Martin O’Malley Broadens Democrats’ Field for 2016 White House Race
Brad Knickerbocker
The Christian Science Monitor
May 30, 2015The race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination just got broader and more interesting.
Martin O’Malley, former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, formally tossed his hat into the ring Saturday - ideologically somewhere between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and with an emphasis on his relative youth (52), at least compared to the other two declared hopefuls (67 and 73, respectively).
“Martin O’Malley ought to be a Democrat’s dream candidate,” Molly Ball wrote in the Atlantic in December. “In two terms as the governor of Maryland, he’s ushered in a sweeping liberal agenda that includes gay marriage, gun control, an end to the death penalty, and in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants. He’s trim and handsome; he plays in an Irish rock band; he even served as the basis for a character on The Wire.”
At the moment, however, he barely registers in polls - 0.8 percent at the tail end of a list of seven names mentioned, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. Even Republican-turned-Independent-turned-Democrat Lincoln Chaffee (expected to announce June 3) does better.
What’s more, Mr. O’Malley starts out with other big challenges, a main one being the (so far) lack of big-time political funders.
And as Politico puts it: “The run-up to his launch here could hardly have been worse, complicated in recent weeks by unrest in the city where he served as mayor and the unexpected early momentum of another Hillary Clinton challenger: Bernie Sanders…. who so far has captured the imagination of progressives looking for a Clinton alternative.”
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