After a long career in city, state and federal government, Martin O’Malley is on the campaign trail again, vying to lead the Democratic Party at a pivotal time as it deliberates a new path forward following November’s resounding election defeat.

In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, the 61-year-old O’Malley pitched himself as “probably the best operational turnaround leader” the party has today. He touted that skill partially because of his record in Maryland. His supporters see him as someone who brings about real change; his critics reject that he led any turnaround in his leadership roles.

O’Malley, who served as mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007 and governor of Maryland from 2007 to 2015, has the backing of 65 committee members so far, his campaign said Monday.

Party members will choose the replacement of outgoing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison Feb. 1. The new leader is tasked with rebuilding a Democratic Party relegated to the minority — as Republicans control both houses of Congress and Donald Trump soon will reclaim the presidency — amid criticisms the DNC has lost sight of decisive working-class voters.

Former leaders in city and state politics praised O’Malley’s development of performance metrics to assess improvements in government, while also noting accusations during his time as mayor that the city was overpoliced.

O’Malley would use his city program to help DNC

O’Malley pointed to his development of Citistat, a performance management system designed to streamline bureaucracy, improve city services and cut costs, as evidence of his success.

Citistat has been emulated by other cities and received an Innovations in American Government award form Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2004.

Several years after O’Malley left office, in 2019, reporting by The Baltimore Sun indicated the Citistat agency was “slow to hold officials accountable.”

As governor, O’Malley developed a similar program — Statestat — which was later expanded to BayStat, to track restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. Statestat was replaced in 2015 by O’Malley’s successor, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, with the Governor’s Office of Performance Improvement.

O’Malley applied the same performance management approach to his most recent position as commissioner of the Social Security Administration under President Joe Biden, via “SecurityStat.” During his one year in the position, O’Malley said the average hold time for people calling the agency was reduced from 42.5 minutes to 12.5 minutes, and the average processing time on administrative law judge disability hearings was reduced from 450 days to 280 days.

The improvements were made possible “by bringing people together every two weeks, by measuring performance, by asking the question, ‘What works and how can we do more of it?’” O’Malley said.

“It’s the method that I can bring in making our Democratic Party quickly battle-ready for the next election so that we can win,” he added.

This time, performance metrics will be tracked through “ActionStat,” in order “to drive the leading actions every two weeks that will drive up voter registration and candidate recruitment,” O’Malley said Monday during a livestreamed candidate forum hosted by Our Revolution.

Some say O’Malley is ‘very skilled,’ others raise doubts

Democratic Delegate Sandy Rosenberg of Baltimore City said the performance metrics O’Malley has used throughout his career have been effective.

“He’s very skilled at using real numbers to make real change,” said Rosenberg, who’s served in the State House since 1983.

Rosenberg also credited O’Malley with signing a bill he sponsored in 2013 to repeal the death penalty in Maryland. And he recalled O’Malley’s time as state field director for the successful first-term campaign of longtime former Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski in 1986.

“It’s not theoretical with him. He knows what campaigning is about,” Rosenberg said.

But not everyone in Maryland agrees with O’Malley’s “turnaround manager” pitch.

“I don’t think a single person alive would say that he fixed Baltimore City,” said Doug Mayer, a Republican strategist who served as communications director for Hogan. “In fact, what he’s most well known for is locking up about 100,000 Black guys.”

In the 1990s, O’Malley adopted a controversial “zero tolerance policing” approach that involved increasing stop-and-frisk searches and arrests for quality-of-life crimes, with 100,000 people arrested in 2004. O’Malley has previously refuted accusations that his policy resulted in “mass arrests,” saying, “There was nothing ‘mass’ about the greater amount of enforcement or the greater number of arrests. Each arrest was individual.”

Former Baltimore Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young, who served on the city council with O’Malley in the early 2000s, noted that crime was greatly reduced during O’Malley’s time in office.

“Even though it was a little controversial with some, with the majority of the people in the city, they were okay with reducing crime,” Young said.

Young added that he believes O’Malley is the “best candidate out there.”

“The Democratic Party have lost focus on what’s really important to people, and I think O’Malley understands that, and could get us back on the right track,” he said.

Bob Flanagan, a former Republican delegate representing Howard County said O’Malley “got very little change done,” during his time in office.

“As mayor, he had a lot of talk about being a turnaround person, but the population of Baltimore continued to decline,” said Flanagan, who served as transportation secretary under former Republican Govs. Robert Ehrlich and Hogan.

On transportation, Flanagan added, “He delayed construction of the Red Line so that Governor Hogan could come in and kill it.”

During his three years leading the Democratic Governor’s Association, O’Malley pointed to “record fundraising” and noted Democratic gubernatorial victories in red states like Montana and Kentucky.

O’Malley recently was criticized by Republican Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, for a union agreement he signed, allowing some Social Security employees a minimum amount of telework through 2029. Asked about the agreement, O’Malley said productivity at the Social Security Administration improved 6.2% last year, the largest productivity increase in 10 years. The campaign also noted the terms of the contracts were negotiated in 2022, prior to O’Malley’s appointment.

O’Malley attributed the improvement in productivity to “more effective on-site and telework balance.” He said he required all headquarters and regional headquarters to increase their on-site presence and core collaboration days to mostly three days a week, instead of one day a week. Field offices have been open five days a week since vaccines were made available, he said.

But Mayer expressed skepticism about the state of the agency following O’Malley’s tenure: “Social Security’s fixed? He fixed it? It’s not billions and trillions of dollars in debt? That’s surprising to hear,” Mayer said.

Returning to a message of ‘economic security’

One of the first changes the Democratic Party needs to make, O’Malley said, is returning to a message of “economic security … fighting for the hardest working people in our country, many of whom felt we lost sight of their struggles in this last national election.”

Economic issues also were a focus during his time as governor, O’Malley said. He was reelected governor after the 2008 Great Recession “by always keeping the message connected back to the kitchen table,” he said.

O’Malley expressed some degree of openness to working with the Trump administration: “If there’s things that help the hardest working people in our country, we should support those things.” But if President-elect Donald Trump makes “harmful decisions” on issues like the cost of living or cost of energy, he said, “we need to fight those decisions.”

“These guys are going to break a lot of things,” he said. “They might even break Social Security.”

O’Malley has the endorsement of a former DNC chair, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, who said he met O’Malley when they were both mayors and later both served as governors of neighboring states.

“In these roles, and in his work as Social Security Administrator, I’ve seen how Martin leads with values, collaborates well with others and insists upon results,” Kaine said in a statement. “He is a superb communicator and a proven political winner.”

Another Maryland candidate runs for DNC chair

O’Malley may be a seasoned elected official, but the other Marylander in this DNC race, Bethesda resident Robert Houton, is not.

A lobbyist by trade, Houton entered the state’s crowded 2024 Democratic Senate primary, where he finished ninth out of 10 candidates with just 0.29% of the vote.

In a Fox News appearance discussing his candidacy, Houton said the party needs to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts and focus less on “gender-affirming care” — positions seemingly at odds with Democratic campaigns in recent elections nationwide.

“We really have to embrace what the voters have said on Nov. 5, and they elected President Trump,” Houton said. “President Trump won because he’s right on the issues.”

Houton declined to answer questions from The Sun last week after initially indicating that doing so was a “priority,” citing a need to focus on obtaining the signatures necessary for his candidacy. He claimed that a fellow DNC chair candidate, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, signed his petition for the nomination.

“With my announcement on social media that Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman and fellow DNC Chair Candidate Ben Wikler having signed my official DNC nomination petition form, I am well on track to both securing and exceeding the minimum 40-count threshold of DNC voting Members to participate in the Forums and be on the ballot on February 1st,” Houton said in an emailed statement.

A spokeswoman for Wikler did not immediately respond to The Sun’s request to confirm if the chairman signed Houton’s petition.

‘We need to get the DNC out of D.C.’

O’Malley and Houton face additional competition from around the country. In the first of four DNC Chair forums, candidate Ken Martin, who’s currently leading Minnesota Democrats, on Saturday said, “We need to get the DNC out of D.C.” He noted population growth in the South, saying Democrats need to turn more of their focus to that region of the country.

Wikler, Wisconsin’s Democratic Party chair and a candidate in the national race, advocated an audit of consultant contracts. “We should identify where money was wasted,” he said.

Another candidate, New York State Sen. James Skoufis, said Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to address difficult issues, like the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“Say what you want about Donald Trump… He’s authentic in the eyes of a lot of voters,” Skoufis said.

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