Gov. Parris N. Glendening, Darkness fell on Easter Sunday, and a select group of lawmakers crowded into a stifling Annapolis office, prepared to balance the state's budget by sacrificing one of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's treasured environmental programs.

Sensing danger, Glendening summoned the group to his mansion for an 11th-hour plea of uncertain impact.

The chest that once held so many political tools - the hammer of a redistricting map, the reward of a judicial appointment, the generosity of a fat budget - was nearly empty. The 2002 General Assembly session, the governor's last, would end in eight days.

Glendening was a wounded duck; the hounds were circling.

But when the state's most influential lawmakers emerged from Government House a half-hour later, the governor's GreenPrint land-buying initiative had been salvaged. Yet another piece of his legacy was secure.

"That was a culmination of months of positioning himself," said Joseph C. Bryce, the former head of Glendening's legislative office. "It's all a product of preparation."

Glendening, 60, leaves office this week after eight years, reluctantly relinquishing the political power wielded so effectively to the very end. The past few months saw a flurry of moves designed to polish his reputation as a three-decade political career comes to a close.

He drew maps that increased the number of Democrats in Maryland's eight-member congressional delegation by 50 percent. He orchestrated the second-largest land preservation deal in state history. He promised unionized state employees a 2 percent pay raise.

"I am - there is no other way to say it - a good, old-fashioned progressive," Glendening said in a recent interview. "I always have been."

He was a master at using the budget to achieve goals. At the Easter meeting, the governor reminded lawmakers that he had kept much of what they wanted in the capital spending proposal. It was time, he told them, to keep their end of the bargain. What was left unsaid: If they didn't agree, any of their favored items could be eliminated with the stroke of a pen.

"He is the most focused person I've ever met in my life," Bryce said. "He can walk through the minefield, without blinking."

When the door to Government House closes behind Glendening on Wednesday, the authority that he used so forcefully - "aggressively," he boasts - will abruptly end. It will be for historians to sort out the complex and confounding mix of accomplishments and failings of the state's 59th governor.

There will be many Glendenings to study: The national environmental leader. The new father who married his third wife, a former aide, while in office. The ruthless chief executive. The dry technocrat who invoked flaming passions in so many.

"Politically, people will remember him for being not the warmest and fuzziest guy in the world, and not having the best relationships with people," said Donald F. Norris, a policy sciences professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "But if you take a look at what he set out to do in each General Assembly session, he got what he wanted. He knew how to use power effectively."

Glendening knows how he wants to be remembered. He stayed true, he says, to his three top priorities: a commitment to public schools and universities, a stewardship of the environment, and a champion of social causes such as creating a racially diverse judiciary.

But among his political peers, it's just as likely that he will be recalled for the enemies he has made, for what some call a ruthless and uncaring style. His popularity ratings are abysmal. The state's finances are a mess. His hand-picked successor, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, suffered an embarrassing defeat in her election bid.

"He utilized the prerogatives of a governor as effectively as anybody I've ever seen, to force his will," said state Sen. J. Lowell Stoltzfus, an Eastern Shore Republican and the Senate minority leader. "Many times it was vindictive and mean-spirited."

Others are even harsher. Glendening thinks of no one but himself, some say. He can't be trusted. His word is no good.

"He's going out the same way he came in: double-crossing and lying," said Blair Lee IV, a Montgomery County political commentator who is the son of a former governor. "I've never seen a politician tick off the entire state political community the way this one has. He's famous for it. Nobody likes this guy."

"This guy cannot meet the minimal ethical standards of Maryland politics, and believe me, they're minimal. He is an outcast among politicians. Everything he does is motivated by self-gain and his own career," Lee said.

If sentiments like that bother Glendening, he doesn't let on.

"My good friend [former Florida Gov. and Sen.] Lawton Chiles said, 'I didn't come here to stay. I came to make a difference,'" the governor said. "I would modify that. I would also add: I didn't come here to be loved. I came here to be effective."

Throughout his career, Glendening tapped the liberal leanings of Maryland voters, first in his hometown of Hyattsville, then in Prince George's County and other parts of the state.

He cobbled together a left-leaning coalition comprising Baltimore City and Prince George's and Montgomery counties that earned him a squeaker 6,000-vote gubernatorial victory in 1994, and a more comfortable 10 percentage-point win in 1998.

Had term limits not prevented him from running, "he could have won again," said Secretary of State John T. Willis, a political historian and longtime Glendening loyalist. "He could have."

As governor, Glendening took on entrenched interests and won. Under his guidance, Maryland passed some of the toughest handgun laws in the nation, increased tobacco taxes, improved health care for children.

Schools were funded at unprecedented levels. He championed a law banning discrimination in public accommodations based on sexual orientation.

Followed his 'vision'

During an interview to discuss his administration, the governor pulled out of his top desk drawer a small green book. The title: A Vision for Maryland's Future. The 50-page publication was his campaign platform in 1994, and is evidence, he said, that he keeps his commitments.

"If you go through there, we've done everything we've said we were going to do," Glendening said. "And in most cases, exceeded by far."

Without irony, Glendening - who can come across as aloof and paternalistic, every inch the political science professor he was for 27 years - said he owes much of his success to personal relationships.

"I remember when I came here, people said Walter Baker would kill every bill I had," said Glendening, referring to the gruff, powerful former state senator from Cecil County whose Judicial Proceedings Committee was a cemetery for liberal ideas.

"What I started doing, from the very first session, sometime in the first week or so, I would go over to Calvert House, where he stayed. I would go over there personally. No staff. No backup. No detail. I would talk to him about what he thought the major issues were going to be for the session, and about what I was going to try to do."

Baker valued being listened to, Glendening said. Those private meetings paved the way for legislative victories.

Likewise, he needed to improve his relationship with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a fellow Prince Georgian. The two had clashed for decades. "Historically, we've had great disagreements, with a great flourish of vocabulary on both sides," the governor said.

In the end, the relationship may have mellowed. "He never lied to me as governor," Miller said recently. "Never during eight years was I ever denied access to the governor."

Glendening's immediate reputation is stained by the state's current fiscal climate. A $1 billion surplus became a projected $1.2 billion deficit in about two years. Critics say the governor is irresponsibly leaving the state the same way he left Prince George's: in a deep hole.

"Hogwash," said Glendening, asked whether he was a profligate spender. "Nonsense." Forty-seven states have deficits, he pointed out.

"Everyone is demanding, correctly so, more investment in education," Glendening said. "And we did it. And I'm proud of it. Everyone said we ought to address the very crucial safety net issues out there: 140,000 children out there today have health coverage that did not have it when I was elected governor."

Regrets tax cut

Perhaps his only regret, the governor said, is pushing to cut Maryland's income tax rate over five years - though passing that measure in 1997 co-opted a Republican issue and was instrumental to his easy re-election victory. "There should have been less tax cuts," he said.

Some say poor finances are a blemish on his record.

"Unfortunately, I think his legacy is going to be as the governor who left the state in a terrible financial situation," said former Gov. Marvin Mandel. "People always remember the bad things you do. As Shakespeare said, 'The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.'"

Born in the Bronx and raised in Florida, Glendening used higher education as a springboard out of poverty. He graduated from Florida State University and moved to Maryland to take a teaching position at the University of Maryland, College Park.

He taught throughout his career in local politics, including his tenure as Prince George's executive, and never forgot his roots in education.

When the economic boom of the 1990s fattened the state's surplus, he steered much of the money into schools. There was unprecedented funding for universities and money for kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms.

Glendening is proud of this statistic: Ten years ago, University of Maryland, College Park had one academic program nationally ranked in the top 20. Today, the governor says, there are 65.

"Higher education in Maryland is stronger now as a result of the support the governor has given," said Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "We have stronger faculty, stronger students and stronger facilities. We're in a better position to prepare students than ever before."

Other money went to environmental programs. As a county executive, Glendening was viewed as cozy with developers. Environmentalists were unsure of his credentials when he became governor. But after a few years, his views began to change. By 1996, he was sitting his staff members down, telling them of his vision for a land-protection strategy that would be known as Smart Growth.

"It's admirable that he was able to take an issue and grow into that issue," said Susan Brown, head of Maryland's League of Conservation Voters. "He was willing to really listen to the scientists and the folks working on problems. And as you hear more about the problems, you grow more interested in them."

Under the Smart Growth label, Glendening pushed for legislation that tried to curb sprawl - by steering state construction to designated areas, and by providing money to preserve rural land and redevelop older neighborhoods.

"Since its enactment in 1997, Maryland's Smart Growth program has established itself as one of the most significant - maybe the most significant - state growth-management initiatives to be adopted in a quarter-century," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in a speech last month. "Maryland has become a major incubator and exporter of ideas that work in the fight to encourage development that is fiscally and environmentally responsible."

As head of the National Governors' Association, Glendening took those ideas to a broad audience to wide acclaim.

Although he has not announced his next job, some say they anticipate that expect Glendening to form a consulting company to take his development philosophy to other states.

Divorce, remarriage

But Glendening's policy accomplishments tell only part of the story. His personal life has been fodder for headlines, making a deep impression in the minds of voters, polls show.

During his second term, Glendening separated from his second wife, Frances Hughes Glendening. He developed a relationship with a much younger aide, Jennifer E. Crawford, whom he promoted from appointments secretary to deputy chief of staff.

The couple married in January last year. In August, Gabrielle "Bri" Glendening was born.

Crawford shuns the press, and Glendening refuses to discuss the relationship or his wife's influence on policies.

"I believe Jennifer had a major influence on his thinking," Miller said. "I know he became a vegetarian."

Voters mention other lowlights. In 2001, the governor was forced to rescind his stealth candidacy for chancellor of the university system, a $375,000-a-year job. He had appointed every member of the Board of Regents. It would be wrong, ethics experts said, to wangle employment from them.

Glendening's 2002 legislative redistricting plan - perhaps his starkest use of power to promote his party and punish his enemies - was rejected by Maryland's highest court as unconstitutional.

The redistricting mess, most agree, fueled a perception of corruption in Annapolis that contributed to Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s gubernatorial triumph.

"In terms of personal missteps, they will affect his legacy," Miller said. But they won't overwhelm it, he said.

"When they look back at Parris, they'll forget his marital problems, his attempts for a position in the university system," he said. "They'll go to the Eastern Shore and see this property. They'll say, 'What a wise man to preserve this land.'"

Parris N. Glendening's governorship

November 1994

Glendening wins election as Maryland's 59th governor by 5,993 votes. Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey demands a recount and fights the results in court, dropping her challenge two months later.

January 1995

Glendening and three top aides agree to forgo tens of thousands of dollars in pension benefits after facing intense criticism for a deal they made before leaving the Prince George's County executive's office.

November 1995

Glendening and Maryland officials persuade the Cleveland Browns to move to Baltimore. In the 1996 General Assembly session, Glendening wins passage of a $270 million deal to build football stadiums for the team, renamed the Ravens, and for the Redskins.

March 1996

General Assembly passes Glendening's gun control bill, limiting people to one handgun purchase per month.

August 1996

Glendening announces he will veto any legislation to legalize slot machines in Maryland, adopting his mantra of "No slots. No casinos. No exceptions."

April 1997

General Assembly passes a landmark $254 million, five-year deal to help Baltimore schools, giving the state more oversight. Glendening also wins passage of Smart Growth legislation intended to discourage suburban sprawl.

November 1998

Glendening wins re-election, easily defeating Sauerbrey in a rematch of 1994. He's helped by the five-year, 10 percent personal income tax cut he pushed through in 1997, co-opting one of Sauerbrey's main issues.

April 1999

Glendening wins approval of a 30-cent-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax. Six months earlier, Maryland had accepted a $4.2 billion legal settlement with tobacco manufacturers.

September 1999

Maryland reaches an agreement to buy 58,000 acres of Eastern Shore forest and wetland, the largest land preservation deal in state history.

April 2000

With President Clinton looking on, Glendening signs the most restrictive gun-safety bill in the nation, requiring built-in locks on all handguns sold in Maryland beginning in 2003.

March 2001

Assembly approves Glendening's gay-rights bill, reversing a defeat on that issue in 1999.

January 2002

Glendening marries his deputy chief of staff, Jennifer E. Crawford; a daughter, Gabrielle, is born in August. Glendening and his wife of almost 25 years divorced in November 2001.

June 2002

Maryland's highest court rejects Glendening's legislative redistricting plan as unconstitutional, leading to the November defeat of many veteran lawmakers.

November 2002

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend loses the race for governor. Glendening describes her effort as the "one of the worst-run campaigns in the country."