Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (blue polo shirt, center) and his running mate, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman (red shirt, center) make splash at 37th annual Tawes Crab and Clam Bake Wednesday at Crisfield, sur- rounded by campaign aides holding up Brown-Ulman lawn signs. State Attorney General Doug Gansler, who is widely expected to run against Brown next year for governor, noted that numerous campaign signs for the lieutenant governor's gubernatorial candidacy were il- legally displayed on the public highway median strip leading into Crisfield. (VoB Photo/Veronica Piskor)
THROWS HAT IN RING FOR GOVERNOR
IMMEDIATELY BEFORE ANNUAL EVENT
Would be first openly gay governor elected in U.S.
By Alan Z. Forman
Except for Spiro Agnew in the late 1960s and Bob Ehrlich near the beginning of the new millennium, Maryland has elected only Democrats to the Governor’s Mansion in Annapolis since the GOP’s Theodore R. McKeldin served two terms from 1951 to ’59.
What’s more, they’ve all been men, and white. But next year’s election could change all that, or at least some of it.
A frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, an African-American Harvard-educated lawyer who is finishing out his second term as Gov. Martin O’Malley’s No. 2 and has gotten the jump on other hopefuls by running for more than two months since announcing his candidacy in early May.
He made a big splash at Wednesday’s J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clam Bake in Crisfield on the Eastern Shore (see photo), a political must-attend event for Maryland politicians that is billed as equal parts seafood, sweat and schmooze.
But a dark horse female candidate for governor appeared at the annual event as well.
Enter State Del. Heather R. Mizeur, an out-of-the-closet lesbian who hopes to be not only Maryland’s first non-male governor, but the first openly gay person to run and be elected governor in the United States.
Mizeur announced her candidacy by email immediately prior to the Tawes namesake event, a political gathering open to all factions despite being named for a governor of the old school variety, a conservative Democrat of the 1950s and 1960s, who was a longtime state comptroller prior to serving two terms as governor before he was succeeded by then-liberal Republican Spiro T. Agnew, a one-term Baltimore County executive.
Women have run for governor of Maryland before, albeit unsuccessfully; Mizeur is not unique in that regard.
If elected Maryland governor, Heather Mizeur would be the first openly gay person in the United States to be elected to head a state government.
There have been three, to be exact: Helen Delich Bentley, a popular five-term congresswoman from Baltimore County who was defeated in an all-female Republican primary in 1994 by Maryland State Del. Ellen Sauerbrey, who then lost twice to two-term Gov. Parris Glendening; and Glendening’s lieutenant governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a daughter of assassinated Attorney General Robert Kennedy and niece of President John F. Kennedy. She lost to Ehrlich in the election of 2002.
Mizeur has represented Montgomery County’s 20th Legislative District in the House of Delegates since 2007, after having served a term on the Takoma Park City Council, where she lives with her wife of five years, Deborah Mizeur, and their dog Chester.
Brown’s principal opposition, at least at the moment, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, arrived shortly after the event began but did not attempt to make an “entrance,” accompanied by just a small cadre of aides.
Gansler is not expected to formally announce his candidacy until September, even though the primary will be next June, much earlier than in recent elections.
It didn’t stop him Wednesday however from taking a shot at Brown:
“Did you see all those illegal Brown signs on the highway coming down here?” he asked the first group of people he greeted.
The Brown campaign had posted a long row of yard signs along the grassy median strip of the main highway leading into Crisfield — on public property, which is an illegal use of campaign materials.
For the Republicans, David R. Craig, the Harford County executive running for governor, and his running mate, Del. Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, of Talbot County, made a splash as well.
As did candidates for a myriad of other statewide offices.
But none could match the attendance record of former Gov. Marvin Mandel, who at age 93 was attending his 37th consecutive Tawes Crab and Clam Bake since the event began in 1977.
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
Editor’s note: The first openly gay person to serve as a governor in the United States was James E. McGreevey of New Jersey, who resigned in disgrace after admitting to an adulterous affair with a male lover in 2004. He served just under three years of a four-year term, having been threatened with a sexual harassment lawsuit that caused him to state at a press conference, “My truth is that I am a gay American.” McGreevey and his second wife separated after he came out.
