Monday, May 28, 2012

2016 Preview: Newt Gingrich & Newsweek Comment on Gov. Martin O'Malley White House Run // PLUS: "MoM" on Gambling

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (aka "MoM") has been under the media spotlight this weekend. Below, Maryland Juice highlights commentary about a future 2016 White House bid by Mr. O'Malley. Additionally, we print an excerpt from a unique Washington Post article that digs into MoM's thoughts about a special gambling session in Maryland. Notably, Newsweek now calls marriage equality "the new Democratic litmus test." Perhaps that is because the issue is now one of my generation's most obvious civil rights issues. Repeat after me: I told you so.

JUICE #1 - NEWSWEEK'S HOWARD KURTZ WEIGHS IN ON O'MALLEY WHITE HOUSE BID (excerpt below):
NEWSWEEK: ...[Obama] hasn’t exactly groomed a successor for 2016, either. He expresses occasional exasperation with his vice president, Joe Biden, who would be 74 upon taking office. His formerly fierce rival, Hillary Clinton, is stepping down as secretary of state and insists she won’t mount another White House campaign. The upshot is a gaping void for the post-Obama era, a space that two ambitious governors untainted by the mess in Washington are quietly moving to fill....
New York’s Andrew Cuomo took the lead by legalizing gay marriage, the new Democratic litmus test, last summer. Maryland’s Martin O’Malley, who hadn’t embraced the issue previously, got it done in March. “They’re just shadowing each other,” says Democratic strategist Joe Trippi. “As soon as one of them scores a point, the other one goes to score....”

O’Malley, 49, is a former Baltimore mayor, a guitarist in a Celtic rock band, and the model for ambitious pol Tommy Carcetti in the HBO series The Wire. Asked about the presidential chatter, he pauses, laughs, and stares at me intently: “What’s helpful to me as governor is that people come to understand the progress we’re making. We suffer in Maryland from a pathological modesty....”

Privately, Cuomo views the buzz as an affirmation that his star is again rising. A decade ago, he withdrew from a losing gubernatorial campaign and became tabloid fodder as his marriage to Kerry Kennedy broke up....

JUICE #2 - NEWT GINGRICH ON O'MALLEY WHITE HOUSE RUN (excerpt below):
WASHINGTON POST: Newt Gingrich’s advice to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley if he runs for president in 2016: “Raise a lot of money.”

Gingrich, a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, shared that insight Sunday during a joint appearance with O’Malley, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, on NBC’s “Meet the Press....”
But at the end, host David Gregory focused attention farther down the road, noting to O’Malley that there is “a lot of buzz about you running for president next go-around.”

Gingrich, who was significantly outspent by Romney in the primaries, called fundraising “the entry-level problem” in what he said is “a brutal, tough process.”

“You’ve got to be prepared,” he told O’Malley. “And then, second, just understand you’ll spend two or three years on the road.”

Gingrich also pointed O’Malley to the experience of U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a former Virginia governor who considering bidding for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

“Mark Warner is a great guy to talk to, because he went out, he looked at it a lot, and then he came back and ran for the Senate,” Gingrich said....

JUICE #3 - O'MALLEY'S THOUGHTS ON GAMBLING SPECIAL SESSION (excerpt below):
WASHINGTON POST: Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), however reluctantly, is trying to steer Maryland’s debate over expanding gambling to a conclusion in coming weeks.... 
“There are other things I enjoy, and in order to enjoy those things, and to accomplish other things, I do things this world requires of me. That’s kind of my attitude about this gaming thing.”

During the interview, O’Malley also said he sympathizes with others who have said there are “more pressing” issues to consider besides gaming, citing two initiatives of his that failed during the 90-day legislative session: bids to increase transportation funding and to jump-start the state’s wind-power industry.

“That’s why I charged across the battlefield, alone, holding up the flag of the gas tax in the hope that my political blood sacrifice might inspire [legislators] here to find a way forward,” he said. “Instead, they found a way to beat each other over the head over this contentious issue of gaming. And so, any hope of addressing our transportation needs went by the wayside, along with wind and other issues.”

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