Marvin Mandel

Mandel was born and raised in a Jewish family in Baltimore and attended the Baltimore City Public Schools, graduating from the Baltimore City College, which was a citywide, all-male institution that served as an early model of a college prep, specialized "magnet" school that developed and became popular in American public education forty years later. Mandel received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1939[7] and a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Maryland Law School in 1942,[5] also receiving an honorary prize for his part in a school practice court honor case.[8]

Mandel was first elected to public office in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1952, representing northwestern Baltimore City.[9] Mandel served several terms throughout the tumultuous events and urban politics of the 1950s and early '60s when civil rights was on the state's front burner, and was finally chosen as Speaker of the House of Delegates in January 1963 and served in that position until January 1969. Speaker Mandel was first elected Governor and then sworn in by the legislative members of both houses in a joint session of the General Assembly in January 1969, upon the resignation of Governor Agnew, who was sworn in as vice president later that month. In his short inaugural speech to the legislators, he famously predicted his method and attitude towards the powers of his office putting aside the indirect and unusual way he came to the executive office and the idea of serving as an "acting governor", from the formerly opposing party, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we intend to govern!".[10] After serving 23 months (almost two years of the unfinished Agnew term), he was duly further elected by the entire Maryland state body of voters in a regular gubernatorial election for a full four-year term in November 1970, and re-elected in a state election in November 1974.

Mandel was convicted in 1977 along with five co-defendants of mail fraud and racketeering. The charges stemmed from what prosecutors said was a complicated scheme in which Mandel was given money and favors for vetoing one bill and signing another to help his friends make money on a race track deal.[13] On June 4, 1977, he notified Lieutenant Governor Blair Lee III that Lee would have to serve as "Acting Governor of Maryland" until further notice. Lee continued to serve as "Acting Governor" until January 15, 1979, when Mandel rescinded his letter appointing Lee as "Acting Chief Executive" (just two days before the expiration of his second full term) on the basis of his overturned previous legal conviction and the neutral legal opinions on the status of his appeal case, that the governor was now eligible to re-assume the powers of his office previously delegated to Lee, even at that late date.

Mandel had already served nineteen months of his original sentence in the low-security federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base, in Florida, before having his sentence commuted by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Based on the reasoning of an opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, a U.S. District Court judge overturned the former governor's conviction in 1987. A year after that, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the final decision, ending the long legal and political saga.[14]

In addition, in 1980, Mandel's administrative aide Maurice R. Wyatt, a Maryland District Court Judge Allen B. Spector, and State Health Department director, Donald H. Noren were tried and convicted by Judge James MacGill on bribery charges related to payments for land development and septic tank installation moratoriums. Although not connected with Gov. Mandel's personal integrity and administration, these additional trials and convictions cast a pall on an otherwise overwhelming record of positive accomplishments in Maryland during the Mandel years.[15]

Mandel's official gubernatorial portrait was not hung in the governor's Reception Room of the Maryland State House, the historic state capitol, with the most recent occupants of the office, until 1993, fourteen years after he left the executive chair and two administrations had intervened.[16]

Mandel married the former Barbara Oberfeld (his first wife) on June 8, 1941, at age 22 and later had two children, Gary and Ellen. Mandel announced through his press office on July 3, 1973, that he was leaving his wife of 32 years to marry the woman he loved, Jeanne Blackistone Dorsey.[13] In 1974, after temporarily moving out of the governor's mansion into a small Annapolis apartment and separating from his first wife, Mandel later obtained a decree of divorce from Barbara, who had remained in the mansion and attempted to continue to act as "First Lady" and maintain a domestic life. After finally coming to a legal and domestic agreement, the first Mrs. Mandel left and moved to her own quarters. Thereafter the governor soon married Dorsey, who occasionally entertained and performed some official functions as "First Lady" of the State in the later Mandel administration. The second Mrs. Mandel died October 6, 2001, after 27 years of marriage to Mr. Mandel.

Mandel lived briefly in Arnold, Maryland, and lived and practiced law in Annapolis.

Mandel served as the chairman of the governor's Commission on the Structure and Efficiency of State Government beginning in 2003. He was also a member of the Board of Regents for the University System of Maryland from 2003 through 2009.[17]

Mandel died on August 30, 2015 at the age of 95 in Compton, Maryland.[18] A Fall 2017 issue of his law school's magazine reported that Mandel had since been inducted into the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore Hall of Fame.[19]

• List of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United States

• Maryland Manual official state gubernatorial biography
• First Lady Jeanne Blackistone Dorsey Mandel
• Jeanne Mandel gravesite
• Mandel bio from archive
• Jeanne Blackistone Dorsey Mandel from archives
• Mandel Family papers at the University of Maryland libraries