Former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) unveils his official portrait during a July 2023 ceremony at Government House. O’Malley announced Monday that he is leaving his job running the Social Security Administration to seek the Democratic National Committee chairmanship. Photo courtesy the Governor’s Office.
Former Gov. Martin O’Malley became the first candidate to formally enter the race for Democratic National Committee chair Monday, telling The New York Times he is a “proven operational leader and a turnaround manager.”
“We face enormous challenges and a lot of soul-searching,” O’Malley told the newspaper, which broke the news of his candidacy. “We need to focus on fixing the problem and not the blame.”
O’Malley is one of several expected candidates who are expected to seek to replace outgoing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison in early 2025. The next chair will be chosen by 440 DNC members from across the country.
In an interview with the Times, O’Malley said that while the Democratic committee should conduct an “after-action report” for what went wrong during the 2024 election, he was loath to criticize President Biden for not ending his reelection bid sooner, or Harrison, or the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m not going to second-guess the past,” he said. “I’m focused on the future. And I’m running for chair of the DNC because I believe I can lead us out of this darkness and into a better future where we do a better job of connecting with the American people around the economic reality. I can’t fix yesterday. I’m not running to fix yesterday or second-guess yesterday.”
O’Malley, who served as governor from 2007 to 2015, and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, has spent the past year heading the federal Social Security Administration. He resigned that post on Monday, with the resignation officially kicking in on Nov. 29.
O’Malley has also been the mayor of Baltimore and a city council member, and headed the Democratic Governors Association for part of his tenure in Annapolis.
Asked what previous DNC chairs he admires, O’Malley replied, “I believe that Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy was something very valuable, important and that we should learn from and replicate. And I also believe that Ron Brown’s commitment, his work ethic, his ability to bring people together and pick us up off the mat, is also a shining example.”
Both those party leaders held the job after Democratic defeats in presidential elections.
Dean — who served as DNC chair from 2005 to 2009 and guided the party when Barack Obama was elected president — offered his own views on the future of the party in a recent podcast interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd. Brown was DNC leader from 1989 to 1993 and served when Bill Clinton won the White House. He later served as Clinton’s secretary of Commerce.
O’Malley did not weigh in on whether New Hampshire should resume its first-in-the-nation status for Democratic presidential primaries, saying “there needs to be a process for that.”
“I’m focused on listening and learning and collaborating with the 440 men and women that have to pick up the pieces in order to move our country forward,” he said.
O’Malley also said the party needs to rethink how it communicates with voters.
“We need to engage on channels that perhaps we haven’t engaged on before,” he said. “And a lot of people don’t watch TV anymore. But a lot of people are on WhatsApp. And that’s particularly true in a lot of communities with new immigrants.”
O’Malley declined to discuss how he felt Baltimore was portrayed on the highly-acclaimed HBO series, “The Wire,” which contained a fictitious mayor who many viewers assumed was modeled after O’Malley, expressing incredulity that he’d be asked such a question.
“I’m not the guy in ‘The Wire,’” he asserted.