Alex Hughes, Chief of Staff to House Speaker, Will Depart at Year’s End

On May 1, 2019, as the House of Delegates gathered in Annapolis to select a new leader three weeks after the sudden death of Speaker Michael E. Busch (D), Alexandra M. Hughes, Busch’s longtime lieutenant, packed up her State House office, unsure if the next speaker would want to keep her around.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Hughes recalled in a recent interview. “It was so hard not to be in control of that process and to leave everybody to their own devices.”

She shouldn’t have worried.

By that point, Hughes had worked for Busch for 13 years — including 4 1/2 years as his chief of staff. She served, in the words of one admirer, as Busch’s “war-time consigliere,” as he navigated a strained relationship with Republican Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr.

So when Del. Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County), who had been Busch’s loyal, low-key speaker pro tem for the entirety of his tenure, emerged as the Democratic caucus’ compromise choice to replace him that May Day, it wasn’t surprising that she chose to keep Hughes as her chief of staff. Jones said it never occurred to her that Hughes might leave.

“As pro tem, I dealt with her a lot,” Jones said. “We really had a good rapport. Plus, we’re both Scorpios. Scorpios have this sense about people, so we really connected early on,” Jones said, referring to their shared astrological sign.

But now, Hughes is packing up her State House office for real. She plans to step down as Jones’ chief of staff at the end of the year and set up her own public affairs shop in Annapolis.

Jones is expected to announce — perhaps as early as Friday — that Jeremy P. Baker, a senior adviser who has been Hughes’ deputy, will become chief of staff in the New Year.

>> RELATED: Jones Announces Jeremy Baker as Next Chief of Staff

Hughes, a 44-year-old single mother of a 3-year-old daughter, said she’s ready for something new — and less all-consuming.

“I’ve been a part of huge transformational change,” Hughes said. “Front-row seat. I don’t know what more there is for me at this stage of my life to do in the House. I don’t feel like I’m walking out with unfinished business.”

Hughes is a trailblazer in Maryland politics — the first woman of color to serve as chief of staff to a presiding officer of the Maryland General Assembly. And for the past 2 1/2 years, she’s been working for Jones, the first Black woman to serve as a presiding officer in Annapolis.

Hughes arrived at the State House in 2006 to be Busch’s communications director. At that point, she had done economic development work for then-Baltimore mayor Martin J. O’Malley (D) at City Hall and had worked for a government relations firm in Atlanta. While attending law school at night at University of Baltimore, she became Busch’s deputy chief of staff in 2011 and then chief of staff in 2015, right after Hogan’s election.

Hughes is literally and figuratively a towering figure, standing on the dais at the front of the House chamber next to the speaker during every floor session. Through the years she has been part policy maven, part political strategist, part traffic cop, part enforcer and part confessor to 141 diverse and demanding officeholders. She has been fiercely loyal to her bosses and she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

“The thing I’ve always liked about Alex is you always know where you stand with her,” said Del. Nicholaus R. Kipke (R-Anne Arundel), who recently finished a seven-year stint as House minority leader. “Not everybody liked that, but I really appreciated it. Even though I was serving in the minority, Alex and I talked constantly. The communication was excellent. Although we were often at odds about hot-button issues, there was always mutual respect.”

House Economic Matters Chair Dereck E. Davis (D-Prince George’s) — who will depart the legislature next week to become state treasurer — said that in Hughes’ interactions with House members, she occasionally played the role of “bad cop” so that Busch and Jones could be the “good cop.”

“But that’s the mark of a good staffer,” Davis said. “Every politician wants to be the good cop.”

Davis also credited Hughes with offering legislators spot-on advice, even if it was difficult to swallow.

“She never told me or any of our friends what we wanted to hear, but what we needed to hear,” he said.

Yet Jones observed that colleagues often brought their problems to Hughes.

“They may not want to divulge to me, but she would take them to tea so they could feel comfortable and figure out how to deal with something,” she said.

Hughes said she is struck by how the job of state legislator has changed since she went to work for the House — and how much pressure the members are constantly under, a condition that she said is exacerbated by the toxic national political discourse.

“There are a lot more members that are full-time now than there were in 2006,” she said. “There’s really no break anymore [after the 90-day session]. It’s definitely evolved more into a 24/7, 365-day-a-year job.”

A crisis manager

House Appropriations Chair Maggie L. McIntosh (D-Baltimore City) has known Hughes since Hughes was a teenager growing up in Baltimore, through her parents’ activism in local Democratic politics.

“When she landed in Annapolis, I had a pretty good picture of who this young woman was and where she came from and what she was about,” said McIntosh, who called Hughes “brilliant.”

McIntosh noted that with Busch’s major illnesses and surprising death, followed by a heated race to replace him as speaker, Hughes’ tenure has been “extraordinary.”

“She has helped us through extraordinary times,” said McIntosh, who unsuccessfully sought the speaker post during the tense period after Busch’s death.

“She held us together — the leadership, the [Democratic] caucus, the full House, even across the aisle, when our speaker had two major health scares. She held us together through what could have been a very contentious speaker’s race,” McIntosh said. “She played such a pivotal role. When you think of what could have been and what wasn’t, it was because of her. The institution came through a very difficult time because of her.”

Hughes said she focuses on all the legislature has accomplished during her time in Annapolis — and all the lawmakers who made it happen.

“Over the past 15 years, we’ve abolished the death penalty, we’ve enacted gun control. We passed [same-sex] marriage. We did this huge Black agenda. We did police reform.”

Now Hughes will take all that accumulated knowledge, all those political battle scars, into her new venture. She isn’t prepared to say much about what she plans to do until she leaves the House. She can’t sign clients until then, either.

‘The best of what the House can be’

Hughes naturally has takes on the two leaders she served.

“Mike was a prince of a guy,” she said of Busch, whom colleagues frequently called “Coach.”

“His own personal politics really evolved, even in the 13 years I worked for him. He could tell where the winds were blowing, where the caucus was. And Mike was sort of the ultimate motivator. The thing he really knew how to do was give the great ‘coach’ speech in a caucus meeting, which really proved to be the great motivator.”

Hughes said Jones came into the speaker’s job under difficult circumstances and surprised a lot of people.

“Adrienne got thrown into a situation where she had to evolve really quickly and I think she really rose to the occasion, in ways that many people really didn’t think she could,” said Hughes, who credits Jones for empowering younger delegates and pushing through an ambitious agenda. “That’s really invested a lot of people in her and her leadership.”

Jones said that when she became speaker, Hughes’ institutional knowledge was invaluable.

“I knew that as speaker, in that historic role, I knew that a lot of eyes would be focused on me and things that I wanted to do differently. So I would ask, ‘Does this make sense?’ Did this ever happen with Mike?’ She had that history that was helpful for me. She would give me excellent feedback.”

As she prepares to leave, though, Hughes is most interested in talking about the institution of the House and the people who led it while she worked there, Jones and Busch.

“They both represent the best of what the House can be,” she said.

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