Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is inching closer to a run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
The Baltimore Sun reports he is slated to sign a lease Friday for a campaign office across from Penn Station. By the middle of next week, the Washington office of O’Malley’s “O’Say Can You See” political action committee will be closed and some 40 staffers will work from the new Baltimore location, according to the Sun.
O’Malley’s latest moves come after a Thursday night conference call with supporters, in which the ex-governor reportedly indicated he was inclined to run, though he stopped short of committing definitively. Former Maryland Democratic Party chairman Terry Lierman was tapped as O’Malley’s treasurer and Maryland businessman Martin Knott enlisted as finance chairman, according to the Washington Post.
An official campaign launch is tentatively planned for May 30 in Baltimore, where O’Malley served two terms as mayor before winning the governorship.
O’Malley is viewed as a possible progressive challenger to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, but his “zero tolerance” approach to crime in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, in police custody and the riots that followed, could now become a political liability.
In the RealClearPolitics polling average, O’Malley not only trails Clinton and non-candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren nationally, but also Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee. Chafee is a former Republican senator and independent governor who only recently joined the Democratic Party.
