Former Lt. Gov. Melvin 'Mickey' Steinberg, Dies At Age 92

By Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters

Melvin A. “Mickey” Steinberg, Maryland’s fifth lieutenant governor and a former Senate president known for his political acumen and sense of humor, died Tuesday. A cause of death was not publicly announced. He was 92.

Sen. Shelly Hettleman, a Baltimore County Democrat who represents District 11, the district once represented by Steinberg, described her predecessor as “a thoughtful conciliator who preferred bringing people together to resolve differences than allowing disputes to divide them.”

He parlayed that approach into a career in politics that began in 1966, when he was first elected to the Senate. It ran through 1994 when, after two terms as lieutenant governor to Gov. William Donald Schaefer, Steinberg lost his own bid for governor to Parris Glendening in 1994.

Steinberg’s story is that of a self-made man.

The son of Russian immigrants, he was born in Baltimore in 1933. His father Irvin Steinberg founded a grocery store in Baltimore where Mickey worked after school. The family lived in an apartment above.

Steinberg earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Baltimore and later a law degree. He passed the bar when he was 21.

He later enlisted in the Navy, serving two years, then built a law practice that started with a a used chair and desk in the waiting room of his cousin Marvin’s law office, according to the Washington Post.
Former Lt. Gov. Melvin A. “Mickey” Steinberg, in a 1986 photo. (Photo courtesy Maryland State Archives)
Steinberg hustled, working traffic cases, divorces and other legal work and later with labor unions.

He amassed a small fortune — described by the Washington Post in 1994 as the “wealthiest gubernatorial candidate” in that year’s race — through real estate partnerships and other investments.

First elected to the Senate in 1966, Steinberg first rose to vice chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, a post he held until 1978. When then-President Steny Hoyer opted that year to become the running mate for Blair Lee III, who was running for governor, Steinberg backed James Clark, a Howard County Democrat, to be Senate president.

Francis X. Kelly, another Baltimore County Democrat, who joined the Senate in 1979, remembers that most of the county delegation was backing another candidate, but he had pledged his vote to Clark. Kelly said he was under pressure from Sen. Norman Stone to join the rest of the county delegation when Steinberg called.

“He says to me, ‘Are you still with Clark?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘So am I, stick with it because he’s going to win,'” Kelly recalled Wednesday.

Steinberg had cut a deal that would land him the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee. He told Kelly if he continued to back Clark “you can name the committee you want to be on.”

Clark won.

Kelly spent his first year in the Senate rooming with Steinberg in a house on Spa Creek. The lessons came with the rent.

“I’ve never been accused of not liking to talk,” Kelly said. “Mickey said to me, ‘Can you keep your mouth … shut? Can you go through the first 60 days without opening your freaking mouth? ‘ I went almost 90 days and he was right. I got it. I understood you don’t need to make fancy speeches to get things passed. You have to work it. Belly-to-belly politics.”

Kelly and others, including Dennis Rasmussen, a former state senator and Baltimore County executive, said it was Steinberg’s sense of humor that was his most effective tool as a legislator.

That sense of humor won Rasmussen over when he joined the Senate after serving in the House. During that time in the House, Steinberg had killed a package of bills sponsored by Rasmussen.

“I remember going to Jim Clark, saying, ‘Put me on any committee you want…. Don’t put me on Finance,'” which Steinberg was chairing. But, Rasmussen said, “Mickey and I became really good friends, more than just, you know, a professional relationship.”

Steinberg had a reputation for inserting levity and the occasional prank into tense moments.

When Kelly was new, Steinberg convinced him during one long floor session that it was tradition for new members to order pizza for the chamber during late floor sessions. Steinberg dispatched Kelly to take orders from other senators, then handed Kelly the phone number to what he said was a local pizza place.

Kelly went into the Senate lounge and called the number to place the order — not knowing that he was calling a line inside the Senate chamber and that the pizza parlor employee taking his order was Steinberg, who played put the call on speaker for the chamber to hear.

After some time passed with no pizza, Steinberg asked Kelly where the pizzas were, and Kelly went back to the Senate lounge to call the pizza joint. Again Steinberg answered, assuring Kelly the order was on the way.

More time passed. Steinberg put more pressure on the new senator. The members were hungry. People were getting angry. Where was the pizza?

Kelly marched back to the lounge, this time yelling at the pizza parlor “worker,” demanding to know where the pizzas were. It was at that point that Kelly could hear his own voice in the chamber. He had been played.

“He definitely did it,” Kelly said.

Steinberg also could play hardball politics.

He thought Clark was faltering as Senate president. The chamber was disorganized, with floor sessions starting in the afternoon after late morning committee sessions.

“Mickey felt he was being let down by Clark,” said Patrick Roddy, who was a lobbyist for Baltimore County government when he became friends with Steinberg.

“The house under Ben Cardin was run much more efficiently, and he felt that in order to compete on policy issues, he had to get those things cleaned up,” Roddy said.

The final straw was when Clark left the rostrum to take a seat on the Senate floor and argue against a legislative redistricting bill he felt was unfair to areas of his home county.

“Mickey and his supporters felt that was an unbelievable absence of leadership,” Roddy said, “that the Senate president needs to be able to get that worked out with the governor without that kind of an individual display.”

Steinberg, with the backing of Sens. Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and Clarence Blount, mounted a challenge and deposed Clark in 1982.

Steinberg was a key player in a number of crises at the time, including the run on the savings and loan industry in the state. The crisis was triggered by the failure of Old Court Savings and Loan before, the era of “too big to fail” institutions.

“What Mickey did and what the state of Maryland did is very analogous to what the Federal Reserve did in 2009,” Roddy said. “Tough decisions had to be made and businesses had to be put out of business who did nothing wrong. He was tough during the S&L crisis. He knew he had to give people haircuts.”

Steinberg moved up the political ladder again in 1986, when Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer mounted a run for governor and tapped Steinberg to be his running mate.

It was a marriage of political necessity for Schaefer.

“Schaefer was a creature of Baltimore and Mickey was a creature of Annapolis,” said Roddy, who went on to serve as a senior aide to Lt. Gov. Steinberg. The two worked together again, after Steinber was out of politics, as lobbyists at the firm now known as Rifkin Weiner Livingston.

“They [Schaefer and Steinberg] came in together in ’87 not really knowing each other or not really having worked together or been political allies,” Roddy said. “Mickey’s political allies were all in the legislature. Schaefer’s political allies were in Baltimore City, not just the politicians, but the large businesses of Baltimore City, right, which were … you know, his base.”

Schaefer, an irascible political giant with a ‘Do it now” philosophy, had irritated the legislature more than a few times while mayor.

“And Schaefer, I’ll never forget when he was elected, you know, he just didn’t know how to deal,” Kelly said. “He controlled City Hall. He controlled the council, right? So he comes down to Annapolis, and people are a little more independent down there, and he wasn’t getting his way with everything.”

But Steinberg had legislative relationships. He knew how to move the governor’s priorities.

“The first year of the Schaefer administration was one of the most successful years a governor has ever had with the Maryland legislature,” Roddy said. “And the general of that effort was Mickey Steinberg. He was the Dwight Eisenhower of that effort.”

It was an effort that included the creation of the Maryland Stadium Authority, the building of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and later the complex that would include a new football stadium and a new NFL team.

The creation of the stadium authority, with the power to issue bonds backed by lottery proceeds, ultimately moved the legislature to back the project.

“He [Schaefer] wanted to build a stadium so bad, and we didn’t have the votes to get that done,” said Kelly, speaking of Oriole Park. “And then we put together the stadium authority, which was a genius thing to do. It worked out great …Nobody was going to support a tax, a tax increase to pay for that stadium.”

Steinberg also helped guide the modernization of the Maryland State Police aviation unit, with helicopters a key to transporting critically injured patients to what is now the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.

But the relationship between the governor and his lieutenant became tense and ultimately fractured.

Schaefer, who had won his first term in a landslide, won reelection by a smaller margin. He was not happy having won just three, albeit large, jurisdictions and lashed out, using an scatalogical term to describe the Eastern Shore as an outhouse.

Steinberg was not immune. In the first term, Steinberg made comments critical of Schaefer’s plan to increase the gas tax.

Schaefer kicked Steinberg off the helicopter advisory committee. He also cut two positions from Steinberg’s small office staff, as payback for Steinberg breaking with the executive over an $800 million tax proposal.

“I was the guy who got cut,” Roddy said.

Steinberg is survived by his wife of 67 years, Anita (nee Akman), son Edward, and daughters Susan and Barbara Steinberg; three grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Sol Levinson’s Chapel in Pikesville. He will be interred at Beth El Memorial Park in Randallstown.

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