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William Donald Schaefer Always Made a Splash
As Baltimore mayor, Schaefer posed with a "mermaid" at the city's aquarium in 1981.
(Associated Press)
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After Snoops replaced carpets and woodwork, moved in statues of Gandhi and Schaefer, and painted the screens with landscapes, as they do in Baltimore rowhouses, the two took aim at the vaunted cuisine in the kitchen.
"She had to teach the cooks how to cook regular," Schaefer said. "Pork and mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. They really didn't know what sauerkraut was, these French guys. They weren't French, but they were raised French."
Later, he was called "the most pampered governor in America" by Money magazine, and he saw his ratings sink, as his second term ended in 1995.
For this he blamed the press, and once hissed at a Baltimore Sun reporter at a statehouse event, "I . . . hate . . . your . . . guts."
At another news conference, when he was seeking a ban on automatic handguns, he pointed an unloaded pistol at an Associated Press reporter, who began to smile. "I bet you wouldn't be laughing," Schaefer taunted. "I bet you wouldn't be smiling. I don't know what would happen to your pants, but I can imagine."
In recent years, as comptroller, Schaefer teed off on immigrants, called a female reporter a "sweet little girl" and taunted his successor, Gov. Parris N. Glendening, as "rabbit brain," "ayatollah" and a "pile of manure."
Most recently, it was his unique way of showing appreciation to a gubernatorial aide who served him tea during a Board of Public Works meeting that got him into hot water.
After watching her walk away, he asked her to return, saying, "Walk again," and stared as she left the room.
"She ought to be damned happy I observed her going out the door," he said in his defense afterward. He eventually apologized. But as in earlier times, he seemed surprised by the uproar that followed.
"Life is funny," he said once, after an abortion foe booed him at a bill signing in 1991. "You can hear 10,000 clapping, but the boo comes in the loudest."
