Busch A Thorn In Side Of GOP
Md. House Speaker Is Master Tactician

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; A01

Just before the final floor debate in last week's battle over same-sex marriage in Maryland, Minority Whip Anthony J. O'Donnell (R-Calvert) glumly predicted that his party was about to lose a key vote that would have helped get the issue on the ballot.

"Right on script," he said after the bill went down.

In the Democrat-controlled House of Delegates, that script was crafted by Speaker Michael E. Busch (Anne Arundel), the affable county parks and recreation administrator who took over the chamber 3 1/2 years ago and has turned it into a graveyard for some of the state GOP's most pressing initiatives.

To Republican leaders, he's a "tyrant." To Democrats, he's the much-needed foil to the state's first Republican governor in a generation. But people on both sides of Maryland's partisan divide agree that Busch has emerged as one of the state's most powerful House speakers in recent memory.

"He has maintained firm control of the House at a time when debates are very partisan, and yet he's still been able to move the party's agenda forward," said Del. Pauline H. Menes (D-Prince George's), who joined the House in 1967 and is its longest-serving member. "He's mastered the job in a way I can't recall ever seeing."

Like a football coach with a knack for trick plays, Busch has produced a series of wins for House Democrats using some outlandish parliamentary maneuvers. For three years, he thwarted efforts by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) to pass his signature initiative: legalizing slot machine gambling.

Last year, Busch helped orchestrate the outcome of a special session that Ehrlich had called to push medical malpractice changes. It had started as Ehrlich's bid to aid doctors, but it was Busch who helped craft a proposal that the doctors liked even better. The tables had turned, and it was the Democrats' plan that passed over Ehrlich's strong objection.

And last month, even before a Baltimore Circuit Court ruling triggered the Republican push to bring a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Busch was planning for a confrontation on the highly emotional subject.

Last month, during the first full week of the 2006 General Assembly session, Busch pushed through a rule in the House that would make it harder for Republicans to bring such a proposal to the floor. Then he began plotting a path that would let moderate Democrats voice their opposition to same-sex marriage without allowing such a measure to pass and land on the November ballot. Failure, he believed, would hurt the party by driving up Republican turnout on Election Day.

Busch said he spent the session's opening weeks "like a duck; above the surface, everything looked calm. Below, I was paddling like crazy."

The debate over same-sex marriage came to a crescendo last week. At a reception, Busch said, he overheard one delegate say that Republicans were planning a surprise attack. They had gathered signatures to petition the marriage bill right to the floor.

Armed with the intelligence, he waited until the moment before O'Donnell was ready to offer the petition, and swung down his gavel to adjourn Thursday's session. "He stuffed us!" O'Donnell shouted as Busch headed for the door.

That afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee voted to kill the bill. The next morning, Busch gave Republicans an opening to revive the bill on the floor and in doing so gave social conservatives in his caucus a chance to vote their conscience. He knew he had the votes to ensure it wouldn't pass.

Sen. Alex X. Mooney (R-Frederick) watched the hour-long floor discussion from the press seats Friday. "That was pretty slick," he said of Busch and then shook his head. "It was oppressive to some degree. On the other hand, you have to hand it to him. He did give them an up or down vote."

For decades, conventional wisdom among Maryland politicians has been that the vast majority of power in Annapolis is held by a single elected official: the governor. As the only person authorized to add to the state budget, the governor had what once seemed to be unlimited reach in matters of policy and finance.

That changed after Ehrlich's election in 2002, when Maryland got a taste of divided government.

Casper R. Taylor, Busch's predecessor in the speaker's post, said that although the presiding officers of the two chambers have always had the tools to exert tremendous sway over the legislative process, the fact that Democrats controlled the three branches of government meant that power rarely had to be used.

Today, he said, the changes are evident. "With all the partisanship, especially in an election year, they need those tools now," Taylor said. People have discovered the two leaders can be "powerful in a very decisive way."

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) has held his leadership role longer than any Senate president in the country. He has used committee appointments, patronage and campaign dollars to build loyalty and maintain control.

Busch may be relatively new, but he is every bit the tactician. He showed signs of his abilities to master the legislative process even before he took the speaker's gavel. In 2002, as chairman of the committee that oversaw state health care policy, he helped derail the sale of the region's largest health insurer to a California company, a $1.3 billion deal that he and others said would compromise health coverage of the needy.

The next year, his first as speaker, Busch confronted an aggressive push for slot machines by the state's new governor. With little notice, Busch engineered a campaign to defeat slots that coupled the tools of classic grass-roots politics with the powers invested in his office.

Within weeks, he had constructed a coalition of religious, labor and African American leaders and had them launching sophisticated phone banks and conducting polls to help identify and influence key swing groups of lawmakers.

He developed action plans each week to capitalize on divisions within the various groups with a stake in slots, and he sidestepped pro-slots members of his own leadership team by avoiding a strict stance that they could oppose. And he relentlessly stayed on a carefully crafted message: Slot machines at the state's racetracks would do little to fix the state's short-term fiscal crisis, would enrich wealthy racetrack owners and would disproportionately affect poor and minority communities.

By the time he had prevailed, political scientists were marveling at the effort. "Usually in state politics, it is the governor who tries to speak to the public over the head of the legislature," Matthew Crenson, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, said at the time. "It's almost unheard of for a lawmaker to be able to do that."

Last year, Ehrlich's slot machine gambling proposal again fell victim to one of the seemingly endless array of surprise tactics Busch has used to outflank his political adversaries.

With help from House leaders, Busch crafted a gambling proposal that differed significantly from the one being pushed by Ehrlich and Miller in the Senate. Busch then engineered its passage with the bare minimum of 71 votes.

That narrow margin, he told Ehrlich and Miller, meant that changing even one comma would shatter the fragile coalition he had cobbled together to support it. The result: a deadlock that spelled defeat for slots.

At the time, Miller fumed at the outcome. But as Busch worked to defeat the same-sex marriage ban last week, the Senate president credited his Democratic colleague for how he navigated the thorny issue. Miller said Busch in many ways faces a tougher task in running the House, in that he must contend with several conservative firebrands as he presides over a caucus that might be more liberal than it has ever been.

"It's a much more volatile body," Miller said. "He's got a very difficult job."

There's little question that Busch's efforts will do him no favors when the election season gets underway. Republicans have made it clear that they will target his seat this year. And they make a routine of blasting him in news releases and interviews, including one last week in which the GOP's spokeswoman accused him of dealing with the same-sex marriage debate "in a very tyrannical manner."

Busch laughs when he hears what's coming from the GOP. "They always said they wanted a two-party system," Busch said Friday. "Well now, they've got one."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company