Maryland’s Thatcher

STANDING in a classy business suit before a decrepit Baltimore rowhouse, Ellen Sauerbrey looked out of place. The first-floor windows behind her were boarded up, the words “Derrick, R.I.P.” scrawled on the wood in red spray paint, and the second-floor windows were shattered. An empty shell case lay on the ground near her feet. Onlookers, almost all of them black, seemed to be thinking, The lady must have lost her way. Yet this place was not only Mrs. Sauerbrey’s destination, it was also her origin. “It breaks my heart to be back in this neighborhood,” she says, recalling what it was like to grow up in this now-vacant home in the 1940s and 1950s with a blue-collar father who worked for Bethlehem Steel, belonged to the union, and always voted for Democrats.

Ellen Sauerbrey, running for governor of Maryland as a Republican, was ostensibly here to announce her choice for lieutenant governor (former U.S. Attorney Richard D. Bennett). The real purpose, however, was to talk about her past. Mrs. Sauerbrey is one of the most widely recognized politicians in Maryland, but few people know much about her except that she nearly won the governorship four years ago as a single-issue candidate advocating a big tax cut. “I’ve known Ellen for twenty years,” says John Bambacus, the GOP mayor of Frostburg, “but I didn’t know she grew up in that neighborhood.”

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

Featured Tags

STANDING in a classy business suit before a decrepit Baltimore rowhouse, Ellen Sauerbrey looked out of place. The first-floor windows behind her were boarded up, the words “Derrick, R.I.P.” scrawled on the wood in red spray paint, and the second-floor windows were shattered. An empty shell case lay on the ground near her feet. Onlookers, almost all of them black, seemed to be thinking, The lady must have lost her way. Yet this place was not only Mrs. Sauerbrey’s destination, it was also her origin. “It breaks my heart to be back in this neighborhood,” she says, recalling what it was like to grow up in this now-vacant home in the 1940s and 1950s with a blue-collar father who worked for Bethlehem Steel, belonged to the union, and always voted for Democrats.

Ellen Sauerbrey, running for governor of Maryland as a Republican, was ostensibly here to announce her choice for lieutenant governor (former U.S. Attorney Richard D. Bennett). The real purpose, however, was to talk about her past. Mrs. Sauerbrey is one of the most widely recognized politicians in Maryland, but few people know much about her except that she nearly won the governorship four years ago as a single-issue candidate advocating a big tax cut. “I’ve known Ellen for twenty years,” says John Bambacus, the GOP mayor of Frostburg, “but I didn’t know she grew up in that neighborhood.”

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.