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Key Moments From the Democratic Debate

by Joellen8952 Posted on December 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The third democratic presidential debate was held Saturday night at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, and it covered a wide range of issues, from terrorism and the heroin epidemic to family leave and student debt. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley ratcheted up his attacks on his rivals, while Hillary Clinton seemed more assured of her place as the presumptive Democratic nominee, training her fire on her Republican opponents. Sanders entered the debate with his campaign in damage-control mode over news that at least one of his staffers had improperly accessed the Clinton campaign’s voter date, but he still managed to mount a solid performance. Here are some of the most memorable moments from Saturday’s debate:

Bernie Sanders apologizes to Hillary Clinton for his campaign’s breach of her voter data: On Friday, news broke that a at least one Sanders campaign staffer had accessed portions of the Clinton campaign’s voter data when a firewall—maintained by a contractor—had temporarily failed. (See here for an explainer on the data flap.) The staffer that took advantage of this data breach was promptly fired by the campaign. Asked about the controversy, Sanders provided some brief background on the incident, but then promptly apologized to Clinton, a moment that garnered great applause from the audience. “I want to apologize to my supporters,” Sanders added. “This is not the type of campaign that we run, and if I find anybody else involved in this, they will also be fired.”

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O’Malley accuses Sanders and Clinton of flip-flopping on gun control: Moderator Martha Raddatz asked the candidates about a recent poll showing that more Americans believe that arming people, rather than stricter gun laws, is the best defense against terrorism. Clinton came down strong against this idea, and Sanders spoke in favor of strengthening background check laws and closing the gun show loophole. The exchange got testy when O’Malley forced his way into the exchange, over the protests of the moderators, to talk about his record of passing an assault weapons ban in Maryland. He accused Sanders of voting against gun control policies in the past and Hillary Clinton of flip-flopping on the issue. Sanders and Hillary were not pleased with that characterization:

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, lets calm down a little bit Martin,” said Sanders. “Yes, lets tell the truth, Martin,” Clinton said. She added: “I actually agree with Governor O’Malley about the need for common sense gun safety measures. And I applaud his record in Maryland. I just wish he wouldn’t misrepresent mine.” Here’s the full exchange:

Hillary’s empty podium: After a short first commercial break, ABC news turned back to debate coverage before Hillary Clinton had returned to her podium. Several of the initial shots of the stage showed her empty podium in the middle of the stage—a move that flouts general debate coverage etiquette. Clinton returned to the podium less than a minute after the coverage began and said “sorry.”

“Should corporate America love Hillary?” Moderator David Muir asked Clinton about her record with corporate America—last time she ran for president, Fortune featured her on its cover with the tagline “Business Loves Hillary.” Muir asked, “should corporate America love Hillary?” Hillary answered with a smile, “Everybody should!” Asked the same question—”will corporate America love a President Sanders?”—the senator responded quite differently. “No, I think they won’t,” Sanders said matter-of-factly. “The CEOs of large multinationals may like Hillary. They ain’t going to like me and Wall Street is going to like me even less.”

Bernie Sanders dodges question on racial profiling of Muslims: Muir asked Sanders to discuss racial profiling of Muslims. He pointed to the couple behind the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, whose neighbors said they grew suspicious after seeing packages being delivered to the couple’s home, but did not report them for fear of being accused of profiling. Muir asked Sanders what he would say to Americans who “are afraid to profile.” Sanders delivered a glib response: “Well, the answer is, obviously, if you see suspicious activity, you report it,” said Sanders. “That’s kind of a no-brainer. You know, somebody is loading guns and ammunition into a house, I think it’s a good idea to call 911. Do it.” When pressed to answer the question about racial profiling, Sanders instead spoke about his economic policies.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t really understand how encryption works: In light of the alleged use of encrypted communications in planning the Paris terrorist attacks, moderator Raddatz asked Clinton whether she would pass a law requiring tech companies to give the government access to encryption keys—a move that Silicon Valley opposes. Clinton responded with something of a non-answer, admitting that she doesn’t understand how encryption technology works and calling for a middle ground between encryption and non-encryption: “I would hope that, given the extraordinary capacities that the tech community has and the legitimate needs and questions from law enforcement, that there could be a Manhattan-like project, something that would bring the government and the tech communities together to see they’re not adversaries, they’ve got to be partners.”

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Key Moments From the Democratic Debate

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Hillary Clinton Opposes the Keystone Pipeline

by MildredUnwin Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton has long declined to take a position on whether or not the Obama administration should approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline. That just changed. At a campaign event Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, Clinton came out against the controversial project.

Here’s her statement, via NBC:

“I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone XL pipeline as what I believe it is: A distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change, and, unfortunately from my perspective, one that interferes with our ability to move forward and deal with other issues,” she said during a campaign event in Iowa Tuesday.

“Therefore, I oppose it. I oppose it because I don’t think it’s in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change.”

Clinton now joins the ranks of two of her opponents in the Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, who have both opposed the pipeline. Democrat Jim Webb, however, supports the project, along with all of the Republican candidates. A final decision, which has been years in the making, is expected from the Obama administration by the end of this year.

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Hillary Clinton Opposes the Keystone Pipeline

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Martin O’Malley Tries to One-Up Bernie Sanders With Promise to End College Debt

by AlannahVarghese Posted on July 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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As they vie to emerge as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley are racing to stake out territory to Clinton’s political left.

In April, O’Malley endorsed a $15 minimum wage. Sanders did the same within days. On a recent swing through Iowa, Sanders went beyond Clinton’s support of paid sick leave to endorse guaranteed vacation time. O’Malley, meanwhile, stumped on his opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership, an enormous trade deal that has become a bête noire for liberals and labor groups. Clinton supported the deal as secretary of state, but has hedged on the deal as a presidential candidate.

Now, O’Malley has an answer to Sanders’ plan for tuition-free public college: a series of proposals to eliminate debt for students at all colleges, public and private.

The dueling proposals come after an aggressive push to place student loan debt at the center of the Democratic primary agenda by liberal advocacy groups, notably the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The effort received a boost when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed an unspecified path to debt-free college earlier this year. Clinton intends to roll out a student loan plan later this month.

O’Malley outlined his proposal Wednesday at Saint Anselm College, a Catholic liberal-arts school in New Hampshire. Under his proposal, all graduates with federal loans would automatically have their loan repayment schedules tied to their incomes, giving lower-income graduates more time to pay back the loans. (Currently, graduates must opt into income-based repayment and meet certain requirements.) Graduates with debt would be able to refinance their loans at lower rates, and students with private loans would be able to refinance into federal loans with lower rates. The plan also calls for states to tie tuition rates at public colleges and universities to the state’s median income.

The pitch comes several weeks after Sanders argued for taxing certain Wall Street transactions and using the profits to eliminate $70 billion of tuition and fees at state-funded colleges.

O’Malley’s student debt plan is in line with his stated strategy to show up Sanders with a more detailed liberal platform. (In June, O’Malley called Sanders a “protest candidate.”) Their contest has also led to sparring among several outside groups. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee called Sanders’ plan for student debt “narrower” than O’Malley’s, which closely follows the group’s vision for debt-free college. And in June, a super-PAC supportive of O’Malley paid for ads directed at voters in Iowa that hammered Sanders’ record on guns. One ad spotlights Sanders’ vote against the 1993 Brady Bill, which required federal background checks of gun purchasers. Sanders shot back that the National Rifle Association has given a D- to his voting record.

Still, early polling shows Sanders winning the majority of likely Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers who aren’t backing Clinton. In New Hampshire, where O’Malley released his college plan, Sanders trails Clinton by an average of 15 points, a margin that keeps shrinking. O’Malley, meanwhile, is hovering around 2 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire.

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Martin O’Malley Tries to One-Up Bernie Sanders With Promise to End College Debt

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Martin O’Malley Is Running for President. Here’s What You Need to Know

by SUOWinston Posted on May 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The wait is over. Martin O’Malley is running for president. The former Maryland governor formally kicked off his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination on Saturday in Baltimore, the city he served as mayor for six years. O’Malley, who has been publicly weighing a bid for years, is aiming to present himself as a solidly progressive alternative to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. But it’s going to be an uphill slog—in the most recent Quinnipiac poll, he received just 1 percent—56 points behind Clinton, and 14 points behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was an independent until he entered the 2016 Democratic contest.

Here are five things you should read about O’Malley right now:

He’s the “best manager in government today,” according to a 2013 profile by Haley Sweetland Edwards at the Washington Monthly:

The truth is, what makes O’Malley stand out is not his experience, his gravitas, nor his familiarity to voters (Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden crush him in those regards). Nor is it exactly his policies or speeches (New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, both rumored presidential aspirants, have cultivated similar CVs). Nor is it that he plays in a band. Nor is it even the Atlantic‘s breathless claim last year that he has “the best abs” in politics. (Beneath a photo of the fit governor participating in the Maryland Special Olympics’ annual Polar Bear Plunge, the author gushed, “What are they putting in the water in Maryland?”) Instead, what makes O’Malley unique as a politician is precisely the skill that was on display in that windowless conference room in downtown Annapolis: he is arguably the best manager working in government today.

That may not seem like a very flashy title—at first blush, “Best Manager” sounds more like a booby prize than a claim a politician might ride to the White House. But in an era where the very idea of government is under assault, a politician’s capacity to deliver on his or her promises, to actually make the bureaucracy work, is an underappreciated skill.

He pursued a tough-on-crime policing strategy as mayor of Baltimore, according to a recent Washington Post article:

It was as a crime-busting mayor some 15 years ago that O’Malley first gained national attention. Although he is positioning himself as a progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, O’Malley also touts a police crackdown during his time as mayor that led to a stark reduction in drug violence and homicides as one of his major achievements.

Yet some civic leaders and community activists in Baltimore portray O’Malley’s policing policies in troubling terms. The say the “zero-tolerance” approach mistreated young black men even as it helped dramatically reduce crime, fueling a deep mistrust of law enforcement that flared anew last week when Freddie Gray died after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody.

He’s obsessed with the War of 1812 and discussed said obsession in an interview with the Daily Beast‘s Ben Jacobs last September, after dressing up in an 1812-vintage uniform and mounting a horse:

Win, lose, or draw, O’Malley said he is enthusiastic about the bicentennial and has read up on past commemorations to prepare. He recalled for The Daily Beast a 100-year-old Baltimore Sun editorial about the centennial in 1914 and searched excitedly through his iPad for it. PBS will broadcast the event nationwide on Saturday night, and it will feature what is planned to be the largest ever mass singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” and an outdoor concert in Baltimore that will include a rock opera about the War of 1812, and O’Malley’s own band, which he referred to simply as “a small little warm-up band of Irish extraction.”

Though he was the model for the character of Baltimore Mayor Tommy Carcetti on the HBO series The Wire, he is not a huge fan of the show or its creator, David Simon, who described an awkward encounter with the governor last year on an Acela train:

This fellow was at the four-top table immediately behind me. I clocked him as we left New York, but as he is a busy man, and as most of our previous encounters have been a little edgy, I told myself to let well enough alone. I answered a few more emails, looked at some casting tapes on the laptop, checked the headlines. And still, with all of that done, we were only just south of Philadelphia.

I texted my son: “On the southbound Acela. Marty O’Malley sitting just behind me,” then joking, “Do I set it off?”

A moment later, a 20-year-old diplomatic prodigy fired back a reply: “Buy him a beer.”

…I stood up, noticed that Mr. O’Malley was sipping a Corona, and I walked to the cafe car to get another just like it. I came back, put it on the table next to its mate, and said, simply, “You’ve had a tough week.” My reference, of course, was to the governor’s dustup with the White House over the housing of juvenile immigrants in Maryland, which became something of a spitting contest by midweek.

Mr. O’Malley smiled, said thanks, and I went back to my seat to inform my son that the whole of the State Department could do no better than he. Several minutes later, the governor of my state called me out and smacked the seat next to him.

“Come on, Dave,” he said, “we’re getting to be old men at this point. Sit, talk.”

Writing for the Atlantic in December, Molly Ball dubbed O’Malley, “the most ignored candidate of 2016.” Another takeaway from the piece, which chronicled his trip to an Annapolis homeless-prevention center that provides job training, might be that he tries too hard:

“I love kale,” O’Malley told the chef, Linda Vogler, a middle-aged woman with blond bangs peeking out from a paper toque who was teaching a cooking class. “Kale’s the new superfood!”

“We’re learning quinoa next,” Vogler said.

“You’re going to teach what? Keen-wa?,” O’Malley asked, genuinely puzzled. “What’s keen-wa?”

“It looks like birdseed,” she replied, hurrying on with the lesson. As the class counted off the seconds it took to boil a tomato, O’Malley changed their “One Mississippi” chant to “One Maryland! Two Maryland!”

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Martin O’Malley Is Running for President. Here’s What You Need to Know

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Martin O’Malley Is A Longshot Presidential Candidate, and a Real Climate Hawk

by DoyleHeidenreic Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is nothing like any pop culture stereotype of a politician. He’s not a boyishly charming airhead like George W. Bush or The Simpsons‘ Mayor Quimby, or a blunt, lovable grandpa like Joe Biden or The West Wing‘s Jed Bartlet. He’s not even that much like the fictional politician based partly on him, The Wire‘s Tommy Carcetti, who like O’Malley became the unlikely white mayor of majority-black Baltimore. O’Malley has none of Carcetti’s sleazy slickness. O’Malley comes across more like the sort of engaged administrator you would hire to turn around a moribund government agency.

In January, O’Malley will leave office after eight years because term limits prevented him from running for a third term. He will likely run for president in 2016, despite low name recognition and a lack of classic charisma. But whatever his seeming political deficits, he has won a steady stream of elections, made tangible progress in governing, and earned respect from progressives, including climate hawks.

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Martin O’Malley Is A Longshot Presidential Candidate, and a Real Climate Hawk

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Potential 2016 Contender Martin O’Malley Supports New Bill to Wean Politicians Off Big Money

by ImogeneSchafer Posted on February 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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While Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential contest, has made headlines lately for the big-money-fueled super-PACs lining up in her corner, another potential Democratic contender, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, is embracing the other end of the political money spectrum.

O’Malley, who would likely run to the left of Clinton in 2016, says he supports the Government By The People Act, a new bill recently introduced by Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes intended to increase the number of small-dollar donors in congressional elections and nudge federal candidates to court those $50 and $100 givers instead of wealthier people who can easily cut $2,500 checks. The nuts and bolts of the Government By The People Act are nothing new: To encourage political giving, Americans get a $25 tax credit for the primary season and another $25 credit for the general election. And on the candidate side, every dollar of donations up to $150 will be matched with six dollars of public money, in effect “supersizing” small donations. (Participating candidates must agree to a $1,000 cap on all contributions to get that 6-to-1 match.) In other words, the Sarbanes bill wants federal campaigns funded by more people giving smaller amounts instead of fewer people maxing out.

What makes the Sarbanes bill stand out is breadth of support it enjoys. The bill has 130 cosponsors—all Democrats with the exception of Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.)—including Sarbanes and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) And practically every progressive group under the sun has stumped for the Government By The People Act, including the Communication Workers of America, the Teamsters, Sierra Club, NAACP, Working Families, Friends of Democracy super-PAC, and more. Through efforts like the Democracy Initiative and the Fund for the Republic, progressives are mobilizing around the issue of money in politics, and their championing of Sarbanes’ bill is a case in point.

But O’Malley is the first 2016 hopeful to stump for the reforms outlined in the Government By The People Act. “We need more action and smarter solutions to improve our nation’s campaign finance system, and I commend Congressmen John Sarbanes and Chris Van Hollen for their leadership on this important issue,” O’Malley said in a statement. “Elections are the foundation of a successful democracy and these ideas will put us one step closer toward a better, more representative system that reflects the American values we share.”

No other Democratic headliners, including Clinton, have taken a position on the Sarbanes bill. (New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did include a statewide public financing program in his latest budget proposal. And Clinton, as a senator, cosponsored the Kerry-Wellstone Clean Elections Act.) Yet with nearly every major liberal group rallying around the money-in-politics issue, any Democrat angling for the White House in 2016 will need to speak up on how he or she will reform today’s big-money political system.

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Potential 2016 Contender Martin O’Malley Supports New Bill to Wean Politicians Off Big Money

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Maryland pushing ahead on offshore wind farm

by Cynthia Perez Posted on March 21, 2013

Maryland pushing ahead on offshore wind farm

By John Upton

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/ F.SchmidtHere comes the offshore wind power …

Maryland is one big step closer to getting the offshore wind power that its residents want and its governor has fought for.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has spent the past three years trying to convince lawmakers to approve his plans for a wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean to help power the state’s homes. On Monday, the General Assembly finally granted his wish with an 88-48 vote, following state Senate approval earlier this month.

Under legislation that O’Malley will soon sign (and that the state’s residents supported), residential electricity customers will see their bills rise slightly to help fund construction of wind turbines 10 to 20 miles off the coast of Ocean City.

From The Baltimore Sun:

The bill will require suppliers of electricity in the state to get up to 2.5 percent of their power from offshore wind as early as 2017. And it would offer a successful developer a subsidy of up to $1.7 billion over 20 years — paid for by Maryland’s residential and commercial electric ratepayers through slightly higher bills.

To pay for the subsidy, the Public Service Commission could authorize an additional charge of up to $1.50 a month for residential electricity customers. Commercial customers could see a charge of up to 1.5 percent of their electric bills. The higher rates would help assure that the wind energy developer takes in enough money to pay its investors.

The wind farm could produce 200 megawatts of electricity — shy of what O’Malley originally envisioned:

To keep customer costs that low, the governor scaled back the project that would be supported by Maryland ratepayers to 200 megawatts, about a third the size of offshore wind developments proposed in other states.

Some have said the smaller scale of the Maryland project could deter developer interest. Hopper said state officials hope developers can find ways to leverage the state subsidy to finance a larger wind facility.

The project still faces “regulatory, political and financial hurdles,” the Sun reports, and could be four to seven years away from construction even if everything goes as planned. Still, with no wind turbines yet in American offshore waters despite strong growth in the wind energy sector, Monday’s vote is being celebrated by environmentalists.

From the Sierra Club’s Compass blog:

This is a huge victory that is nationally significant for two reasons. First, it could well be the tipping point that allows us to finally tap the massive offshore wind potential off the East Coast. Second, it will ensure that historically underrepresented minority groups and small businesses will benefit from the jobs and investment dollars that offshore wind projects generate.

Not to mention how nice the turbines will look: Like graceful monuments to an energy economy in transition.

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Maryland pushing ahead on offshore wind farm

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