More News

Former Gov. Marvin Mandel recalls events from his 60 years in Maryland politics as he approaches his 90th birthday.

Q: In January 1970, Sarge Shriver resigned as ambassador to France to run against you for governor of Maryland. But by June he was out of the race. What happened?

"He became discouraged. He'd been the ambassador to France and he said he'd come back to run for governor.

"He came into my office to tell me he was officially going to run. I was very kind to him. I kept him there for almost two hours during which I had everybody calling me from all around the state. The receptionist would say, ‘So-and-so is calling from Calvert County and so-and-so is calling from Baltimore City.' And, of course, all of this was pre-arranged and by the time he left he was discouraged.

"And then I got this call one day from a woman who said she had some kind of radio and that she could always (overhear) (Shriver's) telephone calls while he was traveling. And he was making calls to make appointments to ask certain people for support.

"And she said, ‘I'll tell you when he's going to see them,' and she said she would give me a report as to when he was going to see them. And I'd call them and say, ‘I understand you're meeting with Sargent Shriver.' And they'd say, ‘How did you know?' And they would cancel their meeting. And that's why I said, ‘He became discouraged.'

"That really happened; it's not a figment of someone's imagination."

Q: Did Shriver ever find out?

"I think he did. I think I mentioned to him (later) that he ought not to use the phone so much."

Q: In the 1970s you desperately needed Sen. Tommie Broadwater's (D-Prince George's) vote for a Metro bill. How did you get it?

"Tommie Broadwater. I sent one of my aides down (to the Senate) to get him. And he came up (to the governor's office) and told me that he'd said from day one that he could not vote for that bill. And I said, ‘That's fine Tommie, we'll get the votes somewhere else.' But we needed his vote. But I wasn't going to tell him that.

"So, we brought him upstairs and when he walked in the door he was talking — that he was opposed to the bill, that he wasn't going to vote for this bill and that he had told me from the beginning he wasn't going to vote for the bill.

"He went on for about five minutes and I didn't say a word. When he stopped to take a breath I said, ‘Tommie, that's not why I got you up here.' He said, ‘What's the matter?' And I said, ‘Well, you know that fellow that you're backing for the judgeship over in your county? Well, I'm having a terrible time with your county's bar association.'

"He looked at me and said, ‘But that's what I wanted to tell you. I think I might be able to vote for that (Metro) bill.' And I said, ‘And that's what I wanted to tell you, I think I might be able to appoint that judge.'"

Q: What was President Nixon like?

"Strangely enough, I found him good to deal with. He was very up on things. I remember going over to see Nixon because we had a big problem.

"We were working to get water over to Montgomery and Prince George's counties from the Potomac River. But in order to get it we had to go over to the (Virginia) side. But there was an eagle sitting in a tree, so we couldn't do that route, we couldn't disturb the eagle.

"So I made an appointment with the president to talk about the eagle. Just between you and me I said, ‘If that's the biggest problem I'll get rid of that eagle tomorrow with my shotgun!'

"So I went to see Nixon to try and get the federal people to keep the route because it was going to cost $7 million to move the route. And do you know what? No one could get them to remove the eagle so we had to move the route. It cost $7 million."

Q: How about Gov. Parris Glendening?

"I think the only time I was in his office was when he wanted to raise the governor's pension and he told the legislature that he was doing it for me.

"He wanted me to support it and I said, ‘Sure' because I could use the money. I didn't realize it was self-motivated — Glendenning had lost all his other pensions in his divorce settlement."

Q: What was your take on Paul Sarbanes when he was in the House of Delegates and you were speaker?

"Paul was very cooperative, but I never had much of a relationship with Paul.

"I'll never forget Paul's second day in the House of Delegates when he got up on the floor on a point of information and asked, ‘Under whose rules are we operating?' And I said, ‘You're operating under Mandel's rules and there's only one rule — whoever's got the votes makes the rules.' He didn't know what to say, he just sat down."

Blair Lee is CEO of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring and a regular commentator for WBAL radio. His column appears Fridays in The Gazette. His e-mail address is blair@leedg.com.