal moment had passed, and he was back on message, connecting every point to his political agenda. Another politician might be able to make that transition more smoothly; Glendening did not.

He knows, he said, that he doesn't have charisma. Standing next to Clinton last week, he was reminded that it is one of the president's greatest gifts, and it can't be learned. "Just different personalities," he said.

'I am what I am'

His wife, Frances, calls him a "pifflesniff." Son Raymond has despaired at times at his father's buttoned-down quality -- when he wanted to wear a tie to a professional hockey game, for example. "I am what I am," he told his son.

He does find some joy in campaigning. "I love the strategy," he said. "But I have to psyche myself up every day to go out there. You've just got to suck it in and do your job."

He told an odd story on himself: When he was a young professor at the University of Maryland, Glendening once became so engrossed in a diagram he was drawing that he stepped backward off the stage, falling to the floor in a graceless heap.

He can still describe in vivid detail the young woman who laughed so hard that she slid from her seat and rolled back and forth, holding her sides.

Two days later, at the next class session, he drew the same diagram and the laughter started again.

But he kept going and, eventually, the laughter stopped.

Pub Date: 10/18/98