In an interview, O’Malley said it is easy to overlook what his administration has accomplished.
“We asked the General Assembly to do difficult things on the cuts that were in the budget and on pension reforms, and they did both of those things,” O’Malley said.
He said he had no regrets about asking the legislature to embrace ambitious proposals and stressed that some of those, including the wind bill, could pass next year.
“I didn’t run for a second term to coast or kick back or not do this job,” he said.
Although O’Malley won reelection by a wider margin than any Maryland governor in nearly 20 years, he made few promises during the campaign. Lawmakers returned in January without a clear sense of what he wanted to accomplish.
The governor initially was not heavily involved in the issue that came to dominate the 90-day session — a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. But he later publicly urged lawmakers to pass the bill, which died last month in the House.
When O’Malley delivered his State of the State speech Feb. 3, the only major new initiative in the address, the plan to help the Chesapeake Bay by banning construction of most septic systems, was met with near silence.
By that time, trouble had been brewing on the legislation he would push hardest: the offshore wind bill.
A week before the speech, lawmakers who had backed O’Malley’s reelection openly questioned whether offshore wind might cost residents more and produce fewer jobs than his administration had begun to suggest. Weeks later at a House hearing, O’Malley was faulted for what critics thought was an unimaginative and unsatisfying endorsement of the offshore wind bill, which would have forced utilities to buy wind energy at a premium and then divide the higher cost among ratepayers.
If early March appeared to be a low point, O’Malley soon seemed to be be throwing everything he had at building support for wind and even trying to resurrect the septic system bill.
In a stunt meant to draw attention to the septic legislation, O’Malley waded in a polluted Eastern Shore lake. To rally support for the wind bill, he summoned dozens of lawmakers to his office and the governor’s mansion for meetings.
On a single day in late March, O’Malley was seen not only at an event in the District but also at dinner meetings of the state House and Senate committees considering the wind legislation and at a lawmaker’s birthday party.
By last week, it became clear that O’Malley could not cajole support for the wind project even from typically loyal Baltimore lawmakers or from the Montgomery County delegation, which frequently backs environmental legislation.
O’Malley said he is hopeful that, with more study, lawmakers will take a longer view and recognize the wind bill as an important step in moving to cleaner sources of energy.
“The biggest concern that legislators have, and it’s my concern as well, is the additional costs to homeowners’ electrical bills,” O’Malley said. “But because I suppose I’ve been looking at this a little longer, I take the 30-year view toward that cost. As a nation, we’ve become accustomed to taking . . . the one-month view of that cost.”
It is the larger view of his own political career that took him to the Garden State last week.
O’Malley was embraced by Democratic activists in New Jersey, who have been frustrated by Gov. Chris Christie (R), a conservative darling who has sparred with state workers.
“What Governor O’Malley has shown is you can make those tough decisions, you can live up to the expectations, and pay the bills of your state and be fair to the people of your state,” Assemblyman John Wisniewski, chairman of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, told reporters.
O’Malley’s address to the dinner an hour later included several knocks against Christie and “a new breed of tea-partying Republican governors” — themes O’Malley has also hit in recent addresses in Virginia and elsewhere.
Maryland Republicans have played up the notion that O’Malley’s travels left him AWOL at several key points during the session — something O’Malley vigorously disputes.
During the interview, he recounted a conversation with a Republican senator on the subject. “I said, ‘Look, you can vote against my budget, vote for my budget for whatever reasons, but please, spare me the fiction it’s because I haven’t been as engaged this session. It’s not true.’ ”
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