Offices:
Worked for the Gary Hart presidential campaign (1983)
State field director for Barbara Mikulski successful Senatorial campaign (1986)
Lost State Senate race by 44 votes (1990)
Elected to Baltimore City Council (1991 – 1999)
Mayor of Baltimore (2000-2006)
Governor of Maryland (2006 – 2014: term limited)
website: http://martinomalley.com/
As Councilman, Mayor, and Governor, 52 year old O’Malley has taken a conventional, even classic, path for a run for the White House. As Mayor, he worked on reducing a high crime rate, and made some progress using a tool for which he’s credited named CitiStat, described as ‘inexpensive, using off the shelf software’ by the Center for American Progress. According to Wikipedia, as Governor, he brought CitiStat along, now named StateStat, for use in Maryland as a whole, resulting in substantial savings.
Matthew Yglesias gives some initial coverage to O’Malley’s possible run here by way of covering Elizabeth Warren’s avowed non-run:
His agenda:
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Reinstate Glass-Steagall and break up the largest and most diverse banks.
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Prevent banks for taking tax writeoffs when they pay fines.
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Insist on CEO resignations as part of the resolution of regulatory misconduct claims and seek to prosecute individual executives for misconduct.
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An equivalent of the three strikes and you’re out policy to “revoke a bank’s right to operate if they repeatedly break the law.”
I have long felt that the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the near collapse of the financial system 8 years later, were an interesting correlate; certainly the prohibitions of Glass-Steagall on commercial banks owning securities firms makes sense, since conflicts of interest can occur. So I find this attractive.
Ballotpedia covers O’Malley here. They report that a VoteMatch analysis evaluates him to be a Moderate Liberal Populist:
Follow the above link to see his responses to the quiz. I’m appalled that he wishes to expand the Military and opposes legalization of marijuana; in fact, I would like to see the military budget reduced substantially and marijuana legalized – the nation would greatly improve, depending on the metrics used. Otherwise, his views are not unreasonable, although I suspect an omniscient creature would find the gun ownership issue will be unresolvable (not because the two sides are stubborn, either).
