O'Malley launches long-shot primary challenge to Hillary Clinton

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley announced today he will challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. At a rally in Baltimore, he tried to distinguish himself as a better choice than the obvious frontrunner in the race.

“The presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth … between two royal families,” O’Malley said. “It is a sacred trust to be earned from the people of the United States, and exercised on behalf of the people of the United States.”

O’Malley told supporters he called Clinton on Friday to tell her he was running.

Even as he takes on Clinton in the primaries, O’Malley owes much to her family for his position in politics. In a 2002 letter to O’Malley, then mayor of Baltimore, former President Bill Clinton said he saw something in him: “I won’t be surprised if you go all the way.” Since then, the Clintons have helped O’Malley with fund-raising, and vice versa. During the 2008 presidential campaign, O’Malley backed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Bill Clinton then rallied supporters for O’Malley in Baltimore ahead of his gubernatorial reelection bid in 2010.

Now O’Malley, the 52-year-old known as the “Rock and Roll Governor” for his membership in a Celtic rock band, is positioning himself as a more progressive candidate than Clinton. His political experience is limited to Maryland, where he became mayor in 1999. He claims a drastic reduction in crime as one of his greatest achievements in the role. The Washington Post has repeatedly criticized O’Malley for manipulating the numbers in making that claim. O’Malley did implement a statistical tracking system to help police improve their crime-fighting efficiency, which most agree contributed to a crime reduction in Baltimore. But police tactics under O’Malley might also have increased tensions between officers and the public, critics say—a claim that could hurt him more after recent riots over policing there and across the country.

O’Malley became governor in 2007 and pushed an unabashedly progressive agenda for the next eight years. During his tenure, Maryland allowed in-state college tuition for some children of illegal immigrants, legalized same-sex marriage, abolished the death penalty, and raised taxes by an overall 14 percent.

O’Malley, a Roman Catholic, supported same-sex marriage despite personal pleadings to the contrary by the Archbishop of Baltimore, Edwin O’Brien.

“I do not presume, nor would I ever presume as governor, to question or infringe upon your freedom to define, to preach about, and to administer the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church,” O’Malley wrote to O’Brien. “But on the public issue of granting equal civil marital rights to same-sex couples, you and I disagree.”

When term limits pushed O’Malley out of office, Democrats suffered an embarrassing defeat for the Maryland governorship. Republican businessman Larry Hogan made economics and taxes a central issue in the race against Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, taking every opportunity to criticize the O’Malley administration’s tax hikes.

That election could come back to haunt O’Malley next year.

“The failure of the all-but-announced candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination to pass the governor’s mansion to his successor is a sign of his unpopularity at home and will weaken his already limited appeal nationally,” noted Derek Hunter in The Daily Caller.