O Malley Will Officialize His Bid To Challenge Hillary On May 30

narrative essay for college" style="mах-width:410px;float:ⅼeft;padding:10px 10px 10px 0px;border:0px;">Martin O'Malley plans to announce his intentions on May 30 to challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

An O'Malley aide told AP the former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor will make the announcement in Baltimore and will hold a conference call with supporters tonight to discuss his plans, but was unable to share additional details.

At an event on Wednesday the presumed 2016 candidate told prospective voters that he wasn't a contender- yet - and encouraged them 'to talk to me in three days,' CNN reports.

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Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, right, talks with New Hampshire State Rep. Bob Backus, left, and former State Sen. Peter Burling before a private meeting with New Hampshire Democrats yesterday in Concord. The presumed presidential contender told prospective voters that he wasn't a candidate - yet - and encouraged them 'to talk to me in three days'


O'Malley earned his political stripes in Maryland on the Baltimore City Council. He later served two terms as that city's mayor before defeating the the state's sitting Republican governor, Bob Ehrilch, who is also considering a national bid, in 2006. 

He won a rematch against Ehrlich in 2010 and went on to spend another four years in the governor's mansion before exiting office in January.

He's best known as the inspiration for the Tommy Carcetti in David Simon's Baltimore-based HBO drama, The Wire, which ran for five seasons from 2002-2008.

The cult-classic television series exposed the underbelly of Baltimore's drug and crime problems, chronicling the lives and careers of several fictional homicide detectives, drug lords and politicians, including Carcetti, a white, city councilman who becomes mayor in the final season of the show.

Simon has said all of the characters in the critically-acclaimed television show are fake, and that Carcetti was a composite of several politicians.






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'The Wire is most assuredly fiction,' he said in a 2008 essay for Baltimore magazine. 'But we have stolen liberally, shamelessly from a city we know, from people who we reported on, policed, taught, hated, narrative essay on friendship loved and humored. 

'We have fulfilled the first law of not embarrassing ourselves as storytellers by writing only what we honestly think we know.'

Still, similarities between the show's Baltimore mayor as the real one have blurred the line at times between fact and fiction.

Both men rose to power on a promise to be the crime-ridden city's white knights. And O'Malley, like the fictional Carcetti, has been accused of fixing crime statistics in order to make Baltimore appear safer'.

'The writing was not unsympathetic to a man who comes in with the idea of changing things and emerges a completely different creature,' Simon told the Daily Beast in 2013. 'That was the story [of Tommy Carcetti] and that is the story of Marty O'Malley.'






TRUCE: David Simon, the creator of HBO's cult classic television show The Wire, which is set in Baltimore and and based in part on O'Malley's tenure as mayor of the crime-ridden city, has a chance encounter on the Amtrak with the former Maryland governor last summer. The two made amends and took a selfie together - although their back at odds following the recent violence in Baltimore sparked by Freddie Gray's untimely death







ART IMITATES LIFE? O'Malley's best known as the inspiration for The Wire's Tommy Carcetti. Both men rose to power on a promise to be the crime-ridden city's white knights. And O'Malley, like the fictional Carcetti, has been accused of fixing crime statistics in order to make Baltimore appear safer


Even before Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, introduced the character of Carcetti into the show, O'Malley was in up in arms about the show's depiction of his city. 

He memorably threatened to block the show's permits to film in Baltimore just before the cast and crew began taping the second season.

'We want to be out of The Wire business,' he said, according to Simon, during a particularly terse phone call.

He ultimately backed off, and The Wire was allowed to continue shooting in the city. But the third, fourth and fifth seasons saw the introduction and subsequent corruption of his on-screen adaptation, Carcetti, who Simon has said is 'reflective' of O'Malley.

O'Malley wrinkles his nose at the mention of his career in the context of the television show, though.

'I would take issue with whether or not I'm the inspiration for The Wire,' he told MSNBC in 2009, two years after he'd been elected governor of Maryland and a year after the show's final season. 'I'm the antidote to The Wire,' he said.





He boasted a 40 percent overall reduction in crime in the city during his tenure, and has continued to rely on his crime-fighting image in his campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination. 

Baltimore was the 'most violent, most addicted, most abandoned city in America,' O'Malley recently told a group Iowa Democrats, until 'set out to make our city work again, to make the dream true again.'

'Together, in other words, we put into action that powerful belief that, that in our community, there is no such thing as a spare American,' he said, according to CNN, proclaiming that 'are all in this together.'

'Over the next 10 years, Baltimore went on to achieve the biggest reduction in part one crime of any major city in America.'

In order to get to those numbers, O'Malley's administration pursued a so-called 'broken window' policy, however, that involved pursing minor crimes as a means of forestalling more serious ones.

His critics say that approach is directly responsible for the tension between Baltimore police and blighted communities that's playing out now.

'With the crime rate high and with his promises of a reduced crime rate on the line, he put no faith in real policing,' Simon argued during an interview with the Marshall Project a few weeks ago. 

Defending legacy on Meet the Press a few days later, O'Malley said: 'We didn't get it wrong then but we have yet to get it entirely right.'






Family portrait: O'Malley is pictured here with his children, Grace, Tara, William and Jack, and his wife Katie














Now a former governor, having completed his second and final term in January, O'Malley has been considering running against Clinton, the expected Democratic nominee, long before he left office.

His resolve was not shaken by the violence last month that racked Baltimore following the funeral of a young black man, Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody.

Rather than backing away from the legacy-tarnishing incident, O'Malley cancelled a paid junket in Ireland and stayed home 'to be with the people in the city that he loves,' a spokeswoman for the ex-mayor said at the time.

'Whenever, whether it is a police custodial death or a police involved shooting, we all have a responsibility to ask whether there are things we can do that would prevent such a loss of life from happening in the future,' O'Malley told reporters who were with him in South Carolina when Gray's mysterious death came to light.

'There is a lot of grief and a lot of anguish and we have seen it around the country,' he said, per a CNN report. 'And we are going to continue to see more of these images since we all now have cell phones and video cameras,.

He added: 'There is probably very few issues quite as intertwined with the very painful racial legacy in our country as the issue of law enforcement and public safety.'

He plans to formally jump into the 2016 contest in Baltimore, telling Meet the Press host Chuck Todd earlier this month, 'I wouldn't think of announcing anyplace else.'

O'Malley indicated to donors on Monday that he would try to fill the vacuum in the race created by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren absence. She's said she's not running for higher office in 2016 despite well-organized, national campaigns led by progressives who want her to take on Clinton.






OMalley greets the crowd after speaking at Politics & Eggs in Bedford, New Hampshire in March. Indicating how serious he is about taking on Clinton, O'Malley was back in New Hampshire on Wednesday, and he met with donors in New York on Monday


He promised to take up the liberal mantle on issues like the president's Pacific Rim trade deal, which is supported by some Democrats, but has been met with boos by the left-wing of the party.

Clinton has straddled the fence on that issue as well as several others that could hurt her support among warring factions of the Democratic Party.



Indicating how serious he is about taking on Clinton, O'Malley made stops in New Hampshire on Wednesday and met with donors in New York on Monday.

'What came through very clearly was that he's running as a strong progressive,' an attendee of his New York gathering told Politico. 'He hit on big banks and regulations and the shortcomings of the administration.'

In addition to Clinton, he'll face Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is technically an independent but is competing in the Democratic primary, and possibly Lincoln Chafee, a one-time Republican who has gradually moved to the left and now identifies as a Democrat.

Chafee has indicated he'll pummel Clinton for voting in favor of the 2002 authorization of the Iraq war, which he voted against as a U.S. Senator. He was the only Republican in the upper chamber to oppose it.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is also offering himself up as a progressive alternative to Clinton. He's also opposed to the president's trade legislation, and he's using his candidacy to highlight the confluence of big money and politics.

Thumbing his nose at the billionaires bankrolling his competitors candidacies on the left and right, he's limiting contributions to his campaign to $250. 

The strategy has seen early success, and he raised roughly the same amount of money in the first week of his campaign through his website as several Republicans candidates who did not adopt similar caps.

Sanders, Chafee and O'Malley are all tailing Clinton by more than 50 points, however, and none of them have earned support in the double digits in recent polls.



THE 2016 FIELD: WHO'S IN AND WHO'S THINKING IT OVER

More than two dozen people from America's two major political parties are considered potential presidential candidates in the 2016 election.

Eight - including two women, an African-American and two Latinos - have formally entered the race. A long list of others are biding their time and assessing their chances.

REPUBLICANS IN THE RACE 




 













Ben Carson       Retired Physician

Age: 63

Religion:              Seventh-day Adventist

Base: Evangelicals

            Résumé: Famous pediatric neurosurgeon, youngest person to head a major Johns Hopkins Hospital division. Created a charity that awards scholarships to children of good character.

Education: B.A. Yale University. M.D. University of Michigan Medical School.

Family: Married to Candy Carson (1975), with three adult sons. The Carsons live in Maryland with Ben's elderly mother Sonya, who was a seminal influence on his life and development. 

Claim to fame: Carson spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2013, railing against political correctness and condemned Obamacare - with President Obama sitting just a few feet away.

Achilles heel: Carson is inflexibly conservative, opposing gay marriage and once saying gay attachments formed in prison provided evidence that sexual orientation is a choice.
















Carly Fiorina         Former CEO

Age: 60

Religion:      Episcopalian 

Base: Conservatives

                Résumé: Former CEO of Hewett-Packard, former group president of Lucent Technologies, onetime US Senate candidate in California

Education: B.A. Stanford University. UCLA School of Law (did not finish). M.B.A. University of Maryland. M.Sci. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Family: Married to Frank Fiorina (1985), with two adult step-daughters. Divorced from Todd Bartlem (1977-1984).

Claim to fame: Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company, something that could provide key ammunition against the Democratic Partys' drive to make Hillary Clinton the first female president.

Achilles heel: Fiorina's unceremonious firing by HP's board has led to questions about her management and leadership styles. And her only political experience has been a failed Senate bid in 2010 against Barbara Boxer.

 











Mike Huckabee     Former Arkansas governor 

Age: 59

Religion:            Southern Baptist

Base: Evangelicals

Résumé: Former governor and lieutenant governor of Arkansas, former Fox News Channel host, ordained minister, author

Education: B.A. Ouachita Baptist University. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (did not finish). 

Family: Married to Janet Huckabee (1974), with three adult children. Mrs. Huckabee is a survivor of spinal cancer.

Claim to fame: 'Huck' is a political veteran and has run for president before, winning the Iowa Caucuses in 2008 and finishing second for the GOP nomination behind John McCain. He's known as an affable Christian and built a huge following on his weekend television program.

Achilles heel: Huckabee may have a problem with female voters. He complained in 2014 about Obamacare's contraception coverage, saying Democrats want women to 'believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar.' And in 2015 he earned scorn for hawking herbal supplements in infomercials as a diabetes cure.















Ted Cruz            Texas senator

Age: 44

Religion:         Southern Baptist

Base: Tea partiers

                    Résumé:US senator, Texas solicitor general, US Supreme Court clerk, associate deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush

Education: B.A. Princeton University. J.D. Harvard Law School.

Family: Married to Heidi Nelson Cruz (2001), with two young daughters. His father is a preacher and he has two half-sisters.

Claim to fame: Cruz spoke on the Senate floor for 21 hours in September 2013 to protest the inclusion of funding for Obamacare in a federal budget bill.

Achilles heel: Cruz's father Rafael, a Texas preacher, is a tea party firebrand who has said gay marriage is a government conspiracy and called President Barack Obama a Marxist who should 'go back to Kenya.' 














Rand Paul      Kentucky senator

Age: 52

Religion: Presbyterian 

Base: Libertarians 

                  Résumé: US senator, board-certified ophthalmologist, congressional campaign manager for his father Ron Paul

Education: Baylor University (did not finish). M.D. Duke University School of Medicine.

Family: Married to Kelley Ashby (1990), with three sons. His father is a former Texas congressman who ran for president three times but never got close to grabbing the brass ring.

Claim to fame: Paul embraces positions that are at odds with most in the GOP, including anti-interventionist foreign policy, criminal drug sentencing reform for African-Americans and limits on government electronic surveillance.

Achilles heel: Paul's politics are aligned with those of his father, whom mainstream GOPers saw as kooky. Both Pauls have advocated for a brand of libertarianism that forces government to stop domestic surveillance programs and limits foreign interventions.

 











Marco Rubio         Florida senator

Age: 43

Religion:            Roman Catholic

Base: Conservatives

                  Résumé: US senator, speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, city commissioner of West Miami

Education: B.A. University of Florida. J.D. University of Miami School of Law.

Family: Married to Jeanette Dousdebes (1998), with two sons and two daughters. Jeanette is a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader who posed for the squad's first swimsuit calendar. 

Claim to fame: Rubio's personal story as the son of Cuban emigres is a powerful narrative essay topics for college students, and helped him win his Senate seat in 2010 against a well-funded governor whom he initially trailed by 20 points.

Achilles heel: Rubio was part of a bipartisan 'gang of eight' senators who crafted an Obama-approved immigration reform bill in 2013 which never became law - a move that angered conservative Republicans. And he was criticized in 2011 for publicly telling a version of his parents' flight from Cuba that turned out to appear embellished.
















DEMOCRATS IN THE RACE 




 
















Hillary Clinton Former sec. of state

Age: 67

Religion: United Methodist 

Base: Liberals 

                            Résumé: Secretary of state, US senator, US first lady, Arkansas first lady, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville law faculty

Education: B.A. Wellesley College. J.D. Yale Law School.

Family: Clinton's husband Bill was the 42nd President of the United States. Their daughter Chelsea is marreid to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, whose mother was a one-term Pennsylvania congresswoman in the 1990s.

Claim to fame: Clinton was the first US first lady with a postgraduate degree and presaged Obamacare with a failed attempt at health care reform in the 1990s.

Achilles heel: A long series of financial and ethical scandals has dogged Clinton, including recent allegations that her husband and their family foundation benefited financially from decisions she made as secretary of state. And her performance surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a State Department facility in Benghazi, Libya, has been catnip for conservative Republicans.

















Bernie Sanders*  Vermont senator

Age: 73

Religion: Judaism

Base: Far-left progressives

                              Résumé: US senator, US congressman, mayor of Burlington, Vermont 



Education: B.A. University of Chicago.

Family: Sanders is married to Jane O'Meara Sanders (1988), a former president of Burlington College. They have one child and three more from Mrs. Sanders' previous marriage. His brother Larry is a Green Party politician in the UK and formerly served on the Oxfordshire County Council.

Claim to fame: Sanders is an unusually blunt, and unapologetic pol, happily promoting progressivism without hedging. He is also the longest-serving 'independent' member of Congress - neither Democrat nor Republican.

Achilles heel: Sanders describes himself as a 'democratic socialist.' At a time of huge GOP electoral gains, his far-left ideas don't poll well. He favors open borders, single-payer universal health insurance, and greater government control over media ownership.

* Sanders will run as a Democrat but has no party affiliation in the Senate.





REPUBLICANS IN THE HUNT




 







Jeb Bush, former Florida governor

Bush has a father and a brother who occupied the Oval Office, and the capacity to raise massive amounts of campaign cash. He has alienated conservatives, though, by embracing immigration reform and 'Common Core' education standards.

Chris Christie, New Jersey governor

Pugnacious and unapologetic, Christie would bring an ego-driven brashness to the race - although his abrasive style and echos of his 'Bridgegate' scandal might ultimately sink him. 



Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator

Graham was a non-factor until a March summit in Iowa where he stole the show and put himself on the map. Arizona Sen. John McCain has praised him as the best person to help right America's foreign-relations ship 



Bobby Jindal, Louisiana governor



Jindal's main claim to fame is his strident opposition to federal-level 'Common Core' education standards, which included a federal lawsuit that a judge dismissed in late March.

John Kasich, Ohio governor

Kasich is a popular governor in the battleground Buckeye State, but has little name-recognition elsewhere. He has accommodated liberals on some issues and could be seen as a more palatable version of Jeb Bush for Republicans who are anxious about electing a family dynasty.






DEMOCRATS IN THE HUNT

Joe Biden, U.S. vice president

Biden would be a natural candidate as the White House's sitting second-banana, but his reputation as a one-man gaffe factory will keep Democrats from taking him seriously. 

Jerry Brown, California governor 

Brown has been a presidential candidate three times and earned the nickname 'Moonbeam' for his liberal policy ideas. Today he's seen as a centrist but is likely leaning against another run.

Lincoln Chafee, former Rhode Island gov.

Chafee is a Republican-turned-Democrat who has launched a presidential exploratory committee and has distinguished himself from most in his party by attacking Hillary Clinton.









Martin O'Malley, former Maryland governor



O'Malley is a guitar-playing everyman who had limited success as his state's chief executive, showing political weakness by failing to secure a victory for his hand-picked successor.



















George Pataki, former New York governor

Pataki is a long shot with almost zero name-recognition outside his home state, but he pared down the size of the state government and cut taxes during 12 years in office.  He toyed with a run in 2012 but ultimately decided against it.



Rick Perry, former Texas governor

Perry was a top-tier candidate in 2012 until his 'Oops!' moment in a debate, when he couldn't remember one of his own policy positions. He now also faces a criminal indictment in Texas over tenuous claims that he abused his power.



Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania sen.

Santorum is a perennial White House hopeful who won the GOP Iowa Caucuses in 2012 on the strength of ceaseless retail campaigning. He's best known as a religious-right crusader.

Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor

Walker built his national fame on the twin planks of turning his state's budget shortfalls into surpluses and beating back a labor union-led drive to force him out of office. Both results have broad appeal in the GOP.

Donald Trump, real estate tycoon 

Trump, the host of 'Celebrity Apprentice,' could self-fund an entire campaign without spending a life-changing portion of his net worth. He has loudly criticized President Obama and claims he can negotiate with foreign governments better than anyone else. 






  



Mark Warner, Virginia senator 

Warner is a former Virginia governor who won a tough Senate race in a battleground state. He's also known as a tough budget negotiator. 

Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts senator

Warren is a populist liberal who could give Hillary Clinton headaches by challenging her from the left, but she has said she has no plans to run and is happy in the U.S. Senate.

Jim Webb, former Virginia senator

Webb is a centrist Democrat and a Reagan-appointed former Navy Secretary who's hawkish on defense policy. He has launched a presidential exploratory committee.











 



Read more:

Down To the Wire | Baltimore magazine

O'Malley cancels Ireland narrative essay ideas for college students speeches, returns to Baltimore

Martin O'Malley hints at run in New Hampshire

Martin O'Malley, Tommy Carcetti and 2016 - The Daily Beast

Martin O'Malley to top progressives: Warren's not running, I am - POLITICO