By Daniel LeDuc
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 9, 2002; Page B01
 

Today's start of Maryland's General Assembly session marks the beginning of the end of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's administration. But it also marks the end of the beginning of Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's campaign for governor.

For the past seven years, she has not been a visible player in the annual 90-day rite of deal-making and law-passing in Annapolis. Instead, she has traveled the highways and back roads of Maryland, visiting its cities and hamlets. In the process, she has raised both campaign contributions and her name recognition to astonishing heights.

But today, Townsend ends that phase of her campaign and begins trying to show Marylanders that she is able to govern.

After playing the dutiful role of second-in-command to a powerful governor, she will begin asserting herself more, as Maryland's voters and political establishment look at her in the context of a statewide election that is only a few flips of the calendar away.

"The big question with Kathleen is she's never been elected on her own. She's never been a county executive or a manager of a government," said House Economic Matters Committee Chairman Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel). "She has to create an identity on what her issues are and what her vision is for the state of Maryland over the next four years or eight years."

Townsend (D) has begun to do that by signaling the topics on which she will differ from Glendening. Last month, she said she would consider construction of a highway to link upper Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Glendening (D) had shelved plans for the intercounty connector, angering the business community but appeasing environmentalists.

During the General Assembly session, she said, she will actively and visibly lobby for her own agenda, which includes pushing for restrictions on the ability of judges to later reduce the sentences they give criminals, a law-and-order proposal long sought by prosecutors.

She also will lobby for other criminal justice issues, including new penalties for repeat drunken-driving offenders -- though that may not be much of a struggle because lawmakers have indicated that they probably will pass the measures.

Her effectiveness will be closely watched. And Townsend's job will not be made any easier by her possible challengers, including Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (D), who travels to Annapolis frequently to push the city's agenda. O'Malley has already dismissed the lieutenant governor as "irrelevant" during the General Assembly session and may use the next 90 days to snipe at her as he considers whether to run for governor.

Critics of Townsend, such as O'Malley, are saying bluntly what other Maryland politicians, including many Democrats and Townsend supporters, ponder privately: Is Townsend, who never held political office before Glendening selected her to be his lieutenant governor, really up to the top job?

It is a worry that is emphasized by those who wonder whether she has gotten where she is thanks more to her family lineage -- she is the eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy -- than her ability and who are troubled by her predilection for verbal gaffes.

"Off the cuff, she doesn't do very well," said House Minority Whip James F. Ports Jr. (R-Baltimore County). "She doesn't testify on hardly any bills. When she does, the [Democratic] chairman always say the lieutenant governor's time is pressed so she doesn't have time for questions. She definitely ducks out of the room as quickly as she can."

Her supporters counter that some criticism of Townsend smacks of sexism. When former governor William Donald Schaefer's lieutenant governor, Melvin A. Steinberg, ran for governor, they said, the same wariness wasn't expressed. And, they note, Glendening has given Townsend far more responsibility than Schaefer gave Steinberg, a former state Senate president.

During their first four years in office she was in charge of criminal justice issues, and important agencies, including the state police, reported to her. During their second term, she added economic development to her portfolio.

"What I say to the critics is, I've done a lot. I've probably done more than any lieutenant governor," Townsend said during a recent interview.

In the end, she was always subservient to the governor. Glendening made the budget decisions, and if his priorities differed from hers, his got the funding. Also, the governor did not use Townsend as an emissary to help lobby for his agenda during legislative sessions.

That Glendening is still the boss could create some awkward moments in the next 90 days.

"This is the uneasy transition period when she moves from serving at the pleasure of the governor to the governor in waiting," said Herb Smith, a Western Maryland College political scientist. "She has to perform two roles simultaneously, and that can create cross-tensions."

County executives, mayors and other local leaders don't have to worry about being team players in a Glendening administration, so it is easier for officials like O'Malley to create their own image.

Those officials also have had as much if not more interaction with lawmakers in recent years than Townsend because they've had specific goals, funding requests and projects. Those relationships matter.

Political fortunes are made and squandered during the 90-day session in Annapolis. Legislative victories translate into political victories. Likewise, success at the polls translates into political power in legislative battles.

In those fights over the past seven years, Glendening's soldiers were his own staff of legislative lobbyists, his chief of staff and his budget chief.

"She was never an ambassador for him," one former administration official said. "He didn't call on Kathleen much for working the legislature. I don't think he felt she had strengths there. Maybe he thought she wouldn't be strong enough to make things happen."

Should she win the election in November, legislative leaders would be eager to test her resolve. One obvious example is on legalized gambling.

Both House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. (D-Allegany) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Prince George's) say that slot machines will need to be legalized in Maryland to retain millions of dollars now being gambled by Marylanders in Delaware and West Virginia.

Glendening has been a strong opponent of gambling. Townsend also opposes legalized gaming, saying it would spur new problems, from creating crime to hurting restaurants that would lose business to eateries in gambling halls.

But Miller is undeterred. The General Assembly, he said, would move to legalize slot machines next year to help finance education, "regardless of what Kathleen says."
 
 

© 2002 The Washington Post Company