2 Governors, 2 Philosophies, 1 Rough Border Battle

Outside the West Wing, momentarily crossing each other’s space, the two men make sure their gazes don’t meet, in that proud way of estranged people who won’t give the other the satisfaction of being noticed.

As animosity goes, theirs rises to an art form, particularly the way Parris N. Glendening and James S. Gilmore III can convey such mutual scorn while looking so solemn and serene.

This gathering of the National Governors’ Assn. at the White House is just another day when the chief executives of Maryland and Virginia have nothing to say to each other. Glendening, a Democrat, the tall, bespectacled former government professor from Annapolis, and Gilmore, a Republican, the shorter, stockier former prosecutor from Richmond with the pugnacious bearing haven’t spoken since July.

As governors of neighboring states expected to work on regional challenges, such as transportation and land use, theirs is a marriage made in political hell. They have warred over a bridge, a bay and electoral politics--matters that, while often dividing their predecessors, did not prevent political accommodations from being made in the interests of both states. They gleefully jab over the other state’s labor policy, environmental regulations, school funding, abortion rights--in short, most of what’s important in modern politics.

Glendening, 58, remains angry about Gilmore’s 1998 forays over the border to campaign for Glendening’s opponent. “He tried to see that I would be knocked out of office,” says Glendening.

Gilmore, 51, whose zest for skewering Democrats helped him soar into the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, alludes to Maryland’s “comfort with higher taxes.”

Glendening frequently mocks what he regards as the paucity of Gilmore’s agenda and its centerpiece, a car-tax rebate.

Neither has been great at repairing damaged political relationships, nor tried hard to do so, even within his own party. Compromise doesn’t come naturally to either.

“They’re pit bulls--a lot more alike than either of them would care to admit,” said a former Glendening advisor.

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The steely approaches of the two are rooted partly in their dogged climbs from modest circumstances: Gilmore as the son of a Richmond butcher; Glendening so affected by a hardscrabble Florida childhood that even now he has difficulty talking about it.

Each lacks charisma; each has long been underestimated by opponents. Glendening, now chairman of the governors’ association, has successfully pushed through parts of an educational and environmental agenda by threatening to withdraw support for the pet projects of wavering Democratic legislators.

Gilmore’s reputation as a savvy, focused strategist derives from his successful 1997 election campaign, in which he relentlessly focused on one issue. “Somebody could have said to him, ‘There’s life on Mars,’ ” said Gilmore consultant Dick Leggitt. “And he would have said, ‘The good thing is that there’s no car tax on Mars.’

“Jim Gilmore’s focused, and he just won’t back off once he thinks he’s right,” Leggitt said. “I get the feeling Glendening is like him, at least in that way.”

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The origins of the men’s fights are as old as their states’ attitudinal differences--a chasm as basic on occasion as liberal vs. conservative.

Glendening, who casts himself as an architect of the anti-sprawl philosophy “smart growth,” derides what he characterizes as Virginia’s neglect of open land, encouraging the impression of a state where growth is mistaken for progress.

Gilmore said he never fails to get applause when he tells a Virginia audience of “higher taxation” in the neighboring state. His allies call their foe “Spendglening,” and Gilmore said, “I think Maryland, at least for now, is more comfortable with high taxation and a larger government . . . which is part of why I think we’ve been able to attract technology and other businesses like we have.”

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The relationship between Glendening and Gilmore has been cool since meeting shortly after Gilmore’s 1998 inauguration.

Besieged by complaints from Northern Virginia technology companies about traffic congestion, Gilmore broached the possibility of building a new crossing over the Potomac River as another link between the two states.

The idea was anathema to Glendening, so concerned about preserving open space. Gilmore recalls Glendening responding, “Look, don’t take up the western bypass anymore with me, ever.” Glendening remembers, “I told him, very firmly but cordially, we couldn’t do it.”

When the two governors came together on a multi-state commission overseeing the future of the Chesapeake Bay, Gilmore resisted a land-use clause, disdained Glendening’s anti-sprawl language, and argued that the provision could infringe on property rights.

In 1998, Gilmore stumped for Glendening’s opponent, Ellen Sauerbrey. After Glendening won, relations between the two governors seemed slowly to improve, until their falling-out last summer over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

The slowly crumbling old bridge just south of Washington, between Alexandria, Va., and Oxon Hill, Md., is a major route handling not only area commuters but Interstate 95 traffic along the East Coast. For a while, the two governors had aligned to pressure the federal government into doling out more money to build a new one.

Then came a surprise July phone call from Glendening. Gilmore listened as his counterpart, at that moment being driven to Washington for meetings with the media, said he would be announcing plans for Maryland to proceed, unilaterally, with the first steps toward building the new bridge.

“I’d thought we’d been partners in this,” Gilmore said. “But it broke down when he basically said they were going into the water to dredge and that was that.”

“Other people wanted to wait,” Glendening said. “Maryland said, ‘Let’s go, we’re going to move.’ That’s the way we work in Maryland.”

Glendening’s implication: that Virginia and Gilmore were gripped by inertia and a shortsighted stinginess. In time, Congress would authorize the full $1.5 billion, which even Gilmore would applaud.

But by then, Glendening had announced that Maryland would require its bridge contractors to conform to union rules, in a Project Labor Agreement, which Gilmore groused about.

When President Bush banned the use of PLAs on the project, a triumphant Gilmore trumpeted the move. The governors’ alienation was complete.