Maryland voters can make history next year by electing either the state’s first black governor (Anthony Brown or Charles Lollar) the first governor from Montgomery County (Doug Gansler) or the first woman/lesbian governor (Heather Mizeur).
But history is already being made not for who’s running, but for who’s not running.
When Gansler this week picked Joline Ivey, a P.G. county delegate, as his running mate, both parties’ major gubernatorial tickets became finalized without a single candidate from Baltimore. So, barring a highly unlikely, last-minute Baltimorean’s entry into the governor’s race, this is the first time in more than a century that no one from Baltimore will appear on the gubernatorial ballot.
Gansler (Montgomery) is running with Ivey (P.G.); Republican David Craig (Harford) is running with Jeannie Haddaway (Talbot); and Anthony Brown (P.G.) is running with Ken Ulman (Howard). Ulman is peddling himself as a Baltimorean but no matter how many Ravens jerseys he dons, he was raised in Columbia and schooled in P.G. and D.C.
The disappearance of Baltimore candidates is a stunning development given that seven of our last eight governors were from either Baltimore city or Baltimore County (Agnew, Mandel, Hughes, Schaefer, Ehrlich and O’Malley). Only Parris Glendening (P.G.) interrupted Baltimore’s 48-year control of the governor’s mansion. And at least he had a Baltimore-area lieutenant governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
I had to go back to the 1911 election (they were odd years back then) to find a governor’s race without a Baltimorean. The incumbent, Austin Crothers (Cecil) a progressive-era reformer, couldn’t seek re-election because his liberal policies split the Democratic party.
So, two Democratic state senators battled for the nomination; the machine candidate, Arthur Pue Gorman Jr. (Howard) vs. the reform liberal, Blair Lee (Montgomery). In one of state history’s most bitter elections, Gorman defeated great-granddad, but the resulting acrimony split the party allowing Philip Goldsborough (Dorchester) to become Maryland’s governor, only the second Republican since the Civil War.
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