TIMONIUM - One of Helen Delich Bentley's two cellular phones lets out
a shrill ring about 9 p.m. on a weekday evening. A desk phone rattles a
few minutes later.
She has barely taken a seat in her Timonium office
and one of the
volunteers from her congressional campaign emerges, needing her immediate
attention.
Bentley's been working since 7:30 a.m., and it doesn't look
like she's
going to bed anytime soon.
Bentley, who turns 79 in November, is running
hard for Maryland's 2nd
District congressional seat, the same seat she held from 1985 to 1995. The
Nevada native, dressed from head to toe in red, white and blue, bristles
when asked whether she's ever thought of retiring, or spending her time
doing something else.
"I wouldn't be here, so why ask stupid questions,"
she snaps.
It's a typical retort from the woman who made a name covering
the Port
of Baltimore back when few women were in newsrooms and fewer still were
covering longshoremen.
"Helen was a very tough reporter and a very tough
lady. Behind her
back, her nickname was Tugboat Annie," said Jim Keat, who worked at The
(Baltimore) Sun from 1956 to 1995. "She climbed up on the boats when
women didn't do things like that."
Back then, the city's Inner Harbor
was a commercial port with rotting
piers. Keat said Bentley took on a beat few reporters, male or female,
wanted to cover.
Joseph Sterne, who worked at The Sun from 1953 to 1997,
said Bentley
was well known around the port and that "she used the language of the
ports very freely."
"Helen has an aggressive personality. I liked her. I
was always very
fond of her," he said.
After graduating from the University of Missouri
with a journalism
degree in 1944, Bentley said she wrote to nearly every major newspaper on
the East Coast looking for work. But she would not take a society page
job, as many women did at the time.
The Sun was the only paper that
offered her a different position, she
said, so she moved to Baltimore. She covered the maritime industry and the
city's ports as a reporter and later worked as maritime editor. Her last
day there was Oct. 10, 1969.
"I am one of the early women who broke the
glass ceiling, and I came
up the hard way," Bentley said. "I had to break down doors at The
Baltimore Sun. I had to break down doors in government."
Since arriving
in Maryland in 1945, Bentley said she's fought only for
what she felt she has deserved. She felt she deserved the chairmanship of
the Federal Maritime Commission. When she was offered a seat on the
commission in 1969, "I told them to go fly," she said.
It paid off: The
White House offered her the chairmanship a short time
later, and she was reappointed in 1970 for a term of five years, at a
salary of $40,000, according to Congressional Quarterly Almanac.
After
working in the private sector for a few years, Bentley decided
to run for Congress. She lost bids for the 2nd District seat in 1980 and
1982, before winning in 1984. Once elected, the Port of Baltimore again
moved to the center of her career.
"She's gone far beyond the call of
duty whenever there was legislation
that could have had an adverse effect (on the port)," said Clifton G.
Gross, president of International Longshoremen's Association Local No.
333 in Baltimore. "When it comes to the Port of Baltimore, she's every
bit as important as the flag itself."
Maryland Comptroller William
Donald Schaefer, a Democrat, said he
considers the staunch Republican a friend from the days when she was a
reporter and he was a Baltimore City Council member.
"When she got out
of office, she got into international trade, and I
know personally she got some companies from Taiwan and China to come back
to the Port of Baltimore," Schaefer said. "It was definitely because of
her."
In Congress, Bentley struck a balance between being fiscally
conservative and pro-business, said Louis M. Pope, acting chairman of the
Maryland Republican Party.
He recalled one time in 1994, when Bentley
was running for governor,
when she appeared at a Rotary Club of Greenbelt luncheon hauling pieces
of scientific equipment to drive home the point that she supported
high-tech businesses in Maryland.
"She actually came in with props,"
Pope said. "Part of that was
fighting for high-tech industries to come into the corridors around
Baltimore and Washington."
Bentley hasn't always won her battles,
however. In 1994, she lost a
bitter gubernatorial primary to Ellen Sauerbrey, now the Maryland party's
national committeewoman. Bentley got 38 percent of the vote in that race
to Sauerbrey's 52 percent. William S. Shepard earned 10 percent.
Bentley won't say much about her relationship with Sauerbrey today,
and is quick to say that election is in the past.
"This is not important
to this race," Bentley said, her voice rising.
"She is the national committeewoman for now. I respect her for that."
Sauerbrey, who went on to lose twice to
Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening, did
not return a phone call. But Pope, who calls himself a close friend of
Sauerbrey's, said many Republicans are still split over the 1994
election. Had Bentley supported Sauerbrey in the general election, it
could have helped secure a Republican victory, he said.
"You never
forget who wronged you in life, but over time, you have to
overlook things for the good of the party," Pope said.
He said the party
believes Bentley is the best person for the 2nd
District.
"She's as sharp as she was 10 years ago," he said. "She knows
the ins
and outs of Congress."
Bentley said the decision to run was hers alone,
spurred on by a
redistricting plan that carved out a more Democratic and
minority-populated 2nd District for Ruppersberger. For Bentley, passing
up a chance to run almost seemed like admitting defeat.
"When I saw how
this district had been rearranged, and particularly
for a Democrat to win, I decided I wanted to show him," Bentley said of
Ruppersberger.
A July poll by Gonzales/Arscott Research & Communications
Inc. showed
Ruppersberger and Bentley virtually tied, at 45 to 43 percent of the vote,
respectively, and 12 percent undecided. The independent poll had a margin
of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Campaign finance reports filed with
the Federal Election Commission
show Bentley had raised $188,895 by June 30 and still had $167,744 on
hand. Ruppersberger raised $467,673 and held $408,216 in cash on June 30.
But Bentley said she expects "a full budget" of $1 million or more.
She
will not even entertain the thought of losing. By now, it's after
9:30 p.m. in the offices of her business development and lobbying firm,
and a few phone calls later, Bentley is rubbing her eyes. She won't say
she's tired. She will admit only that, "it's been a long day."
Never
mind the hours, or the daily commute she would make to
Washington from her Lutherville home, which she shares with her husband,
William Roy Bentley.
"If I wanted more time for myself I wouldn't be in
it," she says
indignantly. "I'm here. I can be in Washington and back home every day.
"Some days the hours are long," Bentley says. "So they are."
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