… and I don’t actually have a joke for that.
What really happened is that three governors walked into a room and a bunch of journalists wrote down what they said and took their pictures.
Gov. Martin O’Malley held a press conference in December to give the formal OK to a controversial state growth document called Plan Maryland.
The gov called in two high-powered Democratic buddies to bolster his case (and probably draw some more media attention, too): former Gov. Parris Glendening and former Gov. Harry Hughes. That’s half of the living former governors we have in Maryland — the other two are Gov. Marvin Mandel and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
Three governors in one place about five minutes from the newsroom meant that we definitely needed to be there.
I see Gov. Hughes at environmental events from time to time. He did a lot of environmental work when he was governor in the 1980s, and he remains connected with environmental causes.
Gov. Glendening, however, has kept his life much more behind the scenes. He’s not often at public events, though he’s still active in the smart growth issues he first championed as governor.
In addition to covering the press conference and writing about the controvery of Plan Maryland, I took the time to make a few pictures of Gov. Hughes and Gov. Glendening. It’s nice to have photos showing the post-gubernatorial life of these guys for our archives.
And also, it never hurts to have up-to-date pictures of people who might be in the news. They might say or do something interesting, and if we don’t have a camera there, at least we’ll have recent pictures.

