Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley and Republican lawmakers pledged bipartisan cooperation Tuesday as they headed into today’s start of the 90-day General Assembly session as O’Malley addressed the GOP senators and delegates collectively.
But at a Democratic Party luncheon an hour before, party leaders showed the depth of the divisions by exulting in their dominance of both state and now federal governments. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller delivered a rousing partisan diatribe, saying, “It’s going to take 40 years” for Republicans to dig themselves out of the burying they experienced in the last two elections.
Republican legislators have often complained that O’Malley pays them little heed, but the governor was conciliatory.
“Given the magnitude of our challenge, we have to reach across the aisle,” O’Malley told the Republicans. The governor, who refers to them as “the party of Lincoln,” went so far as to quote Ronald Reagan: “I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down.” (The 1964 speech was referring to freedom as “up” and totalitarianism as down.)
Senate Republican Leader Allan Kittleman of Howard County told O’Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who joined him, “It means a great deal to me personally that you’re here today.”
The session was billed as a briefing, but O’Malley and Budget Secretary Eloise Foster shared little new. “This year’s budget will be real, real lean,” O’Malley said. “It gives new meaning to America in miniature.”
Asked if the many spending mandates in the budget would be on the table, O’Malley said some of them would be only “level-funded,” and he would need a change in the law that requires the expenditure.
House Republican Leader Tony O’Donnell told the governor, “We encourage you to invite us into the process. If we’re invited to the table, we’re willing to work with you.”
O’Malley was not particularly partisan in his speech at the Democratic Party luncheon, but other speakers were, as they relished reclaiming both the White House and the 1st Congressional District in Maryland.
But it was Miller who fired up the crowd by recalling his comments to a similar luncheon four years ago. In that speech critical of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, he said he promised in the next election to “bury [Republicans] face down” so far that it would take themselves 20 years to dig themselves out.
“I was wrong,” Miller said. “It’s going to take 40 years.”
“Folks, I’m in heaven,” the senator said, citing “two great years” under O’Malley and especially the election of Obama.
