The pitch for being Maryland’s lieutenant governor goes something like this: a car, a driver, a salary headed for $175,000 next year, and zero constitutional responsibilities. As former state Del. Kumar Barve once told a House committee considering his bill to change the way the position is filled, “the only duty of office is to walk into the governor’s office and feel for a pulse.”
It’s also a career cul-de-sac. Nine people have held the job since it was reestablished in the early 1970s. None has been elected governor, though four tried, and a fifth reached for the U.S. Senate and missed. [Voters on Tuesday will most likely re-elect the Moore-Miller ticket, giving Aruna Miller a chance at breaking the streak, if she chooses to run in four years.]
The latest episode of the Maryland Now podcast, reported and narrated by Josh Kurtz, explores the history of lieutenant governors in Maryland—how they have been selected and what they have brought to their administrations.
Maryland is part of a relatively small group of 10 states where candidates must name their running mates before the primary, so you can’t even file to run without a partner. Some, like Barve, argue that it makes more sense for the selection to made after the primary, meaning that losing but still popular and qualified gubernatorial candidates could round out the ticket.
Nationwide, being lieutenant governor is no sure path to the top spot. While 14 of the nation’s 50 current governors once held the post, a 2013 study by Governing magazine found that of 55 lieutenant governors who ran for governor over roughly 20 years, 17 won and 38 lost, a 31% success rate. Most of the losers never won high office again.
Seventeen states elect the lieutenant governor separately from the governor, which makes a split-party administration possible, though none exists today. In 11 states, the gubernatorial nominee chooses a running mate after the primary, much like a presidential nominee.
Former Gov. Parris Glendening says that when he chaired the National Governors Association, his colleagues had a running gag: every time they looked at their lieutenant governor, they saw “a person waiting for me to go to jail or die.”
The office doesn’t get much respect, either. Political scientist Anthony Sparacino notes that the Oxford Handbook of state politics files lieutenant governors under “other executives,” and he recalls an old editorial that summed up the job with Rodney Dangerfield’s famous line. Reporters, meanwhile, were once offered beer to cover an LG’s press event.
And yet. Glendening says that when he announced his own run for governor, the first thing people asked was, “Good, who’s gonna be lieutenant governor?”
Jolene Ivey, a two-term state delegate from Prince George’s, recalls the meeting when Doug Gansler popped the question at a hotel restaurant about joining him on the ticket in 2014. Then came the vetting, which she compared to a “terrible colonoscopy,” and a moment at the Board of Elections when she considered quietly re-registering for her own seat and leaving Gansler “out on the street grabbing some random person.” She kept her word. They lost the primary anyway.
Other courtships were stranger. In 1994, Mickey Steinberg’s first choice bailed one day before the filing deadline, so he tapped a look-alike state senator with seven hours to spare, joking, “We don’t have to change the signs.”
Why does the job so rarely lead anywhere? Blair Lee IV, son of a late lieutenant governor, says LGs are rarely “alpha politicians” and are often seen as “aliens” by the governor’s team. Former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele adds that you carry the administration’s baggage when you run on your own. Glendening says Maryland governors choose a running mate to help win elections, not to groom a successor, so unlike in other states, nobody is anointing an heir.
Quotes from the podcast
Former Del. Kumar Barve
- “The lieutenant governor, by his or her very nature, the only duty of office is to walk into the governor’s office and feel for a pulse.”
Former Gov. Parris N. Glendening
- “If you put someone in that position, you are looking mostly [at] what they can do to help you in the elections and the eight years to follow. We’re not looking to find a person who would be a perfect candidate thereafter.”
Blair Lee IV (son of Lt. Gov. Blair Lee)
- “Lieutenant governors are never part of the team. They are added through necessity. They are viewed as aliens by the governor’s team…..They are not alpha politicians. The fact they settled for second place means that they were not cutthroat, ambitious, go-for-the-prize politicians.”
Former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele
- “If you do not clearly define your role, you will flop around and you will be aimless over that time….If you’re perceived as weak… then the people in Annapolis, in that town, aren’t gonna listen to you.”
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Maryland Now is brought to you by Blended Public Affairs and produced by Carper Cre8tive.
