BALTIMORE (Map, News) -  Senate President Thomas Mike Miller Jr. all but confirmed he will seek re-election to the Senate in 2010 for his 10th four-year term and stopped short of reneging on the retirement plans he announced after the 2006 election.

Miller, 65, D-Prince George’s and Calvert, has been the elected leader of the Senate since 1986, and was first elected senator in 1974 after a single term in the House of Delegates.

Miller is such a fixture of the Annapolis power structure that a Senate office building bears his name.

“I owe something to the state of Maryland and the people who elected me,” Miller told reporters.

He said he’s been asked to run again by everyone from U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer — himself a former Maryland Senate president — to the people he meets in the grocery store.

Some of that outside pressure comes from “fear of the unknown,” Miller said.

People tell him, “We know you; we know your background; we don’t know what the future is going to bring,” he said.

Speculation about Miller’s future has been grinding through the State House rumor mill for months, but Miller’s June 4 fundraiser in Baltimore City at $1,000 a head brought the speculation to a head.

“I’ll probably make an announcement at that time,” Miller said.

“I’m not talking about running for president of the Senate again,” but about re-election in his own district, added Miller, who has had only one serious challenge to his leadership position.

Miller’s potential retirement had set up a competition among several committee chairmen in the Senate, who have been quietly lining up support.

Miller had some ambivalence about his decision.

He and his wife, Patti, have 10 grandchildren.

“She indicates it’s my decision,” Miller said. “She’s not adverse to it. She’s also concerned about the future of our district.”

He added that one factor in the decision is that his fundraising keeps the strong Democratic lock on the Senate.

“I have a very hard time asking people for money and then they say, ‘Are you going to run again?’ and I say, ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know.’ ”

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com