Gladys Noon Spellman rose through the ranks of Maryland
politics to become an influential advocate for the federal
workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives. Elected
in 1974 to a large freshman class of Democrats, Spellman
joined the front ranks of the “freshman revolt” bent on
reforming congressional practices. Very quickly, however,
she settled into a role as a Representative dedicated to
district work, securing what had been a tenuous first
victory.1 Within a short span of six years she became a
widely popular local politician in the Maryland suburbs of
Washington, DC, before suffering a heart attack that left
her permanently incapacitated.
Gladys Noon Spellman was born Gladys Blossom Noon
in New York City on March 1, 1918, daughter of Henry
and Bessie Noon, and was educated in the New York City
and Washington, DC, public schools.2 After attending
George Washington University and the graduate school of
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Spellman taught in
the public schools of Prince George’s County, Maryland,
a suburban area east of Washington, DC. Gladys Noon
married Reuben Spellman, and they raised three children:
Stephen, Richard, and Dana. Gladys Spellman made her
mark as a crusading parent teacher association leader before winning election to the Prince George’s County board of
commissioners in 1962. At first, she faced a cool reception
from her colleagues. One remarked, “You think just like
a man.” Spellman took that as a compliment, at first.
“Then I got angry and said, ‘Well, I guess today was an
off-day for me. Tomorrow I’ll be myself and do better.’”3 A
county executive recalled years later that his nickname for
Spellman—“Madame Tinkerbell”—derived from her ability
to use her ebullient personality, her broad smile, and her
uncanny ability to recall names to engage voters and work a
room.4 She was re-elected in 1966 and chaired the board for
two years, the first woman ever to lead the county. In 1970,
when Prince George’s County changed to a charter form of
government, Spellman won election to the county council
as an at-large member, serving from 1971 to 1974.
In 1974, when U.S. Representative Lawrence Joseph
Hogan declined to run for re-election in order to seek the
party’s nomination as a Maryland gubernatorial candidate,
Spellman entered the race to succeed the three-term
Republican. Historically, the congressional district which
wrapped around Washington’s northern and eastern suburbs
and swung into southern Maryland had been solidly
Democratic since the mid-1920s. To the south and east it was composed of farms and rural communities, while on
the northern and western side it was made up of suburban
communities wedged between the capital and Baltimore.
The federal government, which had major installations in
the district, employed a large number of workers. Only
two Republicans ever had held the seat: a one-termer who
rode Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential coattails in 1952
and Hogan who won in 1968 when Richard M. Nixon
and Maryland native son Spiro Theodore Agnew made up
the winning GOP presidential ticket (they nearly carried
Maryland as well and, in 1972, won it convincingly).
Spellman easily won the September 1974 Democratic
primary with 67 percent against Karl H. Matthes, a political
unknown, accumulating more total votes than Matthes and
the two GOP primary contenders combined, including
Prince George’s County councilman John B. Burcham
Jr., the eventual Republican winner.5 The seat was hotly
contested with prominent politicians from both parties
campaigning in the district—House Speaker Carl Albert of
Oklahoma and Senator Edward Moore (Ted) Kennedy of
Massachusetts for Spellman, and President Gerald R. Ford
and Representative Hogan for Burcham.6 The candidates
divided on some hot-button issues. While both candidates
opposed a plan by President Ford to add a 5 percent
federal surtax to bring inflation under control, Spellman
attacked the GOP, arguing that the election “ought to be a
referendum on the Republican handling of the economy.”
Instead, it was a referendum on an issue neither of the
candidates addressed squarely: the Watergate Scandal that
had forced the resignation of President Nixon in August
1974. According to a Washington Post poll conducted in late
October 1974, nearly a quarter of all suburban Maryland
voters said that they would be less likely to cast their vote
for a Republican.7 Nationally, the scandal contributed to
a string of GOP losses in five 1974 special elections and
the November general elections. Republicans lost a total
of 48 seats, creating an even larger Democratic majority in
Congress. Nevertheless, Spellman only narrowly defeated
Burcham, 53 percent to 47 percent of the vote.8
Spellman entered the House as one of seven leaders
of the so-called “freshman revolt” of the class of 1974,
which sought to extend reforms of congressional
procedure to secure better committee assignments for
first-term Members and to weaken the power of committee
chairmen. Spellman was appointed to the Democratic
Steering and Policy Committee, a panel reinstituted in 1973 to allow party leaders to assert more control over
the committee assignment process and to shape legislative
policy.9 Congresswoman Spellman avowed, “We may be new
kids on the block, but we’re not stupid”—an allusion to her
frustration with chairmen who underestimated the expertise
and clout of freshman “Watergate Babies.”10 Many reforms
already had been pushed through at the end of the preceding
Congress and, in January 1975, the freshmen Members of
the 94th Congress (1975–1977) provided momentum to
help depose three entrenched southern committee chairmen
and appoint new Members to prominent committees.
Yet, within six months, Representative Spellman’s focus
rested almost entirely on issues pertinent to her district
from which her office received hundreds of phone calls and
as many letters each day. “You don’t always want to stay
in kindergarten,” Spellman explained about her decision
to decline the chairmanship of the freshman caucus. “We
accomplished a great deal, and now we’ve been made a
part of the establishment. We don’t always have to be just
freshmen.” But observers noted that political necessity
changed Spellman’s focus. Vague statements by former
Representative Hogan that he would challenge her in 1976,
her thin margin of victory in 1974, and the demands of
constituent service for a district located astride the capital
forced her reconsideration. Spellman hinted that the latter
concern more than any other caused her to reorient her
attention from institutional reform to district caretaking.
“Mine is the kind of district,” she said, “that requires a lot
of time and attention.”11 She dedicated herself to attending
citizen meetings across the district, answering constituent
mail personally, developing a newsletter, and distributing
“listening post reports” (that included her home phone
number) which requested suggestions from local residents.12
Over time, Spellman became one of the most popular
figures in Maryland politics. In a 1976 rematch against
Burcham, the Congresswoman ran on her record as a
reformer and as a politician closely attuned to the needs
of her constituents. She declared that she had participated
in a movement that had “opened the doors wide and
pumped fresh air back into the smoke-filled rooms” of the
Capitol.13 In the 1976 election she won more comfortably
against Burcham with 57 percent of the vote. In subsequent
campaigns against other GOP opponents, Spellman widened
her margins: 77 percent in 1978 and 80 percent in 1980.14
During her three terms in Congress, Spellman served
on the Committee on Banking, Currency, and Housing (renamed the Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs
Committee after the 94th Congress) and the Committee
on Post Office and Civil Service. In 1977 she favored
legislation to establish a bank to make loans to cooperatives
owned by consumers and legislation to extend the federal
revenue-sharing program. She also voted in 1975 for $7
billion in loan guarantees to aid financially troubled New
York City.
Nearly 40 percent of the workforce in Spellman’s district
was employed by the federal government, at the time,
the largest percentage of any congressional district in the
country. Spellman was carefully attuned to its needs. As
chair of the Subcommittee of Compensation and Employee
Benefits of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee,
she frequently used her position to advance the interests
of federal employees. She sought to derail President
Jimmy Carter’s 1978 reform of the civil service, which
planned to merge the federal retirement program with
Social Security. Spellman also pushed for cost of living
adjustments and opposed hiring freezes. She was particularly
critical of the proposed Senior Executive Service, which
she feared would politicize the civil service. Spellman also
favored an amendment to the 1970 Intergovernmental
Personnel Act which would have authorized a subsidy
to train civil servants in management-labor relations.
She was especially sensitive to the morale of the federal
workforce which, in the post-Watergate years, became a
favorite target for “anti-Washington” candidates. In her
newsletter, she often devoted a “Beautiful Bureaucrat”
column to praise federal workers and insist that the vast
majority of them were people who “far from slowing down
the wheels of government are really the people who keep
them churning.”15
On October 31, 1980, two days before the general
election in which she was re-elected to a fourth term,
Spellman suffered a severe heart attack. She survived
but lapsed into a coma from which she never regained
consciousness.16 House Resolution 80, passed on
February 24, 1981, declared Spellman’s seat vacant,
since she was unable to discharge the duties of her office.
It marked the first time the House had ever vacated the
seat of a Member who had become mentally or physically
incapable of serving. The next day the Washington
Post, while observing that the move “was only right”
for representation of her district, celebrated Spellman’s
“brilliant” career: it “remains a classic for all who would seek public office and serve successfully.”17 Her husband,
Reuben, was a Democratic candidate in the April 1981
special primary to choose nominees to succeed her. He
finished second out of a field of six candidates; the winner
of the primary, Steny Hamilton Hoyer, also won the general
election. Gladys Spellman died in Rockville, Maryland, on
June 19, 1988.18
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