By Andrew A. Green|June 13, 2009
It's Christmas in June for state house reporters in Albany.
In the waning days of the legislative session there, Senate Republicans staged a coup and, with the help of two Democratic defectors, threw control of that chamber into such confusion that it went on literal lockdown. With no lieutenant governor in New York for the moment, the Senate president is next in line, making Gov. David A. Paterson unwilling to leave the state while the Republicans might or might not be able to take over. As if that weren't enough, one of the coup-supporting Democrats is accused of slashing his girlfriend with a broken glass, and the other is under investigation for a wide variety of possible campaign finance violations (not to mention the question about whether he actually lives in his district).
Ah, Albany and Annapolis - so close alphabetically, yet so far apart when it comes to delicious chaos.
It is simply inconceivable that Republicans will soon stage a coup to take control of the Maryland Senate. For one thing, they'd need to swing 10 Democrats to their side, not just two. And for another, there's Mike Miller.
You don't get to be the longest-serving Senate president in the United States for nothing. Mr. Miller exerts exquisite control over his chamber - partially, of course, because he's helped fund the campaigns of many of the people there, but also because he has an uncanny knowledge of what other senators are thinking, seemingly before they think it. Watching the Senate up close, one quickly gets the impression that he's never surprised by anything.
As a result, he's built up a mystique that may now be his greatest source of power and control. The operating assumption in Annapolis is that nothing happens in the Senate without his knowledge and consent; call it the Miller Infallibility Rule. If something inexplicable happens - like, say, a BGE rate relief bill falling apart with 10 minutes to go in the 2006 legislative session - people don't conclude Mr. Miller failed; they figure he must be executing a strategy the rest of us just aren't smart enough to decipher. If the Republicans did manage to take him out, people wouldn't be wondering how he lost control. They'd be trying to figure out what his angle was.
So secure is Mr. Miller that the last time somebody tried to topple him, the Senate president didn't even bother to be vindictive about it. The failed plotter, then-Sen. Tommy Bromwell, didn't lose his committee chairmanship, and he later wound up with a plum state job to boot. (Mr. Bromwell did later go to jail, of course, but I'm pretty sure Mr. Miller wasn't responsible.)
