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MARVIN MANDEL Governor of Maryland Marvin Mandel, the 1972-73 Chairman of the National Governors' Conference, was elected to a full four-year term as Governor of Mary- land on November 3, 1970, by the largest margin ever recorded by a gubernatorial candidate in the history of the State. In a landslide elec- tion, he polled the largest number of votes ever cast for a candidate for Governor, winning every subdivision in the State except one, where he came within a mere 90 votes of making a complete sweep of the State. The only candidates for public office ever to receive more votes in Maryland than Marvin Mandel were Lyndon Baines Johnson in his overwhelming Presidential victory in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1972. In electing Governor Mandel to a full four-year term, the voters of Maryland gave him an overwhelming mandate, a mandate that re- affirmed the confidence and trust placed in him two years earlier when he became the fifty-sixth Governor of Maryland. Marvin Mandel was elected Governor of Maryland in a rare selection process that had occurred only several times before in the State's history. Because Maryland at that time had no direct line of succession to the governorship. Governor Mandel was selected overwhelmingly by the Maryland General Assembly when it met January 7, 1969, to pick a successor to Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned to become Vice President of the United States. Within hours after his election, Governor Mandel was sworn into office in a befitting modest ceremony; and in his inaugural speech he set the tone for his Administration, whose record of achievement has become one of the most successful and progressive in modern Mary- land history. In that address, his first as the State's new Chief Executive, Gov- ernor Mandel declared; "Let there be no mistake in anyone's mind, I shall govern." If there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind, Marvin Mandel has striven vigorously to live up to the challenge he set for himself. One of his first acts was to restore to Medicaid 22,000 persons who were cut from the rolls in an economy move by the Agnew Administration. No governor in recent history has enjoyed greater success in guiding through the Maryland General Assembly such a massive package of legislation as was enacted during the 1969 and 1970 Legislative Ses- sions. Significantly, 93 of the 95 measures sponsored by the Mandel Administration were adopted by the General Assembly. Governor Man- del's record of legislative achievement continued to grow in 1971 when the General Assembly enacted 34 of 37 measures sponsored by his Ad- ministration. During the 1972 session of the General Assembly, Gov- ernor Mandel won enactment of 15 of the 18 Administration measures, including three of the most controversial laws to come before any legis- lature in the Nation during that year. He sponsored and won passage of one of the strictest handgun control laws in the Nation; he saw enacted his landmark transportation measure, committing the State to the concept of a unified transportation system by funding rapid transit systems in the Baltimore metropolitan area and the Maryland suburbs around Washington, and by broadening the State's responsibility for building and maintaining primary highway systems in Maryland's 5 |
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Maryland Manual, 1973-74
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