Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley speaks during a presidential forum during a conference hosted by the International Association of Fire Fighters. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Democrats pining for an alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton are hungry for a liberal lion, and Martin O’Malley has been doing his best to fill the role. The former Maryland governor has of late called for Wall Street reform and an expansion of Social Security benefits and touted his pro-immigrant and collective bargaining credentials.
But on Wednesday, the 2016 presidential aspirant will offer a different picture that is more uniquely him: that of a data-driven technocrat.
O’Malley is set to address an audience at the staid Brookings Institution on the use of statistics to drive policy decisions and measure government performance. It’s a pivot from what many regard as the natural way to run against Clinton — from the left. And while it may be a more natural fit for O’Malley, it highlights one of his challenges in trying to position as the anti-Clinton candidate in a party that’s yearning for one.
“I’m not sure if that will get people out of bed excited and ready to knock on doors,” said Nathan Blake, a Democratic activist in Iowa who helped host an event for O’Malley in the Des Moines area last year, who added that he is “one of those people” hoping for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) to get into the Democratic primary as a more liberal and inspiring alternative to Clinton.
“I like Martin O’Malley, but I’m not sure if the space is there for him,” Blake said. “He has progressive ideals, but he’s not an Elizabeth Warren. It’s a different sort of leadership.”
O’Malley aides argue that his progressive stances and his “new way of governing” are two sides of the same coin. He is a governor with a solidly progressive record on a range of issues, they say, and he also knows how to run a government. Unlike some starry-eyed liberals, they suggest, O’Malley can actually get things done.
As if to prove the double-edged point, on Tuesday O’Malley hewed more closely to the liberal script that is exciting Democratic activists looking for an alternative to Clinton. The former secretary of state is eyed with some suspicion from the left for, among other things, her close ties to Wall Street, more hawkish views on foreign policy and one-time opposition to allowing undocumented immigrants obtain driver licenses.
“The American Dream will never die on our watch, because we choose to fight, and we intend to win,” O’Malley said at a forum in Washington for prospective presidential candidates sponsored by the International Association of Fire Fighters. “That means raising the minimum wage, expanding eligibility for overtime pay and respecting the rights of all workers to organize. To make the dream true again, we must expand — and not reduce — Social Security benefits.”
On Wednesday, O’Malley’s message will tilt to the wonkier side.
As mayor of Baltimore in 2000, O’Malley pioneered a program called CitiStat that used data to hold agency heads accountable for how quickly potholes were filled, how often trash pickups were missed and how often their employees were skipping work.
When he became governor in 2007, O’Malley took the program statewide. Before long, he was using measurements to take on new tasks, including cleaning the Chesapeake Bay, curbing infant mortality and increasing transit ridership.
“If you look at the one thing he owns, it’s that, and there’s nothing ideological about that at all,” said Phil Noble, a Democratic activist in South Carolina who has known O’Malley for 30 years and dined with him during his recent visit to the early primary state.
In an interview shortly before he left office in January, O’Malley said data-driven government and transparency “are not genies that are going back in the bottle. ... There’s not a doubt in my mind that this is how people will expect their state to function in the future.”
He received widespread attention for the work he did on data-driven government while in Baltimore. The concept originated with policing efforts in New York but O’Malley became the first to expand it across a full government. He has said the federal government could benefit from the same kind of initiative.
“He was the first guy to figure out how to make it work for an entire jurisdiction,” said Robert Behn, a senior lecturer at the Kennedy School at Harvard University who has written extensively about government leadership strategy.
In Baltimore, agency heads were summoned to the CitiStat room on the 6th Floor of City Hall every two weeks to explain statistical trends to the mayor and senior members of his staff.
Matthew Gallagher, the program’s director who later became O’Malley’s chief of staff in Annapolis, said CitiStat became a “fundamental bedrock” of O’Malley’s governing philosophy, adding “it’s something he’s rightfully proud of.”
Data was collected and analyzed to deploy police resources in the fight against violent crime that plagued the city. It was employed to make good on O’Malley’s pledge to fill potholes within 48 hours. And it helped guide efforts to combat graffiti in business corridors.
Buzz about the program brought “literally thousands” of visitors to Baltimore from around the globe who were seeking to replicate it for their governments, Gallagher said. As many Republicans as Democrats were interested. And there was one month were representatives of 11 different countries sat in on CitiStat sessions. O’Malley’s staff maintained a map with pushpins showing the far-flung interest.
As technology evolved, his staff developed more uses for the data, including publicly accessible charts, tables and maps showing various trends. At one point, the program landed on the cover of Governing magazine.
If O’Malley’s passion lies in data, he has also grown more comfortable in recent months talking about liberal causes.
In New Hampshire last week, he called for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era measure that separated commercial and investment banking. Warren, who has said she is not running for president, has argued that the act, repealed in 1999 under President Bill Clinton, contributed to the 2008 global credit crisis.
And O’Malley regularly boasts of a string of progressive legislative victories, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, repeal of the death penalty, enactment of sweeping gun-control measures and an increase in the minimum wage.
But O’Malley was not always the first to join the fight — and has never been a liberal crusader, according to Maryland lawmakers.
For instance, O’Malley sponsored the 2012 bill that legalized same-sex marriage, but he didn’t come on board until a similar measure unexpectedly fell just short the year before and advocates appealed for his help. Prior to that, O’Malley had a long history of advocating civil unions as an alternative to marriage.
Likewise, he pushed the gun-control bill through the legislature in 2013 in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. Prior to the tragedy, however, O’Malley had not embraced the perennial efforts of lawmakers who sought to put tighter restrictions in place.
“Sometimes I was initiating those struggles, and it was a couple of years before he got involved,” said Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George’s), one of the chamber’s more liberal members. “But he brought those issues across the finish line, and he brought some reticent Democrats along.”
Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), a self-described fan of O’Malley who hasn’t picked sides in the presidential race, said being so steeped in data can have a downside.
“He can sound like a techno-wonk,” Raskin said of O’Malley.
O”Malley, who plays in a semi-retired Celtic rock band, would be better off if he invoked the social justice passions of a fellow musician, Raskin said. “I’ve told him he needs to release his inner-Bruce Springsteen if he’s going to do this.”
John Wagner has covered Maryland government and politics for The Post since 2004.
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