Baltimore — Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley launched an uphill battle for the Democratic nod on Saturday morning, but the rough reception he received in Baltimore is indicative of the challenges that lie ahead and may be more than he bargained for.
If you had no peripheral vision and focused solely on the candidate, O’Malley’s speech went off swimmingly. But that was nearly impossible considering the loud chants of “black lives matter,” the sharp blasts of whistles, and the technical glitches that competed for audience attention.
After O’Malley’s seemingly glamorous, highly-produced intro video lost sound, the crowd began cheering. After a few awkward minutes, the video completely died out, and the candidate prematurely took to the stage. A group of protesters gathered behind the bleachers, chanting and shouting “We don’t need you! You did this! Look at the city now!” in reference to the recent devastation in Baltimore.
O’Malley has held public office in Maryland since 1991, first serving as a Baltimore city councilman, then the mayor of Baltimore, than as the governor of Maryland. All told, he is a qualified candidate on paper, but this has not translated in the polls — O’Malley has garnered less than 1 percent, compared to Bernie Sanders’ 15 and Hillary Clinton’s 64.
“Hillary is a formidable opponent, but so is Martin [O’Malley. He] has executive experience being both a mayor and a governor that Hillary does not have. Anything can happen as we saw in previous presidential races,” Gerry Brewscer said, who was at the rally and claims to be longtime friend of Martin O’Malley. “Martin’s low in the polls right now, but that will change when he’s on the stage with Hillary.”
During his announcement his team emphasized his executive leadership, going so far as to have the crowd chant the phrase “executive leadership” three times in a row before he stepped on stage.
O’Malley argued that “the presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth by you between two royal families” and that the only way to reclaim the American dream is if “we take back our American government.”
While in office O’Malley was successful at passing through numerous liberal policies and programs including a 2011 law guaranteeing that certain illegal immigrants were eligible for in-state tuition, and a 2012 law legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland, improving access to education as well as the complete eradication of the death penalty.
Prior to his speech, an illegal immigrant, an LGBT Maryland resident and a student who benefited from his education reform took to the stage lauding O’Malley’s legislative successes.
O’Malley’s momentum was stunted this year due to the Freddie Gray ruling and subsequent riots. Some blamed O’Malley for the chaos, saying that police brutality flourished under his “zero-tolerance” law enforcement policy. The governor responded to such criticisms by stating that Baltimore is safer now than when he took office in 1999.
“At the time when Martin made the decision to be tough on crime, those were the best practices and crime went down under the O’Malley watch. Right now we are seeing a backlash to that, people say that the police are being too hard on them,” said Brewscer. “So I’m not at all sure that O’Malley’s policies then weren’t best, but perhaps there’s new thinking that community policing has to be a bit better. But you have to go with what the experts think at the time.”
If the controversies surrounding Freddie Grey don’t significantly derail his campaign, O’Malley will use his relative youth to set himself apart from his two older Democratic contenders. At age 52 he still harkens back to his days as a frontman in a Celtic rock band, and can often be seen performing on the trail. His old band was at its peak when O’Malley was serving as a city councilman and mayor, playing multiple shows in bars across the city. He brought out his guitar yet again for a cheeky campaign video to set the “tone” for his announcement Saturday morning.
