Peter O’Malley III, Pr. George’s lawyer and Democratic power broker, dies at 72

Peter F. O’Malley III, a Prince George’s County lawyer and Democratic Party power broker who served as consigliere to real estate and sports mogul Abe Pollin and was also a force in local education, health care and sports, died May 28 at a hospital in Rehoboth Beach, Del., after a heart attack. He was 72.

Mr. O’Malley, who came from a blue-collar Massachusetts background, completed Georgetown law school at night while working as a Capitol Hill police officer. In the 1970s, he began building one of the most influential corporate law practices in Maryland — a business that grew in tandem with his emergence as a key political strategist in Prince George’s.

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Working with his friend Steny H. Hoyer, then a rising presence in the Maryland Senate, Mr. O’Malley saw room for a vibrant, development-minded Democratic political organization that could replace the historically corrupt “boss” system as Prince George’s was transitioning from a backwater into a suburban bedroom community.

Often described as hard-driving but thin-skinned and intense but soft-spoken, Mr. O’Malley excelled at backroom strategy and enforcing party discipline. Hoyer, now the U.S. House minority whip, was more the public face of the organization.

Their Democratic operation — which controlled nearly every political office in Prince George’s from county executive to registrar of wills, and even some judicial appointments — won enormous clout in the Maryland State House.

In an interview, Hoyer said Mr. O’Malley was “an extraordinarily focused, disciplined planner in business and in politics. Pete was one of the best organizers and implementers of plans I’ve ever seen.”

George H. Callcott, a retired University of Maryland professor who specialized in Maryland history, said Mr. O’Malley “kept the county delegation together” in a way rivaled only by Baltimore City in its authority at the State House.

Mr. O’Malley “was thinking in terms of county coherence and well-being,” he said. “He was in the position of being a political boss, but it was a little bit different. He enjoyed the authority but was dedicated to the development of the county.”

Mr. O’Malley’s law firm, whose clients included Giant Food and Baltimore Gas and Electric, became the nexus between county government and almost every major developer and interest group hoping to sway decision makers. He served as president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade and spoke admiringly about the benefits of free enterprise.

“Profit makes the world go round,” he once told The Washington Post. “It’s the underpinning of everything.”

Perhaps his most notable client was Pollin, for whom Mr. O’Malley cleared the way to build Capital Centre in Landover — against the wishes of environmentalists and others who said the sports arena deal was arranged without sufficient public scrutiny.

When it opened in 1973, Capital Centre was widely regarded as a cultural boon to the county — a major venue to host professional sports teams and high-profile entertainers, from the Beach Boys to the Grand Ole Opry.