Harry R. Hughes, Maryland governor and low-key steward over two terms, dies at 92
By Bart Barnes Bart Barnes Email Bio March 13 at 5:23 PM Harry R. Hughes, who as Maryland governor brought a tone and perception of order and propriety to the state government after the scandal-ridden administrations of Spiro T. Agnew and Marvin Mandel, died March 13 at his home in Denton, Md. He was 92.Mr. Hughes, a Democrat, was Maryland’s chief executive from 1979 to 1987. Unlike two of his predecessors, he served the two full terms to which he was elected.
He began trade relations with China, presided over a doubling of the state budget to more than $8 billion and initiated programs to improve the state’s support of education. He raised payments in the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program and backed reform of a pension plan for state employees. He appointed a record number of women and minorities to cabinet posts and judgeships, as well as state boards and commissions.
Stephen H. Sachs — who was elected Maryland’s attorney general in 1978, the year Mr. Hughes was elected governor — was kinder. “I think his greatest legacy will be that he restored the state to political sanity, not just by being honest, which was not a bad place to start, but with appointments, the openness, the candor,” Sachs said in 1986. “People now take these things for granted, but eight years ago you couldn’t.
Harry Roe Hughes was born in Easton, Md., on Nov. 13, 1926. He grew up in Denton, attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania and served in the Navy Air Corps during World War II. He voted in favor of bills opening up public accommodations to African Americans — one of two legislators to do so from the Eastern Shore, a region with a long history of racial segregation.
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