My Unexpected Journey: (The Autobiography of Governor Harry Roe Hughes)

Raised in a sleepy Eastern Shore farming town where he was the son of a popular high school teacher, Harry Roe Hughes’s dream was to play for the New York Yankees. He never envisioned a life in politics, let alone becoming the governor of Maryland. As often happens, life steered a different course. In 1954, he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and entered a political world where he would prosper for the next thirty-two years. He steadily rose from delegate to senator, from back bencher to committee chairman to majority floor leader, and from legislator to cabinet secretary to Governor.

Pitted against better known rivals, hopelessly short of money and running a campaign staffed with amateurs, Hughes came out of nowhere to win the September 1978 Democratic primary for governor in what remains one of the biggest upsets in Maryland political history. Two months later, he was elected in the largest landslide in state history to the first of two terms as Maryland’s 57th governor.

In contrast to the rampant political partisanship and governmental paralysis so common today, Harry Roe Hughes took a workmanlike approach to public service, more interested in results than personal advancement. His record—major tax and education reform, protection of the Chesapeake Bay and more—is one of lasting significance to all Marylanders. He respected the policy-making role of the General Assembly and governed through consensus. He eschewed the political. His style reflected his personality and approach to life: decent, honest, efficient, low-key and businesslike.

Elected in an era of political scandal, Harry Roe Hughes restored Maryland’s reputation for integrity and good government—an approach that, sadly, seems quaint and old-fashioned by today’s standards.

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