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Limited Options. Bootsie has not only elected to stay put in the 105-year-old Georgian mansion, she continues to carry on business more or less as usual. She conducts occasional tours of the mansion as her bodyguard, a state trooper, stands at the ready. (His accompanied Marvin to the apartment.) She attends outside events, such as a meeting of the United Democratic Women's Clubs of Southern Maryland, where members of the audience openly wept over her plight. "I intend to stay politically active," she assured them. "Male candidates must remember they cannot do it without the women. I think that women such as myself and all those you see here make the difference in an election." Last week, she was the guest of honor at a $25-a-plate dinner sponsored by Hot Line for Youth, Inc., a Baltimore group that counsels troubled teenagers. At the outset, she had trouble with her microphone. She asked the audience: "Are you sure that the p.r. man who works for my husband didn't set that up?" Once properly amplified, Bootsie declared: "We must seek the moral standards we want our children to follow." Her two children, Ellen and Gary, took out a full-page advertisement in the dinner program stating: "Congratulations, Mother, on an honor you truly deserve."
How to get back into the mansion is only one of the thorny problems facing the Governor. His options are limited. He could storm the place and forcibly eject his hard-to-estrange wife, but at the risk of never winning another woman's vote in Maryland. As a friend of the Governor's observed: "If she goes, she'll have to go under her own steam." He could file for a Maryland divorce, but since it is contested, he could have as much as a three-year wait. If he sought a speedier divorce elsewhere, he would have to establish out-of-state residence, and thus give up his office.
Last week the Governor tried another kind of pressure tactic. He ordered the state controller to make out the quarterly voucher for the expenses of the mansion to himself and not to Bootsie. "I don't know why he did it," she objected. "Why is he changing a system that was working so well? We always paid our bills on time. Will the Governor do the same?"
Willing to Wait. Although no position papers are available, it can be assumed that the conscientious Governor put as much thought into his separation as he does into complex legislation at the State House. It was no overnight decision. He has known the comely, ash blonde, 36-year-old Jeanne Dorsey for ten years; she divorced her husband, a former state senator, in 1969. She takes their romance very seriously. A recent convert to Judaism, the Governor's religion, she is willing to wait for Mandel, however long it takes him. "If it took forever, I would wait," she declares. "The type of love we have does not know time. He's my whole life. I love him totally. All we ask is that people try to understand." Except, of course, for Bootsie, who is obviously beyond understanding. Jeanne will not discuss her tenacious rival for the Governor's mansion, if not for his affections.