Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.’s promise to retire in four years has spurred early jockeying among his potential successors and renewed calls to put blacks at the peak of state political power.
“We’ve never had an African-American [Senate] president,” said Sen. Joan Carter Conway, a Baltimore Democrat whose colleagues consider to be a viable but long-shot candidate to lead the chamber. “It will be an issue,” she said.
Mrs. Conway, who is one of two blacks that Mr. Miller is promoting to leadership positions for the General Assembly in January, said much can change in four years but the need for diversity isn’t going away.
“It would definitely be a giant step forward to have African-American leadership in the Senate,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Miller yesterday announced that state Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, Baltimore Democrat, will become Senate president pro tem — the chamber’s No. 2 position — in January.
Mr. McFadden, who will be the Senate’s first black presiding officer, had been the chamber’s majority leader and will replace state Sen. Ida G. Ruben, a Montgomery County Democrat who lost her re-election bid this month.
State Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer, Baltimore County Democrat, will replace Mr. McFadden as majority leader.
The president pro tem presides over Senate sessions when the president is not in the chamber.
Earlier this month, Mr. Miller initiated the contest to succeed him by telling The Washington Times that he planned to quit the legislature at the end of the next four-year term.
After 20 years leading the state Senate, Mr. Miller is currently the country’s longest-serving presiding officer in a state legislature.
The announcement followed a campaign season in which Democratic leaders weathered criticism about the lack of blacks at the top of the party’s ticket.
Several elected Democrats in majority-black Prince George’s County even bucked their party to endorse the U.S. Senate run of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a Republican. Mr. Steele lost to Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a white man from Baltimore.
Mr. Miller was cognizant of racial division in his party when he named Mrs. Conway chairman of the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee and Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, Baltimore Democrat, vice chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Mr. Miller, a Democrat representing Calvert and Prince George’s counties.
Mrs. Conway said that Miss Gladden also is a rising star in the Senate who in four years could be poised to take the top job.
Blacks make up about 30 percent of the state’s population. Black voter loyalty to Democrats has helped preserve the party’s advantage in Maryland, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.
Another black Democrat who Mr. Miller assigned a committee chairmanship in 2002 — Sen. Ulysses Currie of Prince George’s County — is among the three senators most often named as top contenders for Senate president.
“I’m not a candidate for anything. I’m just focusing on the budget,” said Mr. Currie, chairman of the Budget and Taxation Committee. “Four years is a long time in this business.”
The other two top prospects are Sen. Brian E. Frosh, Montgomery County Democrat and chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, and Sen. Thomas M. Middleton, Charles County Democrat and chairman of the Finance Committee.
Mr. Frosh, a more liberal Democrat than either Mr. Miller or Mr. Middleton, is the only candidate to openly express interest in running the chamber.
“Doing the job I have now is perhaps the best thing I can do to advance my presidency when Mike retires,” he said.
Mr. Frosh also acknowledged the push for diversity.
“Certainly, people are talking about it,” he said. “Whether that will be an issue four years from now, I don’t know.”
The Senate president is elected by members of the chamber’s majority party at the start of each General Assembly.
Democrats retained their 33-14 Senate majority in this month’s election, and increased their majority in the House of Delegates.
The election also restored the Democrats’ nearly complete control of state government with the re-election defeat of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., the state’s first Republican governor in more than 30 years, by Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, a Democrat.
• Jon Ward contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
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