Thomas Schaller
2007-01-19 08:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Martin O’Malley’s inauguration Wednesday as Maryland’s 61st governor is, on the surface, a return to normalcy — a restoration of the status quo of familiar, one-party Democratic control in the Old Line State.

O’Malley’s November defeat of Republican Bob Ehrlich — the only incumbent governor running for re-election in 2006 to lose — was the tale of a Democratic state providing a partisan correction to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s horrible and failed candidacy four years earlier.

But O’Malley’s solid, 7-point victory over Ehrlich doesn’t exactly rewind Maryland politics to late 2002. Though Democrats again control the state from top to bottom, much has changed in four short years.

For starters, O’Malley’s is not the only new face in the Annapolis. About a quarter of the members of the Maryland General Assembly are rookies. There are new county executives in Anne Arundel, Howard and Montgomery counties.

Other developments may make O’Malley’s political life easier.

He’s blessed with a new Democratic majority in Congress. And if that were not enough, the two highest-ranking members in the U.S. House of Representatives are Marylanders: Speaker Nancy Pelosi — whose brother and father once ruled, as O’Malley did, over Baltimore’s City Hall — is a native, and 5th District Rep. Steny Hoyer is her majority leader. State-federal relations between Annapolis and Washington may never be as cozy as they are now.

On a state level, Republican numbers thinned in 2006, presenting less of an obstacle for O’Malley than Parris Glendening, the previous Democratic governor, faced. Nor will O’Malley be burdened by antics of the irascible William Donald Schaefer, the Democratic governor before Glendening; as comptroller, Schaefer taunted and haunted his successor for four years on the Board of Public Works. Instead, O’Malley ally Peter Franchot holds the third seat on the state’s most powerful panel.

So it was little wonder that O’Malley was beaming as he delivered an inaugural address full of soaring rhetoric. He talked of his promises to the state’s citizens, and the promise those citizens offer the state. He championed the state’s diversity and its economic strength. He spoke of his hopes for “One Maryland.”

As to the challenges ahead, the governor scrolled through a familiar litany: crime, schools, the Chesapeake Bay, declining infrastructure and other public investments. More interesting, however, were O’Malley’s national and even international comment, including the perils of global terrorism and global warming.

“I promise you I will get Maryland moving forward again,” the governor said later that night during brief remarks at the Baltimore Convention Center gala attended by 8,000 supporters. Then the governor — who stopped fronting for his beloved Celtic rock band, O’Malley’s March, to focus on the 2006 campaign — crossed to another stage to play a few songs with his former band mates.

Some say the state’s structural budget problems will bring this week’s celebratory mood to a quick halt. “There’s a lot of talk about how Martin won’t be able to do this, can’t do that,” scoffed a top O’Malley adviser late Wednesday night as the gala wound down. “But look, he’s governor now and he gets to lead — so we’ll just see about that.”

In terms of constitutional prerogatives, Maryland’s chief executive is among the nation’s most powerful governors. Add to those powers a convincing electoral win in which O’Malley — who grew up in Montgomery County and led Baltimore City — beat Ehrlich in the incumbent’s Baltimore County backyard, stir in Democratic legislative majorities on the state and national level, and it’s clear that O’Malley begins his march on Annapolis with as much if not more political capital than any first-term governor in the country.

His successes — and his failures — will be his own.

Thomas F. Schaller is an associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.”