A Different Vision

On a recent morning, she stands in a gray wool suit before a crowd of about 200 seniors wearing red AARP T-shirts at a candidates' forum in Cambridge. They've come to hear her and Brown speak about what they will do for voters.

"I've had my hand in a lot of different pots," she tells them, as the aroma of sausage-and-egg casseroles, sweet rolls and coffee wafts through the American Legion Post 91. "Policy and budgets and regulations, all that good stuff. So I live my life, love my job, have fun with my kids and get a call one day that says, 'What do you think about running for lieutenant gov?' "

"I was not there at first," she says. But the opportunity to work with a wider range of policy and programs persuaded her. Her own department coordinates 19 other agencies' services for disabled Marylanders. Since she started running, she's broadened her repertoire to include a range of policy issues, from education funding to wraparound social services for students to the intricacies of sewage treatment plant upgrades.

At the same time, she'll readily admit not knowing how to be lieutenant governor -- or governor, for that matter, should that circumstance arise.

"I'll be learning how to do the job," she says after the forum.

As one of her guiding principles, Cox recalls the advice of an instructor at the boot camp she attended nearly a decade ago.

"Sometimes just standing there, hoping the answers are just going to come, doesn't work," she says. "Sometimes you have to walk into unknown territory."

Historical Precedents

If blindness is a hurdle in American politics, it's not an insurmountable one. Thomas Pryor Gore, the maternal grandfather of author Gore Vidal, served as both a U.S. senator and governor for Oklahoma. Minnesota attorney Thomas Schall, who was blinded in an electrical accident, served five terms in the U.S. House and two terms in the Senate. And this year in New York, state Sen. David Paterson, who is legally blind, is running for lieutenant governor with Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Even in her teens, as her eyesight was dimming, Cox was working hard to broaden her experiences.

After her suburban Salt Lake City school district refused to provide her with a magnifying machine at home, she accelerated her studies and left for college a year early. She excelled in her classes and studied abroad in Spain and Japan, learning Portuguese during a missionary stint in Brazil.

After graduating with a degree in educational psychology, she began working full-time for the National Federation of the Blind in Salt Lake City. In 1998, the federation's president offered her a job as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, where she helped push federal legislation that requires public schools to provide Braille textbooks for blind students.

Her husband, whom she met 13 years ago at a motivational seminar in Salt Lake City, says one of her strengths is that she doesn't get distracted or overwhelmed by unfamiliar problems.