Governor O'Malley Announces 2012 Legislative Priorities // Pundits Speculate on 2016 Presidential Implications

The Center Maryland news aggregator recently flagged an article about Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley's subtle jockeying with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic Party's 2016 Presidential nomination. The Politicker NY article was titled Meet The Cuomo Clog: Is Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley The Only Thing Standing Between Andrew Cuomo and The White House? The piece contains some interesting punditry about Maryland's Governor, albeit from a New York perspective. Here are some choice excerpts:

You can’t get from New York to the White House, however, without going through the state of Maryland, and sitting in the Revolutionary War-era statehouse there is another governor. His name is Martin O’Malley, and although five years is a millennium away in political time, he has emerged as perhaps the single biggest threat to Andrew Cuomo’s well-documented political ambitions....

Advisers to Mr. O’Malley think that he will play better on the national stage than his New York counterpart, who will come across as too New York for the heartland....

Mr. O’Malley, meanwhile, has kept up an aggressive touring schedule, and regularly appears on the Sunday morning talk shows, mostly due to his official duties as head of the Democratic Governor’s Association, a job that has introduced him to the bigwig donors to the Democratic Party and has led him to occasionally cross paths with Mr. Cuomo....

“He is essentially in the Roosevelt/LBJ social Democratic tradition,” said Mr. Raskovar. “He believes in government as a vehicle to assist people in need in society.”

The article above hints at some of the dynamics between Governor O'Malley's legislative agenda and his 2016 strategy. The Washington Post's John Wagner expounds upon this in greater detail today, with his discussions of Mr. O'Malley's 2012 legislative priorities: