Back in March, I said Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer needed to end his long and, until recently, distinguished political career when he finishes this term.
I was wrong: Schaefer should resign right now and withdraw from the September 12 Democratic primary before doing any more damage to himself, his reputation, his party, and even Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich.
Once the state’s lovable uncle, Schaefer has become the crazy uncle of Maryland politics.
In his latest — but unlikely last — brush with curmudgeonly self-destruction, the former Baltimore mayor and two-term governor has now added Korean Americans to the growing list of offended parties.
At a recent Board of Public Works meeting, Schaefer lobbed a few missiles at Korean students by implying that they were not worthy of state spending for English proficiency. Schaefer later issued a statement to clarify that his remarks — which came shortly after North Korea’s failed missile launch — were not aimed at South Koreans.
Of course, nationality is not the same as ethnicity. Naturalized Sunni Americans are entitled to the same rights other Americans enjoy, regardless of what Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (a Sunni) did before he was deposed.
Korean activists joined Schaefer on Tuesday for a private, hour-long meeting, but were so disgusted afterward that a post-meeting joint press conference was scrapped. Schaefer referred to one of the attendees as a “little fellow” and a “zero.”
“He’s treating us as if we were a bunch of foreigners instead of Korean Americans,” Chung Pak, the chairman of the League of Korean Americans of Maryland, fumed. “We were very disappointed he didn’t know what he said was wrong.”
The “didn’t know” part is exactly right: Schaefer doesn’t get how unprofessional and rude he’s become and, worse, doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it.
The political issue here — as it was when Schaefer insulted a female state employee earlier this year by asking her to “walk again” so he could leer at her backside —is not whether Maryland’s Korean community is properly respected, though they should be.
Nor is the electoral question whether Korean American voters, or Asian American voters generally, will decide the primary; that’s unlikely. (Warning to Schaefer: Maryland is just one of nine states with an Asian-American population share — 4.5 percent — higher than the national average, and a thriving Korean-American community has sprung up in Howard County near the intersection of Route 29 and I-70, complete with Korean specialty merchants.)
The issue is whether Schaefer is fit to govern. He isn’t.
Schaefer exacerbated matters Tuesday by using his familiar, sexist language to derogate a Baltimore Sun reporter. “Now this little girl, this little child right here, she likes to write these little stories with little digs in them, with a little twist,” he said, pointing to the Sun’s Jennifer Skalka. A few weeks ago, Schaefer said one of his primary challengers, Anne Arundel County executive Janet Owens, was capable of teaching him how to bake a cake.
According to an attendee at Tuesday’s meeting, one Korean American injudiciously premised a question to the 84-year-old Schaefer with, “Now that you are old …” Schaefer perked up and bristled, and rightly so.
Apparently the comptroller understands slights, but only when directed at him, not coming from him. He should take that visceral experience and multiply it by three million, which is the number of women, young people and Asian Americans who may have felt the same sensation after one of his thoughtless comments.
Before the death of Louis Goldstein suddenly opened the comptroller’s seat in 1998, Schaefer had walked away from elective office. It’s time for this little child of a comptroller to walk again.
Thomas F. Schaller is an associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
