23 Facts About Marvin Mandel

Marvin Mandel was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 56th Governor of Maryland from January 7,1969, to January 17,1979, including a one-and-a-half-year period when Lt.

Governor Blair Lee III served as the state's acting Governor from June 1977 to January 15,1979 while Mandel was in federal prison for mail fraud and racketeering.

Marvin Mandel was a member of the Democratic Party, as well as Maryland's first, and to date, only Jewish governor.

Marvin 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.

Marvin Mandel received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1939 and a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Maryland Law School in 1942, receiving an honorary prize for his part in a school practice court honor case.

Marvin Mandel was first elected to public office in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1952, representing northwest Baltimore.

Marvin 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 Marvin 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.

Additionally, the mass-transit system of Maryland was established and fostered under Marvin Mandel, enacting plans begun back in 1969 for the establishment of two urban subway networks.

In 1972, Marvin Mandel selected Philip Kapneck, a local businessman, to start Maryland's International Business efforts by opening an office in Brussels, Belgium.

Marvin Mandel's initiative was so successful that over the next 40 years, his Trade Ambassador attracted hundreds of businesses, creating more than a hundred thousand jobs.

Marvin 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 Marvin Mandel was given money and favors for vetoing one bill and signing another to help his friends make money on a race track deal.

Lee continued to serve as "Acting Governor" until January 15,1979, when Marvin Mandel rescinded his letter appointing Lee as "Acting Chief Executive" 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.

Marvin 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.

Marvin Mandel married Barbara Oberfeld on June 8,1941, at age 22 and later had two children, Gary and Ellen.

Marvin 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.

In 1974, after temporarily moving out of the governor's mansion into a small Annapolis apartment and separating from his first wife, Marvin Mandel later obtained a decree of divorce from Oberfeld, who had remained in the mansion and attempted to continue to act as "First Lady" and maintain a domestic life.

Thereafter, Marvin Mandel soon married Dorsey, who occasionally entertained and performed some official functions as "First Lady" of the State in the later Marvin Mandel administration.

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

Marvin Mandel served as the chairman of the governor's Commission on the Structure and Efficiency of State Government, beginning in 2003.

Marvin Mandel was a member of the Board of Regents for the University System of Maryland from 2003 through 2009.

Marvin Mandel died on August 30,2015, at the age of 95 in Compton, Maryland.