Dan Gross/The Gazette What does the future hold for the state? We're about to find out.

The second year of divided government came in on a wave of dysfunction and left much the same. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s slots plans foundered again on the shoals of House Speaker Michael E. Busch's tax-loving caucus. And the governor's medical malpractice reforms were left to the very last moment, with the governor ultimately losing control of an issue he owned for much of the year.

Meanwhile, much of consequence was accomplished. Car taxes and flush fees were enacted to pave roads and clean sewage. A renewable energy requirement passed, leading to construction of wind farms in Western Maryland. The legislature overrode the governor's veto of energy efficiency mandates for appliances. And the Delaware loophole went to its grave, though not without a giant silver lining courtesy of the General Assembly and the governor.

So without further ado, here are The Gazette Newsmakers 2004:

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

The governor whiffed on medmal and slots, but scored on his flush tax and car tax, the most significant environmental and transportation funding packages in more than a decade.

The Republican governor's popularity remained high, but he stumbled with each new detail about the Willard J. Hackerman land deal in St. Mary's County. He succeeded in raising the medmal issue to the forefront, but has not demonstrated a knack for closing the big deal, which had some doctors questioning his resolve and asking whether he was more interested in having a political issue or a solution. His secret funding source for the medmal subsidy turned out to be raiding a new state insurance plan for the chronically ill, an idea that was dead on arrival.

He called on the business community, and just about everyone else, to "get dangerous" in pressuring the Democrat-controlled legislature after it failed to block the living wage bill and a corporate tax hike tied to tuition caps, which he vetoed.

However, few business groups rallied to Ehrlich's side to back his planned veto of the legislature's medmal package and its HMO tax.

Ehrlich also found time to declare multiculturalism "bunk and crap," blackball Baltimore Sun bureau chief David Nitkin and columnist Michael Olesker, and visit Asia in a trade mission.

House Speaker

Michael E. Busch

Busch continued to play the leading role as the most powerful critic of the Ehrlich administration and its ethics foibles, while trying to shed the obstructionist label with months of failed efforts to craft a slots compromise. He had his caucus walk the line for a $670 million tax package that had no chance of final passage.

And his plan for a slots constitutional amendment collapsed when top leaders in Prince George's and Baltimore balked at multiple locations in their communities and Ehrlich refused to negotiate. Meanwhile, defeating the Annapolis Democrat in 2006 has become an obsession of the Republican Party, after GOP talk of efforts to replace Busch as speaker landed with a thud. Now, with the legislature poised to override the governor's promised medmal veto, Busch can pin the obstructionist label on the governor.

Senate President

Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.

The Energizer bunny of slots advocacy stood for months as a colossus in the way of tort reform. For months, Miller resisted cutting a medmal deal with rival Busch that would embarrass sometime buddy Ehrlich, even tweaking Busch with half-baked plans for a slots-medmal combo.

But ultimately Miller decided to cut a deal with the speaker rather than be publicly humiliated by the governor. How long can this newfound detente between the two Democratic Party heavyweights last? Meanwhile, Miller taunts Progressive Maryland as a fringe group and publicly opposes the living wage bill, only to ramrod the bill through the Senate on a party-line vote. Later he sells out living wage advocates while calling for a hike in the minimum wage.

The Senate president also has become a backstop for the pro-gun lobby. Miller replaced pro-gun Sen. Jim Brochin with pro-gun Sen. Norman Stone in a late fall medmal maneuver. It may be Brian Frosh's committee, but it's still Mike Miller's Senate.

Baltimore Mayor

Martin O'Malley

Multiple choice. The mayor's top cops this year were:

A. Convicted of corruption for stealing from a police charity to pay for visits with various paramours.

B. Fired after reports of domestic disputes.

C. Hired before reports of a questionable bankruptcy deal.

D. All of the above.

If you guessed D, you'd be right.

Of course, not everything went poorly for O'Malley in 2004.

Sure, the city schools' finances were imploding early in the year, and the murder rate rose, but property values are soaring, he still has an Irish rock band and he got the rising star treatment at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. And polls showed him already topping Ehrlich two years out. Worst moment: Describes city in crisis in Blackberry e-mails to police chief (B), who uses the e-mails in a lawsuit against the mayor.

Montgomery

County Executive

Douglas M. Duncan

Duncan has to be pinching himself.

A presumed Ehrlich rival in 2006, he pitches his record as the steak to O'Malley's sizzle, then watches as O'Malley struggles with school and cop scandals. He presides over the grand opening of the new downtown Silver Spring, a gleaming new conference center, skyrocketing property values and one of the hottest economies in the country.

Ehrlich's stumble on selling parkland even gave Duncan a rare opportunity to mend his iffy relationship with the environmental community. And unlike 2000, when Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was busy sewing up support on Duncan's home turf, Duncan has the MoCo crew largely singing off his songsheet this time around and has an early and powerful Prince George's County ally in Rep. Al Wynn.

Worst moment: Caught passing out cheesy refrigerator magnets of himself with Prince George's County emergency phone numbers on election night in his neighboring county. He'll have to do better than magnets to compete with muscle shirts.

Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele

In 2003, he was the light guv, muzzled on the death penalty and abortion and seemingly lost in the shuffle. Last year, Steele came into his own, traveling to battleground states with GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie, espousing reasons for blacks to support Republican principles, defending President Bush in television interviews and giving a primetime speech at the Republican National Convention, where he was dubbed the party's African-American answer to Donkey Party heavyweight Barack Obama and hung out with the likes of hip-hop moguls P. Diddy and Russell Simmons.

Ehrlich, who likes to call his teammate "real," named him to chair a high-profile education commission that promises to come out with some controversial recommendations just in time for the 2006 election.

And somewhere in the midst of all that, Steele found time for a trade trip to Africa and pushed a series of reforms of the state's minority contracting program through the legislature.

Meanwhile, with talk of Steele moving to the Bush administration beginning to die down, talk of a Steele run for Senate in 2006 continues to percolate.

Willard J. Hackerman

The Baltimore philanthropist-corporate titan with a nose for government tax breaks and land deals consumed much of the oxygen left over from the medical malpractice train wreck this fall, with The Sun exposing his secret identity as "the benefactor" who stood to receive up to $7 million in tax breaks for buying a $2.5 million property in St. Mary's County that had been hand-picked and bought for him by the state.

General Services Secretary Boyd K. Rutherford

The man who invented the term "the benefactor" for Hackerman had a busy year.

Rutherford said it was his idea to hook up Hackerman with The Conservation Fund, which wanted to unload the 836-acre Salem Tract in St. Mary's but was worried about negative press should it sell directly to a construction magnate. Rutherford apparently thought having the state do it instead would not invite negative press. Er, wrong.

Rutherford also made news this summer when he tried to evict the State House press corps from its "pit" on two weeks' notice. The eviction plans were rescinded after Busch and Miller threatened to sue because the State House Trust on which they sit had not voted on the plans as required by law.

William Donald Schaefer

The quotable Prince of Decorum says folks with AIDS should be listed in a public registry. He rips Ehrlich for proposing a slew of new business tax loopholes. He blasts the state Democratic Party for lurching to the left (and leaving him off the list of delegates to the national convention). He complains about immigrants for not knowing English when he orders at McDonald's. He beats up O'Malley for, well, everything else, and browbeats nearly all of his staff into donating to the United Way.

Did we mention he's a very good friend to a guy named Hackerman?

Del. Peter V.R. Franchot

Franchot makes it his mission to criticize Ehrlich's every move as the attack dog du jour, every jour, in a naked attempt to boost his name recognition in advance of a bid for statewide office.

His anti-slots crusade and call for left-wing policies shows off the Takoma Park bomb-thrower's chameleon-like flexibility, given his former support for slots and various corporate interests. And he's the governor's favorite Democrat to bash, even meriting a personal Thanksgiving letter from the governor hoping that he makes it on to the gubernatorial ticket in '06. A Franchot-Schaefer smackdown appears more likely.

Tom Hucker

and Sean Dobson

The top dogs at Progressive Maryland have been dismissed as the left-wing fringe by some, but the allegedly nonpartisan duo provided plenty of fodder for the grist mill this year, filling in for a divided and dysfunctional Democratic Party establishment, with a report highlighting that two-thirds of Maryland's biggest corporations don't pay any state income tax and pushing the living wage bill through a reluctant General Assembly. They also accurately predicted that the Delaware loophole was costing the state far more than Annapolis number-crunchers had estimated.

Sen. John A. Giannetti Jr.

One senator, so many nicknames: Senator Tailgate, Senator Speedo, Senator Cell Phone Tower and Senator AK-47.

Giannetti made himself the center of attention with some bizarre doings this year, including a post-honeymoon news release talking about his wife trying to, er, wear him out, and about the locals preferring the wife's bikinis to his black Speedo.

The senator also came under fire for holding beer-laden tailgates for College Park students in violation of state law. He nixed the beer and apologized to local pols whom he had initially dismissed as party poopers with axes to grind after cops told him his shindigs were illegal. He earlier came under fire for proposing a bill that would have benefited one of his law firm's clients by allowing companies to build cell towers disguised as giant flagpoles.

Last but not least, Giannetti ensured what was already a likely primary challenge in 2006 by providing the key vote to kill the assault weapons ban in committee.

The two Lindas

Linda H. Lamone, the state's steely elections chief, survives efforts by the Ehrlich administration and opponents of paperless voting machines to get her fired. Linda Schade, her energetic Green Party nemesis, keeps the voting machine issue on the front burner.

Christopher J. McCabe

The embattled secretary of the Department of Human Resources kept failing to hire enough social workers to meet General Assembly mandates, while children kept dying on his watch. We'd love to let you know what he has to say for himself, but he hasn't returned our calls.

Robert L. Flanagan

Maryland's transportation secretary steers a controversial road-funding bill through the legislature this year and then holds news conferences around the state to criticize opponents of the measure.

He also has the $2.1 billion Intercounty Connector chugging on the fast track, despite escalating costs and an up-in-the-air funding scheme.

Flanagan also had to deal with the ongoing delays and costs of the construction screwups at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and the fallout from the discovery of vastly inflated prices for basic goods in a long-running looting of the treasury. Meanwhile, wags are talking up Flanagan for a potential attorney general run in 2006.

Peter G. Angelos

The powerful owner of the Baltimore Orioles unsuccessfully tried to scuttle the deal that brought the Montreal Expos to Washington, but his reticence resulted in a big payoff and various media agreements that will protect the O's. He emerged as a major Democratic donor to Ehrlich and is now a central figure in the slots debate, thanks to his family's purchase of beleaguered Rosecroft Raceway in Oxon Hill. We're wondering how long this wink-wink nod-nod agreement about Angelos' "family" getting into the gambling business while owning a Major League Baseball team will last.

Rep. Albert R. Wynn

The Prince George's County boss helped sink this year's slots negotiations when his preferred plan -- a casino at National Harbor -- didn't get the nod. The congressman also jumped on the John Edwards bandwagon early and often, which could help him raise cash in the trial lawyer community in 2006 when he decides whether to run for the U.S. Senate.

Del. Sheila Ellis Hixson

The chairwoman of the Ways and Means Committee found herself at the middle of the big debates of 2004 -- sponsoring legislation that removed the trigger for the $1.3 billion Thornton funding plan, helping craft a $670 million tax package, trying to craft a slots deal and single-handedly nixing legislation requiring paper receipts for voting machines, among other items.

Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp

Kopp's proposal to increase borrowing by $150 million a year to pay for new schools put a spotlight on an issue that is likely to receive major attention this year. Her advocacy for school construction also highlights one of the weakest spots on the governor's record.

Sen. Robert Kittleman

The death of one of the gentle giants of Annapolis politics dealt a blow to Democrats and Republicans alike who appreciated his principled stands and classy demeanor.

Dels. Patrick L.

McDonough and

Richard K. Impallaria

Earning them a ticket on the fast track to the theatre of the absurd, the GOP duo from the east side of Baltimore County called on the federal government to withhold funding from Montgomery County because of its immigrant-friendly policies that they argued coddled "illegal aliens," including possible terrorist sleeper cells.

They launched a series of anti-immigrant bills that got them a lot of ink, but no action. And last but not least, there was a scuffle with a female Latino lobbyist that required a response from the state police.

Thomas E. Perez

The president of the Montgomery County Council became the highest-ranking Latino elected official in Maryland in a year where he took on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and made national news for pushing a Canadian drug re-importation program.

The civil rights lawyer from Takoma Park has dubbed his council presidency the year of the consumer, which is in line with talk that he could launch an insurgent bid as an Eliot Spitzer-style attorney general in 2006.

Thomas M. DiBiagio

The now ex-federal prosecutor scores with getting ex-Baltimore and Maryland top cop Ed Norris to plead guilty to corruption charges AND winning a conviction against former Glendening crony Nathan A. Chapman Jr.

He also gets the doofus award for sending an e-mail to his underlings calling for more "front-page" corruption cases by early November. That prompted his bosses in Washington to institute a humiliating procedure that essentially took the power to prosecute such cases out of his hands, and his days in the job were numbered.

Alan Keyes

The master of the Historically Bad Senate Campaigns took his show on the road to Illinois when that state's Republican Party could find No One Else to run against the Obama juggernaut, and Keyes went down to a suitably historic defeat. It didn't help when he called Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter a "selfish hedonist." So will the anti-carpetbagging carpetbagger come back to MoCo to run? Surely he'd do better than Chuck Floyd ...

Ira Cooke

Welcome to the convicted felon lobbying corps, Ira. Move over, Bruce and Gerry. This is bad news presumably for one of Cooke's steady clients -- the bail bond industry. Cooke also had been a key lobbyist preserving the transfer tax loophole that lets corporations avoid paying taxes when they sell real estate.

Sen. Brian E. Frosh

The Bethesda Democrat came under fire for heading the Senate's medmal commission while being employed by a law firm that represents malpractice victims, and he could not control his own committee on the assault weapons ban. But the sharp-eyed lawyer's star continues to shine, with high-profile fund-raisers leading to talk of an attorney general run, if the Senate presidency isn't in the cards first.

Del. Anthony G. Brown

While other pols grouse about the war in Iraq, the Mitchellville Dem is actually serving in it, called up to active duty in the summer. Brown's political star has already burned brightly as a Harvard-trained attorney, member of House leadership, chairman of the House's medmal task force and key opponent of slots.

Glenn F. Ivey

The polished Prince George's County prosecutor is on everyone's list as the leading contender to be somebody's lieutenant governor running mate in 2006, but he may not want to play second fiddle to anybody.

Kweisi Mfume

The president of the NAACP quits his post after a turbulent year, reigniting talk that he'll run for Paul Sarbanes' Senate seat in '06. He finally gets his chance to visit with President Bush on his way out the door.

Terry L. Lierman

The new Democratic Party chairman has some serious work to do trying to lasso the fractious factions of the state's still-dominant but reeling party. Can he successfully navigate the rivalries between Busch and Miller, Duncan and O'Malley, rural and urban, et al., while competing with the resurgent GOP money machine?

John M. Kane

The GOP chairman's predictions of strong congressional challengers and a close presidential race in Maryland fell resoundingly flat, as Chuck Floyd, Brad Jewitt, E.J. Pipkin and George W. Bush, to name a few, were crushed at the polls.

But those GOP fund-raisers are still very well attended, and he and wife Mary still get to go to another presidential ball in a few weeks.

Isiah Leggett

The former MoCo Council president struggled to unite the wings of the Democratic Party in its first two years without the governorship, but he can take some heart in the strong showings of Democratic incumbents in '04. Leggett now appears poised to jump into the '06 Montgomery county executive race pronto.

Jim Purtilo

Who needs Walter Baker? With the crusty Senate chairman of Judicial Proceedings out of the legislature, the gun control crowd thought it had an opening with liberal new Chairman Brian Frosh in the catbird seat. But the pro-gun lobby -- led by Purtilo, the ever-present publisher of Tripwire newsletter, and his ever-expanding database of readers -- flexed its muscle, helping to kill the assault weapons ban and the state's ballistic fingerprinting program.

Karl P. Riggle

The soft-spoken surgeon from Hagerstown jumped headlong into the medmal fray this fall and became the most quoted white coat in Annapolis.

Members of Riggle's medical coalition -- Save Our Doctors, Protect Our Patients-- challenged the state medical association, snagged a spot on the governor's task force (for what it was worth) and generally lit a fire under the advocates of tort reform. It's also worth noting that Riggle was back to seeing patients in Washington County less than five hours after watching the bill pass in the Senate at 3:30 a.m. last Thursday. Whew!

Del. Robert A. Zirkin

The feisty Democrat owns the juvenile justice issue, dragging the Ehrlich administration along for the ride. The slow pace of implementing reforms, however, has Zirkin promising more fireworks this year.

Del. Anne R. Kaiser

Kaiser's testimony before a House committee where she came out as a lesbian and asked for equal rights stood out.

Del. Maggie L. McIntosh

The chairwoman of the Environmental Matters Committee crafted deals on the flush fee and brownfields reform with the administration and emerged as Baltimore city's leading voice in Annapolis.

David Nitkin

Blackballed by the governor following a series of hard-hitting scoops on the Hackerman land deal, Nitkin's reporting kept the Ehrlich administration tied in knots and the governor whining about "noncontextual innuendo" without providing specifics about any inaccuracies in Nitkin's copy.

The farm team

Ehrlich continued to pick off Southern Maryland lawmakers to fill in his roster of top staffers and Cabinet secretaries.

Joining the ranks of Maryland State Police Superintendent Tim Hutchins, a former delegate from Charles County, were Veterans Affairs Secretary George W. Owings III, the majority whip from Calvert County and Van T. Mitchell, who went from Charles County delegate to deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The list does not stop there: Del. W. Louis Hennessy, a La Plata Republican, was named a Charles County District Court judge in short order.

Without a scorecard, the Southern Maryland delegation is not going to be easy to identify this year.