Women love Martin O?Malley. No kidding.
Statewide polls consistently show women in the state favor the Baltimore mayor in his race for governor more than men, but Sen. Barbara Mikulski said, “It?s not about gender. It?s about the agenda.”
Mikulski, who hired O?Malley two decades ago as field director for her first Senate campaign, helped rev up the crowd at a Women for O?Malley rally Tuesday night on the Bay Lady boat docked at Baltimore?s Inner Harbor.
More than 500 women attended the event. They waited patiently for the star of the evening, who showed up fashionably late.
While they waited, they gathered around the second-best thing ? O?Malley?s running mate, Del. Anthony Brown.
Beverly Stappler, co-owner of the Bay Lady with her husband, Larry, told the crowd huddled on the top deck, “We all know that O?Malley-Brown are the best candidates for all Marylanders, but especially for women.”
Patricia Arzuaga Brown, wife of O?Malley?s running mate, said, “Both he and Martin understand family,” and the need for affordable health care and tuition.
“He told me in law school that he would be a senator some day ? so I was forewarned,” Patricia Brown said. The two met in evidence class at Harvard Law School.
As the sun set over Baltimore, Mikulski., D-Md., said, “Twilight comes to the city, and twilight is coming to the Ehrlich administration. We need new leadership and O?Malley-Brown needs the support of Democratic women.”
“Every issue is a woman?s issue,” Mikulski said.
A large number of elected women joined the two men, including City Council President Sheila Dixon, who would succeed O?Malley as mayor if he is elected in November.
O?Malley was joined by his mother, sister and two of his three daughters, but conspicuously absent was his wife, District Court Judge Catherine Curran O?Malley. After introducing Baltimore Orphans Court judges running for election, O?Malley noted, “Judges who just have the misfortune of being married to people running for election cannot appear at political events.”
