Mitch Daniels did not come to Baltimore on Tuesday to announce he was running for president, but the governor of Indiana also did not come to the Pikesville Hilton to say he wasn’t running for president.
“I’m not a candidate for anything yet,” Daniels told a small audience as he accepted the Governor Reagan Award from the Harbour League, a four-year-old Baltimore-based organization of free-market conservatives, which some in the audience of about 60 had never heard of before the event.
The governor said he was curious when he heard of the group and its founder, Eli Gold, who was “not to be deterred by the difficult politics of this state.”
Many in the small crowd were curious about Daniels too, and had first-hand experience of the difficult politics in Democratic Maryland. They included Dick Hug, ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s chief fundraiser; Ehrlich’s primary challenger Brian Murphy; Ellen Sauerbrey, who came close to being elected governor in 1994; former congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley; and Congressman Andy Harris.
Daniels is in a way an anti-candidate. Slight of build, balding, plain spoken, with little rhetorical flourish, he has one of the deepest resumes of any of the Republicans mentioned as presidential contenders. He was a U.S. Senate staffer, an adviser to President Reagan, budget director for President George W. Bush, president of a pharmaceuticals division, and CEO of the Hudson Institute think tank. Hudson’s current president is a member of the Harbour League board, and helped Gold get Daniels to Baltimore.
Gold asked Daniels to recount his successes as Indiana governor, something Daniels said he is usually reluctant to do to an out-of-state audience. “It’s like showing them your home movies,” Daniels said.
Daniels’ reputation is built on his fiscally conservative policies that pulled Indiana out of deficits without tax increases, cut the size of government, and leased the state turnpike to a private company to gain $4 billion for other transportation projects. Overall, he reduced the size of government so that Indiana now has the lowest number of employees per capita in the nation.
“You’ll be amazed how much government you’ll never miss,” Daniels said.
Sounds like a good prospect.
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