Martin O'Malley will decide on 2016 bid by end of May
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said he will decide by the end of May whether he is running for president in 2016 - and that it would be "an extreme poverty indeed if there weren't more than one person willing to compete for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party."
"I believe that if you have the executive experience, the ideas that can serve our nation well, and the ability to govern, you should offer your candidacy and then let the people decide. If we do that, then we can be the party that leads our country into the future," O'Malley said in an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday. "But we won't do it unless we offer ideas for the future and break with things like bad trade deals, the systematic deregulation of Wall Street that many Democrats were complicit in and helped get us into this mess."
O'Malley has made trips to both Iowa and New Hampshire this year and speaks like a politician who is ready to run for the White House.
"I believe that our country faces big challenges. And I know that leadership's important if we're going to turn these challenges into opportunities. I have 15 years of executive experience as a big city mayor and as a governor bringing people together to get things done. And I believe that I have the ideas that will help out country move forward to a time when our economy's actually working for all of us again instead of wages declining," he said.
Still, he insists that any presidential campaign will be run "for" something rather than merely "against" Clinton. But when asked by host Bob Schieffer why he would make a better president than Clinton, he was ready with an answer.
"Because of the experience that I can bring to this job. The seven years as mayor of Baltimore, eight years as the governor of a state. I guided our state through this recession. And I did so with results that actually matter," he said.
O'Malley highlighted the fact that Maryland has the highest median income in the country, and cited his record of signing laws that legalized same-sex marriage, gave in-state college tuition to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and making it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain drivers licenses.
"That's the inclusive America that I believe all of us want to move to," he said.
He declined to weigh in on the launch of Clinton's campaign, saying only, "I have a tremendous amount of respect for Secretary Clinton." He did weigh in on his own campaigning philosophies.
"I believe that the best way to campaign is one-on-one with people," he said. "You can't forge public opinion by following public opinion. And you have to engage with people in living room after living room and luncheonettes and lunch counters. I think that's the best type of campaign, is the one-on-one contact where we actually talk about the better choices we need to make to get earnings to rise again."