On Tuesday morning, state Sen. Kathy Klausmeier was waiting to find out what her Wednesday — and with it, her next two years — would look like.

Would she go to Annapolis for the Maryland General Assembly’s opening day, as she had every January for three decades? Or would she instead make the 15-minute drive from her home in Perry Hall to Towson and serve her first day as Baltimore County’s first full-time female county executive?

By 9 a.m, she got the call that would change her life — and a few hours later, her husband of more than 50 years was by her side as she swore to serve the residents of Maryland’s third-largest county.

Klausmeier, 74, is familiar with the county’s issues after representing the Perry Hall area for 30 years. But how familiar are the county’s 844,000 residents with their new leader?

Here are five things to know about her.

1. She served as vice chair of the influential Maryland Senate Finance Committee

The finance committee considers legislation that deals with banks, consumer protection, health care, substance abuse and workers’ compensation, among other matters.

“We do all the health care, hospital, scope of practice kind of work — what doctors can and can’t do — and also workers’ compensation, insurance, property and casualty, and even cemetery legislation,” said committee chair Pam Beidle, an Anne Arundel County Democrat. “We really should be called the health and business committee.”

Klausmeier showed Beidle the ropes when Beidle became chair; Beidle said Klausmeier became a trusted confidante who was “just really great to work with” because she listened to everyone.

2. She’s a consensus builder, a bipartisan legislator and a mentor to up-and-comers

Klausmeier talked of her listening skills at her swearing in, and those who know her from the General Assembly say she’s not exaggerating her abilities to make people feel heard and solve problems.

“She has this charm that just draws people in,” said Del. Carl Jackson, a Baltimore County Democrat who considers Klausmeier a mentor. “It’s been a pleasure to work with her, bounce ideas off her, see her in action. Every project I wanted to do, she fully supported.”

Del. Harry Bhandari likewise said Klausmeier convinced him to run for the House of Delegates in 2018 and has supported and guided him since then. She also worked closely with Republicans, including former Del. Anthony O’Donnell of Southern Maryland, on crucial fisheries legislation.

3. She had a major role in bringing oyster aquaculture to Maryland

It’s not possible to grow oysters with aquaculture in Baltimore County — the Chesapeake and its rivers are too fresh north of Annapolis for the required salinity. Nevertheless, Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. named Klausmeier to chair a task force on seafood aquaculture in 2003. At the time, the watermen who supported Ehrlich did not want aquaculture in Maryland because it would compete with wild harvests.

Don Webster, a University of Maryland extension agent who had been pushing aquaculture for decades, was not sure whether Ehrlich’s choice of a Baltimore County senator indicated he was not serious about aquaculture. Regardless of the governor’s intentions, Webster said, he quickly learned Klausmeier was serious.

When members of the committee tried to engage in backroom discussions, he said, she scolded them and brought them back to the public table. Eventually, he said, Klausmeier developed legislation that led to the Aquaculture Coordinating Council and the Aquaculture Review Board — organizations still keeping the industry functioning more than 20 years later.

“She was a fast learner,” he said. “She came to every meeting.”

Maryland now has 7,800 oyster aquaculture leases, Webster said. Working with Klausmeier to build the industry was, he said, “one of the highlights of my career.”

4. In the Maryland Senate, she leaned conservative, as did her district

Klausmeier was the consensus pick for county executive in large part because the County Council’s three Republicans appreciated her more conservative leanings.

Born and raised in Perry Hall, she represented an area with a mix of Democrats and Republicans; former Gov. Larry Hogan tried and failed to flip her seat in 2018.

She sometimes took stances that few Democrats did, including voting against mandatory sick leave for employees of small businesses. The Maryland Senate overrode Hogan’s veto of that bill without her vote. Her constituents love her, said Pat Keller, president of the Perry Hall Improvement Association.

“If I was rating her out of a 10,” he said, “it would be a 9.9.”

5. She will be the first woman in the job full-time

Baltimore County is becoming increasingly diverse, and yet the council remains all-male and almost all white. Only five women have served on the council since 1956. Voters overwhelmingly approved a charter amendment last year to expand the council from seven to nine members, a move many hope and expect will bring more diversity.

County Administrative Officer D’Andrea Walker served as interim county executive for five days; other than that, the county never before had a female county executive.

Of the nine Maryland counties with executive leadership, only Baltimore and Montgomery counties had never chosen a woman for the top job before this week. Frederick County, which switched to a county executive form of government in 2014, has only had women at the helm. Anne Arundel County has had two women in the top position, though only one of those, Janet Owens, was elected; the other, Laura Neuman, was appointed to fill a year of a departing executive’s term.

“It’s about time,” Beidle said of her friend taking the top spot in Baltimore County. “But remember, she’s not being elected. I still don’t know if a woman county executive in Baltimore County would be elected.”