State Sen. Nathaniel Exum, servant of special interests
Sunday, May 11, 2008; B06
AS A CANDIDATE for the Maryland Senate two years ago, Nathaniel Exum, a Prince George's County Democrat, asserted that he was "a proven servant of the people." In fact, he is a proven servant of special interests, often unsavory ones.
Among the special interests Mr. Exum has served so assiduously are, to cite two recent instances, a suspect auto inspection station that wanted its license reinstated and his own private-sector employer, a scrap-metal business trying to dodge state legislation that would crack down on the theft of construction materials.
Mr. Exum's grubby brand of politics is not exactly unknown in Annapolis, but he practices it with particular brazenness. Take the case of the inspection station, Hilltop Fleet Services, which lost its license in 2002 when police determined it had fraudulently approved safety certificates for hundreds, maybe thousands, of vehicles it had not actually inspected. As reported by The Post's John Wagner, Mr. Exum, an African American, played the race card to delay the confirmation of the state police superintendent, who initially sided with his department in opposing a new license for the station.
Never mind that Mr. Exum produced not one shred of evidence to support his smear that the then-nominee for superintendent, Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, lacked the "sensibility" to promote racial diversity. The senator's meddling was enough to prompt Col. Sheridan to change his position -- under pressure from Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), whose own intervention suggested gubernatorial spinelessness in the face of Mr. Exum's political blackmail. Hilltop's safety inspection license was reinstated, and, in an especially stomach-turning finale, a police captain who stood on principle to oppose the political interference was reassigned.
Then there was the case of Mr. Exum's role in cutting a break for his own employer, a scrap-metal firm called Joseph Smith and Sons, by exempting it from new state legislation. The measure would have forced junkyards to disclose the source of their material in order to fight a growing wave of thefts from construction sites. In the process of doing a legislative favor for his bosses, Mr. Exum did nothing to alert his colleagues in the state Senate to his conflict of interest, which many of them were unaware of. (The bill died because of a technicality.)
Mr. Exum says that he did nothing wrong, insisting that his activities were nothing more than "constituent services." But a "servant of the people" would not use his privileged position in the legislature to do favors for his friends.
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