Blacks eye top job in Maryland Senate

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.

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