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His record in the Governor's mansion was also laudably progressive. Even though Maryland's voters register 3 to 1 Democratic, Agnew was elected to the governorship in 1966 because, once again, the Democrats had been split by a bloody primary campaign. His opponent was Baltimore Contractor George P. Mahoney, a buffled-headed segregationist who campaigned on the slogan: "Your home is your castle—protect it." Agnew staked out a moderate position, emphasizing the need for fiscal responsibility and tax reform.
Maryland's fifth Republican Governor in 180 years, Agnew proved to be an eminently competent and imaginative chief executive. In contrast to some of his predecessors, he was positively revolutionary. Enjoying a year-long honeymoon with the Democrat-dominated state legislature, he pushed through a graduated income tax and obtained passage of one of the nation's toughest state antipollution laws. He also won repeal of the state's 306-year-old antimiscegenation law and signed the first statewide open-housing law below the Mason-Dixon line (which was across Maryland's northern border). The law was limited to dwellings of more than five units, but Agnew later said he might even favor "total open housing."
Personal Offense. In spite of that splendid record, the man from the suburbs was never fully attuned to the brutal realities of Baltimore's gritty ghettos. Last spring's riots in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination wrought a peculiar change in Agnew. When he saw the Negroes who had helped him to defeat Mahoney rioting in the ghettos, he took it practically as a personal offense, reacting in the style of the stiff-necked counterpuncher.
Having restored order with National Guard and federal troops, he summoned about 100 of the city's black moderate leaders to a conference. Agnew dressed them down like a prison warden. He accused them of conspiring with such black radicals as Rap Brown and suggested that they had abdicated their leadership. "I publicly repudiate all white racists," he said. "I call upon you to publicly repudiate all black racists. This, so far, you have not been willing to do." Seventy of the Negroes angrily rose and walked out. State Senator Verda Welcome, who had praised Agnew as "a wonderful, honest statesman" after the antimiscegenation law was repealed, now snapped: "He is a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Toward the Ticket. When some 300 students from dilapidated, predominantly Negro Bowie State College appeared at the Statehouse to protest their school's condition, Agnew refused to see them, ordered out the state police, who arrested 227. "I was not going to respond while they were putting the pressure on," Agnew said. Curiously, the Governor had already doubled the school's budget and added capital funds to upgrade the college. What annoyed him was that the demonstrators had failed to make an appointment with him. Agnew cherishes a routine governed by an appointments calendar as neatly arranged as the rows of bungalows in a subdivision.