Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is laboring to shore up support among African-Americans and liberal voters after the Baltimore riots cast a shadow over his record on race relations during 15 years running the city and the state — a record he’d hoped would be the center of a White House bid.
Mr. O’Malley, who was expected to announce his presidential run next month, had emerged as a strong liberal voice among Democrats eyeing a challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s nomination. But he quickly had to shift to a defensive footing amid questions about the racial tensions in Baltimore that erupted in violence just three months after he left office.
His team on Wednesday was touting his record as governor decriminalizing marijuana, repealing the death penalty and reducing incarceration rates, as well as his record as Baltimore mayor doubling funding for drug treatment, increasing police hiring of minorities and supporting an independent civilian review board for allegations of police misconduct.
They also pointed out that Mr. O’Malley called for mandatory body cameras for all police in the U.S. a month ago, as Mrs. Clinton garnered attention Wednesday for making the same proposal in a speech at Columbia University in New York.
Mr. O’Malley was always a long shot against the former first lady, senator and top diplomat. He captured about 2 percent support versus Mrs. Clinton’s 62 percent in a Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls.
The racial unrest in Baltimore only threatened to make the uphill climb steeper for Mr. O’Malley. Political insiders said that it even could spell the end of his presidential ambitions for 2016.
SEE ALSO: Baltimore riots sparked not by race but by class tensions between police, poor
“Riots in your home state never help. They are usually the end result of long-standing problems that haven’t been adequately addressed by leaders,” said Democratic political consultant Thomas Mills. “I’m just not sure O’Malley’s presidential campaign was ever going to really get off the ground. The riots could keep it from getting on the runway.”
In the aftermath of the riots, Mr. O’Malley encountered jeers from some of the black residents as he walked the streets, including calls of “get the f*** out of here” and “this is his fault.”
The black community’s hostility toward Mr. O’Malley mostly stems from the zero-tolerance policing strategy that he employed as mayor to combat the city’s high rate of murder, violent crime and drug addiction.
“Of course that contributed to a community feeling oppressed by the law,” said Tina Hassane Muhammad, national spokeswoman for Black Lawyers for Justice, which has been at the forefront of protests in Baltimore and other cites over police brutality against blacks.
“Of course that culture of us against them contributed to what you are seeing [in Baltimore] and the economic and educational disparities that exist in that community as well,” she said. “We are fighting police departments all over the country because of their position as judge, jury and executioner.”
When he took office in 1999, Baltimore regularly recorded more than 300 murders a year. The mass arrests for even minor infractions under Mr. O’Malley vexed poor, black neighborhoods but helped cut violent crime 41 percent by 2006, the steepest decline of any major city in the country.
SEE ALSO: Hillary Clinton seizes on Baltimore riots, calls for criminal justice reforms
Mr. O’Malley, who was elected by wide margins to two terms as mayor and governor, took the insults in stride while he casually walked the streets.
“I just wanted to be present. There’s a lot of pain in our city right now,” he told reporters. “You got to [be] present in the middle of the pain, man.”
Several residents did warmly embrace Mr. O’Malley or took cellphone selfies with him.
Before the riot, Mr. O’Malley was positioning himself to be a champion for black Americans in the struggle against harsh police tactics.
In a speech earlier this month at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Convention, Mr. O’Malley burnished his racial justice credentials talking about the death of Walter Scott, who was shot in the back running away from a policeman in North Charleston, South Carolina.
The shooting was caught on cellphone video by a bystander.
“It’s very, very hard, I think, for white people, any white people, to understand just what that loss of a precious life does to the constant state of random vulnerability that Americans of color feel and is reinforced when all of us see those images,” he told the conference in Washington, D.C.
“Before I was elected governor, I served as the mayor of Baltimore,” he said. “By 1999, we had allowed our city — through the choices we made, the actions we took, and the actions we failed to take — we had allowed our city to become the most violent, the most addicted and the most abandoned city in America. One year, we had almost a homicide a day when we hit our high. And 90 percent of the people we buried were young, and were poor and were black.
“Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter,” said Mr. O’Malley.
Mr. O’Malley found defenders among Baltimore politicians who said he was mayor more than eight years ago and bore no responsibility for the unrest this week.
State Sen. Lisa Gladden, who lives about six blocks from the scene of massive looting at Mondawmin Mall, defended him but said she wanted Mr. O’Malley to do more than give speeches or offer moral support to city residents.
“Just get a broom and a dustpan and help clean up the mess,” Ms. Gladden said as the former governor prepared to tour the damage. “If you want to be president of the United States, start by cleaning your house. And that’s what I need to do. I need to clean my community too. So I’m going down here to Mondawmin to see what I can do.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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