William Donald Schaefer
William Donald Schaefer was an American politician who served in public office for 50 years at both the state and local level in Maryland. As a Democrat, he was the 45th mayor of Baltimore from December 1971 to January 1987, the 58th Governor of Maryland from January 21, 1987, to January 18, 1995, and the 32nd Comptroller of Maryland from January 20, 1999, to January 17, 2007. On September 12, 2006, he was defeated in his reelection bid for a third term as Comptroller by Maryland Delegate Peter Franchot in the Democratic Party primary.
Early life and career
Schaefer was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the only child of Tululu Irene and William Henry Schaefer, on November 2, 1921. His parents were Baptist, and he was of part German ancestry. He spent his childhood at 620 Edgewood Street in the old West Baltimore community off Edmondson Avenue, near Hilton Street and Parkway by Gwynns Falls-Leakin Park. He received early education in Baltimore's city public schools, and later graduated from The Baltimore City College in its centennial class of 1939. Schaefer received an LL.B. from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 1942 and an LL.M. in 1954.Schaefer was a member of the Order of DeMolay in Baltimore as a youth, later inducted into the DeMolay International Hall of Fame. He was also a Freemason and a member of the "Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Maryland". He was a member of "Mystic Circle Lodge No. 109" when he first ran for public office. During his childhood and much of his adulthood, Schaefer was a member of Cummins Memorial Church in the Reformed Episcopal Church, serving as a vestryman and treasurer.
When the United States entered World War II on Monday, December 8, 1941, Schaefer joined the United States Army and later achieved officer rank, taking charge of administering hospitals in England and the rest of western Europe. He continued to remain in the U.S. Army Reserves during his academic, legal and political/public service careers until 1979, when he retired with the rank of colonel.
Schaefer resumed his legal career afterwards, practicing real estate law. He had earned his Master of Law degree in 1954 from the University of Baltimore School of Law and formed a general practice law firm with two colleagues. Except for his military service, he lived unmarried with his mother in two different very plain West Baltimore two-story, six-room "daylight-style" rowhouses on Edgewood Street all his life, until moving to the Government House at age 65 in 1987.
Impelled, according to his biographer, by a situation in which Cummins Memorial Church lost a city property auction in which it was the highest bidder due to alleged corruption, Schaefer ran for a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1950 and again in 1954, losing both elections. He was successful in his third campaign for a seat on the Baltimore City Council in 1955, when his concern for city planning and housing issues propelled him to a seat representing the 5th Councilmanic District. In 1967, Schaefer ran successfully for Baltimore City Council president and, four years later in 1971, he ran successfully for the mayor's office, when incumbent mayor Thomas L. J. D'Alesandro III, brother of Nancy Pelosi, retired after one term.
Mayor of Baltimore (1971–1987)
Schaefer served four terms as mayor, being first elected in 1971, then re-elected in 1975, 1979 and 1983, each time receiving 85% or more of the vote. He was known for his attention to detail: taking notes of strewn garbage and citing other violations as he rode around for appointments/events in a plain town car with a police officer driver, and ordering them fixed immediately. A famous photograph shows him dressed in a Victorian style red and orange-striped bathing suit, with a straw boater hat, carrying an inflatable rubber duck into the outside seal pool at the then under construction National Aquarium in Baltimore at the Inner Harbor, attracting wide national media attention, to settle a wager that it would not be opened in time in August 1981. In 1984, in a move to give the majority African-American population more power in the city of Baltimore, Schaefer named Bishop L. Robinson as the Baltimore City Police Department's first African-American police commissioner, a position previously dominated by Irish American and Italian American members of the city police department. Baltimore's 1967 police headquarters were renamed for Robinson in 2007.Throughout his tenure as mayor, Schaefer realized that the closings of large manufacturing plants like Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point, the largest waterfront steel mill in the world; and the 70-year-old General Motors auto/truck assembly plant on Broening Highway in the southeast city would negatively impact the quality of life in the city of Baltimore and add to the city's unemployment rate. His administration turned to tourism as a possible alternative. He pushed for and saw built a new Baltimore Convention Center along West Pratt Street between South Charles, Sharp and Howard Streets in downtown Baltimore in 1979, enlarged again in the 1990s to keep up with expanding and larger competition for the burgeoning nationwide convention business; as well as the opening of Baltimore's famed "Harborplace", festival marketplace pavilions by shopping center developer and urban visionary James Rouse along the north and west shores of the old "Basin" at East Pratt Street along South Calvert Street, replacing the former small grassy central "Pratt and Light" triangular Samuel Smith Park with its bronze statue of the old brave "Defender of Baltimore" and its surrounding "temporary" Light Street parking lots from the last waterfront "urban renewal" project of the Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro, Jr. administration from the late 1940s. Dubbed "America's Best Mayor" at the time by several national magazine stories, Mayor Schaefer was hailed for transforming a deteriorating city into a hub of national tourism, although the groundwork and the original vision for the Inner Harbor project in the early 1960s to succeed the previous Charles Center downtown renewal of 1958–1970 had first been foreseen and crafted two mayoral administrations earlier under progressive/liberal Republican mayor and former governor of Maryland Theodore R. McKeldin, who was eventually recognized by having the redeveloped plaza facing the new "festival marketplaces" at Pratt, Light and Calvert Streets renamed for him. With new businesses, new hotels, a new National Aquarium and the new convention center, Baltimore had been revived. Harborplace had 18 million visitors its first year, 1980–81. In 1984, Esquire magazine named Schaefer "the best mayor in America". A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Schaefer as the twentieth-best American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.
Colts leave
Schaefer constantly battled Robert Irsay, the owner of the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League. Irsay and Orioles owner Jerrold Hoffberger complained that Memorial Stadium, which the Colts and the American League's Baltimore Orioles shared, was antiquated due to a lack of quality seats and inadequate parking. Schaefer extracted a promise from Irsay that the Colts owner would call Schaefer first before moving the team. However, after one of the houses of the Maryland State Legislature passed legislation giving the city of Baltimore the right to seize ownership of the team by eminent domain – an idea first floated in a memo written by Baltimore mayoral aide Mark Wasserman – Robert Irsay called Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut that afternoon and began serious negotiations in order to move the team before the Maryland legislature's other chamber could pass similar legislation. In the early morning hours of March 29, 1984, Mayflower moving vans began relocating the Colts from the team's Owings Mills training facility to Indianapolis. Schaefer lamented that " didn't call his old friend, Don" before the move.Ravens arrive
The Colts were not the first professional sports team to leave Baltimore on Schaefer's watch. In 1973, the Baltimore Bullets moved to Landover, Maryland and were renamed the Capital Bullets, and later, the Washington Bullets.In his last years as mayor, and later during his two terms as governor, Schaefer led the push to build Oriole Park at Camden Yards for the Orioles and M&T Bank Stadium for a new NFL team, which came to fruition in 1996 when Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, giving credit to Schaefer for the transaction:
Governor of Maryland (1987–1995)
Schaefer, with running mate Melvin Steinberg, was overwhelmingly elected the 58th governor of Maryland in 1986, defeating Republican challenger Thomas J. Mooney with 82% of the vote, the largest percentage total ever for a contested statewide election in Maryland. He was re-elected in 1990 with almost 60% of the vote. Immediately upon taking office, Schaefer sought to take on the state's unemployment problem. After learning of a proposed closing of a major corporation in western Maryland, he personally went to Allegany County with his top advisors and the Maryland Congressional delegation and devised a plan of state and federal action to meet the needs of the faltering company. The corporation kept its headquarters in Allegany County, saving 600 jobs.Schaefer's legacy includes the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, stricter measures taken toward preventing and solving the Chesapeake Bay pollution problem, and higher standards for public schools.
Schaefer reappointed Philip Kapneck as Maryland Trade Ambassador, originally appointed by Governor Mandel. Kapneck worked closely with the pro-business governor, bringing overseas companies to Maryland, creating many new jobs and generating revenue for the state.
Schaefer as governor also pushed for the light rail line of electric trains that run 30 miles from Hunt Valley in Baltimore County, through Baltimore, past Oriole Park at Camden Yards, to Cromwell Station/Glen Burnie in Anne Arundel County, near BWI Airport.
Detractors remind the public that, in the winter of 1991, Gov. Schaefer compared Maryland's Eastern Shore to an outhouse. When the remark circulated, Eastern Shore residents erupted in protest.
In the 1992 presidential election, Governor Schaefer endorsed Republican President George H. W. Bush over Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. "He was a great man. I liked him; he was a friend. I went up to Camp David with him.". He also endorsed Republican Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley in her bid to succeed him as governor in 1994.
Schaefer stepped down from his position as governor on January 18, 1995, after serving the maximum two consecutive four-year terms.