Running For Governor

Encouraged by Gov. William Donald Schaefer and his political brain trust, Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos has become intrigued by the prospect of running for governor and is giving the idea serious thought.The multimillionaire team owner, according to sources close to Mr. Schaefer and Mr. Angelos, would like to enter the crowded Democratic field, but must decide whether he is willing to give up or take time away from his current enterprises.What does not seem in dispute is that Mr. Angelos, a former Baltimore city councilman who ran unsuccessfully for council president and mayor in the 1960s, has a desire to re-enter the political arena.

Among the likely Democratic candidates for Maryland governor in 2014 - Howard County executive Ken Ulman, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Attorney General Doug Gansler - Ulman comes closest to being the "Baltimore-area candidate. " But a genuine Baltimore-area candidate - someone who could pull votes from Baltimore County and the city, and enough in other key sectors of the state - would be a serious contender for the big-daddy chair in Annapolis. And who might that be? Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the six-term congressman and former Baltimore County executive, "is considering it," says his spokeswoman, Jaime Lennon.

China should welcome surveillance, a rightful tribute to its awesome power. P. Glendening is the one politician in Maryland who is not (rpt: not) running for governor. Just when everyone had counted Dutch out, he goes and lowers taxes. The Prize for Brevity was omitted again this year. Howard County has decided to beautify U.S. 1. Honest.

Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot, who had considered running for governor in 2014, told supporters Tuesday he will bow out of that contest to seek another term as comptroller instead. Franchot, a Democrat, has frequently been at odds with Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration. His decision not to run comes amid speculation that Democrats will have a crowded and potentially messy gubernatorial primary in 2014. "This is a decision that I have made after a great deal of personal reflection," Franchot, 65, said in a message posted on his website Tuesday.

Is Mickey running for governor or away from it?Don is getting retribution at state senators who annoyed him by punishing their subdivisions' future school children. What's wrong with that?Never make a threat you won't carry out -- unless you are Bill making foreign policy.The Redskins say they don't need all that much parking for a football stadium in Laurel. People can copter in.

Zaire never really existed. Now maybe it can.Exec Rehrmann is running for governor until someone makes her a better offer.The Supreme Court must decide whether conversations between the spouse of a high official with her own lawyer in front of a lawyer employed by the people are shielded by lawyer-client privilege or were for a prosecutor. Only in America.Cap'n Bodgit for governor!Pub Date: 5/19/97

House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell Jr., who twice this year has toyed with the idea of running for governor, now has twice backed off.The Kent County Democrat, asked about his intentions yesterday, replied, "I'm not running for governor."Mr. Mitchell had said during this year's legislative session that he was thinking about running for governor in 1994, then later said he was not interested. His interest was renewed in September after Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, regarded as the front-runner in the race, dropped out.Yesterday, however, Mr. Mitchell said flatly, "I've thought about it, but it's not for me."

WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles E. Schumer ruled out running for governor of New York in 2006, saying yesterday that he will instead help lead the Democratic Party's efforts to retake the Senate. Schumer's decision reshapes the political landscape in New York and leaves the field open to Eliot Spitzer, the popular Democratic state attorney general, who has been gearing up for the campaign. Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, has not said whether he will seek a fourth term. Schumer, 53, who was just re-elected to a second term with 71 percent of the vote (a record for a New York senatorial candidate)

Gov. Parris N. Glendening has another challenger in the Democratic gubernatorial primary next September -- Dr. Terry A. McGuire, a Prince George's County physician and self-described "pro-labor" conservative.McGuire, 55, a Davidsonville resident who has practiced medicine in Seat Pleasant for 28 years, set up a campaign committee with the state election board yesterday and announced he is running for governor.Billing himself as "A Voice for the Voiceless," McGuire said he is running to represent a frustrated electorate "that is very angry at what is going on right now" with government and the Democratic Party.

Maryland House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. is abandoning the idea of running for governor next year, but he is hardly jumping on the re-election bandwagon of fellow Democrat Gov. Parris N. Glendening.In a letter to members of the House of Delegates circulated yesterday, Taylor said he will run only for re-election as a delegate from Allegany County next year and as speaker of the House.Without naming Glendening, Taylor was openly critical of the governor's performance, raising questions about where he is leading the state -- questions that set the stage for a potentially contentious legislative session this winter.

Blaine Young, the Republican president of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners, has taken a step toward a possible run for governor in 2014 by launching a fund-raising committee. Young, 40, was elected in 2010 as part of a conservative Republican sweep of the five board seats in the Western Maryland county. He had been appointed to the board earlier that year. The former Democrat, who switched parties in 2002, said he has registered a committee, Blaine Young for Maryland, with the state elections board.

Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. launched his campaign to reclaim the job of Maryland governor Wednesday, promising to balance the state budget without "gimmicks" and roll back a sales-tax increase enacted soon after he left office. Speaking to hundreds of enthusiastic supporters not far from the Arbutus rowhouse where he was raised, Ehrlich, a Republican, portrayed his single term that ended in 2007 as an era of economic growth and fiscal restraint that was undercut by Martin O'Malley, the Democrat who defeated him. "They spent beyond our means, and we spend within our budget," Ehrlich said.

George W. Owings III, a former state delegate and Calvert County Democrat, appears to be little more than a week away from announcing his run for governor. He said Monday that he'll "make it official" at a morning news conference Jan. 6 on the courthouse steps in Prince Frederick. The former majority whip, who served as secretary of veterans affairs under Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., has been a sharp critic of Gov. Martin O'Malley's fiscal policies. He disagreed with O'Malley's decision to raise the sales tax during a 2007 special session and took issue with the governor's personal lobbying to repeal the death penalty this year.

In April, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s message to fellow Republicans in Howard County, delivered by his wife, Kendel, was a plea for guidance and support as he pondered another run for the Maryland state house. "This is all about you," Kendel Ehrlich told a packed Lincoln Day party dinner six months ago. "You need to tell Bob Ehrlich what you want him to do." Now those Republicans in this key political barometer county are cajoling, chanting, almost demanding that Ehrlich run for governor again against Democrat Martin O'Malley, but he is still not willing to commit, or even set a deadline.

Arguing that the BGE rate-relief plan approved by the General Assembly last week will bring finality to the state's most pressing consumer issue, Democrats called on the governor yesterday to either sign the legislation or veto it now. But that decision, due later this week, will come after a five-hour public hearing that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. will conduct today on the Assembly's plan to defer part of the average 72 percent increase. Ehrlich aides said it will give the governor the chance to hear from people whose voices have been absent from the debate.

Baltimoreans should ask themselves: Why make Martin O'Malley, our mayor for the past six years, the governor of Maryland for the next four? Why do you suppose he's running, seeking another job right under our noses, while this one remains, by all measures, unfinished? We need to mark 2006 as the Year of Paying Attention because, before you know it, the primary election will be here and O'Malley will have smiled and winked his way into the general, buoyed by votes from Baltimore - and, if you believe the polls, from women, in particular.

Howard County Executive Charles I. Ecker, whose moderate politics and easygoing style have made him one of the most successful Republicans in county history, is seriously weighing a run for governor -- against the powerful conservative Ellen R. Sauerbrey.In making that bid, Ecker would face an enormous uphill fight to try to win a 1998 GOP primary election against Sauerbrey -- a formidable opponent with statewide name recognition and a loyal following among the conservative voters who dominate the Republican primary.

He's the most successful state legislator in the modern history of Western Maryland: The first chairman of a standing committee in the House of Delegates from that rural region, and the only House speaker in this century from the Appalachians. Could it be that Cumberland's Casper R. Taylor now wants to reach for the brass ring on the political merry-go-round by running for governor?Such speculation was inevitable from the time Gov. William Donald Schaefer took a personal hand in drumming up support for a $200-a-ticket Taylor fund-raiser in Baltimore Monday night.