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From the Baltimore Sun
Hughes' 'Journey'
With another election day at hand, former Gov. Harry R. Hughes reflects
on the state of Maryland politics, past and present
By Stephen Kiehl
sun reporter
November 6, 2006
CENTREVILLE -- The living room of the headmaster's house at the Gunston
Day School is tastefully furnished with wingback chairs and a grand
piano. But when former Gov. Harry Hughes enters with his lunch on a
recent visit, he takes the worst possible seat - a brown plastic
folding chair, where he sits and delicately balances a plate on his
knee.
Someone asks why he didn't choose a more comfortable chair.
"This one seemed fine," says Hughes, who will turn 80 next week and
hasn't lost the air of modesty and decency that served him well over 30
years in public office. He also still has the strong jaw that
photographers loved, that great political hair (easily the best hair of
any recent Maryland governor), and the courtly manners that speak to
his humble, Eastern Shore heritage.
He spent much of the last three years writing his autobiography, My
Unexpected Journey, which he views as something to leave his family.
But the recently published book is also a tour of a half-century of
Maryland politics and the dramas that shaped the state: a struggle over
civil rights, urban flight and scandal and corruption at the highest
level.
Now Hughes, widely credited with restoring integrity to the governor's
office, has been coaxed out of retirement to play a small but
influential role in this year's elections. He vetted Mayor Martin
O'Malley's finalists for running mate and campaigned for his old
friend, U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin. Hughes, whose wife Patricia was
diagnosed with Parkinson's disease 13 years ago, is also making the
case for expanded stem cell research.
He is upset by the nasty and divisive politics that have become the
norm and by the increasing influence of religion on government and
policy decisions. For Hughes - who was known as an honest and
gentlemanly public official who didn't even ask his staff or appointees
their political party - the changes are discouraging.
"I worked very closely with the Republican legislators and considered
them good friends," says Hughes, a Democrat who served two terms as
governor, from 1979 to 1987. "There's an old cliche: The art of
government is compromise, and we haven't seen much of that in the last
four years."
Hughes thinks religion has stymied advances in stem cell research. And
he was incensed by radio host Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Michael J.
Fox, who has Parkinson's and appeared in an ad for Cardin, a proponent
of embryonic stem cell research. Limbaugh suggested Fox was acting in
the ads to exaggerate the effects of the disease.
"They ought to run that Rush Limbaugh out of the country," Hughes says.
"I don't know why the network wouldn't fire him."
There are few people who can raise the ire of the placid Hughes. Rush
Limbaugh is one of them. William Donald Schaefer is another. Schaefer,
who followed Hughes as governor and undid several Hughes initiatives,
both political and personal, is not spared in the book.
When Schaefer took office, his companion, Hilda Mae Snoops, redecorated
the public rooms of the governor's mansion after Pat Hughes had
painstakingly restored them. "I almost could not believe Schaefer could
be so petty," Hughes writes, "but of course I should have known better."
And as governor, Schaefer built the Baltimore light rail line that
Hughes had decided was not a priority because it would run parallel to
the Jones Falls Expressway. Hughes notes with amazement that the
project went forward even when the cost doubled, from $290 million to
$600 million.
"But you know Schaefer - he likes to build things," Hughes writes.
"Education programs or things like that, he could care less. But
building things is easy, particularly if someone names them after you.
It is amazing they didn't call that the 'Schaefer Light Rail!'"
"Wait till he reads that!" Hughes says in an interview at his Denton
home, momentarily relishing the old rivalry.
Still on the scene
His perch on the Eastern Shore has, to some extent, insulated him from
state politics. But Hughes never left the scene entirely. He was
chairman of the state Democratic Party during Gov. Parris N.
Glendening's first term, and he has advised O'Malley this year in his
run for governor.
"It gets in your blood," Hughes told a group of students that day at
the Gunston Day School in Centreville. Hughes appeared with his
co-author on the book, former Sun political writer John W. Frece. What
interested students more than politics were Hughes' days as a semi-pro
baseball player on the Shore.
Raised in Denton, Hughes was a standout pitcher who played for the New
York Yankees' minor league organization before his career was cut short
by injury. (He was inducted into the Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of
Fame two years ago. "It's a good group," Hughes says. "We all get
together and lie.")
Hughes joined the Air Force toward the end of World War II but did not
see combat. After the war, he met the woman he would marry, Patricia
Donoho, who was taking French lessons from his mother. They were
married in 1951, but before it could happen Hughes had to meet the
matriarch of his fiancee's family, a great-aunt who lived in Delaware.
She asked him two questions:
"Are you a Democrat?"
"Yes," Hughes said.
"Are you an Episcopalian?"
"No."
"Well, you will be."
She was right. He soon converted from the Methodist denomination. He
joined a Denton law firm and in 1954 was elected to the House of
Delegates. As the Eastern Shore was becoming more conservative, Hughes
nonetheless voted for every piece of civil rights legislation that came
before the Assembly, with one exception - a bill to lift the state's
ban on interracial marriage.
Hughes voted to maintain the ban but felt so bad after the vote that he
asked the bill's sponsor to reintroduce the measure. The bill came back
the next day, Hughes voted in favor, and it passed.
Role of government
Through his decades in public office - 16 years in the General
Assembly, six years as state transportation secretary and eight years
as governor - Hughes says he was most concerned with government's moral
obligation. "I think government exists to do for people what they can't
do for themselves," he says.
His reputation for integrity was cemented in 1976, when he didn't play
along with politics as usual. Hughes' department had selected, through
competitive bidding, a California firm to oversee work on the new
Baltimore subway line. But the contract was held up for months by the
Board of Public Works, which wanted the job to go to a politically
connected Baltimore company.
Hughes would not budge and eventually resigned, telling the press about
the tainted process.
Two years later he would run for governor. But even with his honest
reputation, it wasn't easy. When he entered the race, he was polling
around 5 percent. He campaigned for months without gaining ground. He
asked 10 people to be his running mate before someone accepted - a
little-known Prince George's County councilman, Samuel W. Bogley. In a
Sun story on Hughes' stalled campaign, a political insider famously
called him "a lost ball in high grass."
"I wasn't getting anywhere," Hughes says. With virtually no money, he
thought of leaving the race but ultimately decided to fight on. "I
thought I would regret it the rest of my life if I didn't try."
He needed a miracle, and he got one. On Aug. 20, 1978 - three weeks
before the primary - Hughes was endorsed by The Sun. A day later, The
Evening Sun also endorsed him, on the front page, saying, "A vote for
the right man is never wrong." Hughes put that on his campaign
brochures and printed 200,000 copies.
Momentum began to turn as voters realized Hughes was a viable
candidate. On Election Day, Sept. 12, Hughes won 37 percent of the
vote, beating Acting Gov. Blair Lee III (34 percent) and Baltimore
County Executive Ted Venetoulis (24 percent).
(This year, state Del. Peter Franchot scored a similar upset in the
primary for state comptroller. After the election, Hughes sent Franchot
a note: "I know what it's like.")
Once in office, Hughes focused on improving services for children, the
poor and the elderly. He steered the state through a recession and
sharp cutbacks in federal aid. And he was the first Maryland governor
to seriously address the health of the Chesapeake Bay and raise public
awareness about the dangers it faced.
"The people of Maryland are very proud of that bay," Hughes says, but
he's disappointed that more progress has not been made since he left
office. "It's been 20 or more years and it's just not where we had
hoped it would be. It's going to take, I think, a lot more resources
being devoted to it than what's being done now."
The attention to the bay is one of Hughes' enduring legacies, says
Cardin, who was speaker of the House of Delegates for all eight years
Hughes was governor. "He set an agenda for the Chesapeake Bay, and he
set the agenda for integrity in government," Cardin says.
This year, Hughes has appeared at several campaign rallies for Cardin.
He also met with the 10 finalists to be O'Malley's running mate. They
each came to Hughes' Denton home and were grilled in the living room
with a view of the Choptank River. O'Malley, who chose Del. Anthony
Brown of Prince George's County, said he asked Hughes for help because
of his legacy of integrity and service.
"His public service and brand of politics - the politics of change and
the politics of reform and the politics of progress - are the sort of
politics that I've always been attracted to," O'Malley said.
Hughes lost his last run for office, in 1986, when he finished third in
the three-way Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. (Barbara Mikulski won
the seat, which she still holds.) He had been tarnished by the savings
and loan scandal and the perception that he didn't realize the depth of
the problem soon enough.
But Hughes defends his handling of the crisis. "I'm sorry it ever
happened, but I'm proud of the way we resolved the issue," he says.
"Nobody lost a penny of their savings. They lost some interest, but
everybody got all of their money back."
For Hughes, what mattered was not how the press portrayed him or the
outcome of that 1986 Senate race, but that he did what he believed was
right.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry R. Hughes
Born: Nov. 13, 1926, Easton
Residence: Denton
Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Maryland, 1949; law degree,
George Washington University School of Law, 1952
Military: U.S. Navy Air Corps, WWII
Experience: House of Delegates, 1955-1959; State Senate, 1959-1970;
first state secretary of transportation, 1970-1976; governor, 1979-1987
Family: Wife, Patricia; two daughters; one grandson
Position on golf: "Terrible game. You walk around, hit that little
ball, and get angry at it."
stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com
Copies of My Unexpected Journey are available through the Maryland
State Archives for $36.99 each. Call 800-235-4045 or e-mail
pubs@mdsa.net. Credit card payments are accepted.
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun