Maryland

Although the majority of the state’s voters were registered as Democrats, the state nonetheless put Republicans in office in the 1960s and 1970s. Maryland politics was broad based. In the late 1970s, the Maryland congressional delegation had a higher proportion of women than that of any other state, and the legislature had one of the highest ratios of black and female membership in the nation.

The openness of Maryland politics helped the state weather the occasional embarrassing scandals. Governor Agnew, later twice elected vice president under President Richard M. Nixon, pleaded no contest to corruption charges and resigned in disgrace in October 1973. Four years later a sitting governor, Marvin Mandel, was sentenced to federal prison for mail fraud. Following these events, anticorruption measures were passed under the reform administration of Governor Harry R. Hughes.

In the early 1990s taxation and government expense were among the major political issues. Marylanders were split about evenly by geographic region. Liberals and moderates prevailed in three localities: heavily black, financially strapped Baltimore; Prince George’s County, containing many federal workers and black suburbanites; and well-to-do Montgomery County, with its own federal employees. Conservative-to-moderate voters prevailed in other parts of the state, which are predominantly white, suspicious of government, and culturally conservative. Democrat Parris Glendening was elected governor in 1994 on the strength of the Baltimore black vote and Prince George’s federal worker vote; his Republican opponent carried 19 of the state’s 23 counties. He was reelected in 1998.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Maryland voters were becoming increasingly conservative. In 2002 voters elected the state’s first Republican governor since 1966 when United States representative Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., defeated two-term Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. As governor, Ehrlich proposed legalizing slot machines to help offset the state’s budget shortfall. But the controversial initiative failed in the state legislature. Voters elected a Democrat, Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley, as governor in 2006.

The history section of this article was contributed by Robert J. Brugger. The remainder of the article was contributed by James E. DiLisio.