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A Politician Molded by Irish Rebels, Jesuit Ideals
"People always overestimate my ambition and underestimate my conviction," the Democratic candidate for governor says.
(By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"We're talking about somebody who understands how to combine data with a real sense of how people tend to behave," Wilson says, adding that O'Malley "understands at a very grass-roots level . . . how people are going to vote or what it is that appeals to them."
O'Malley was set to work for his man again in 1988. Hart, the party's early front-runner, formally launched his campaign in April 1987, while O'Malley was in law school in Baltimore.
Attending the University of Maryland there, O'Malley says, he fell in love with the city. He helped get Mikulski elected to the Senate in 1986 as her statewide field director and was looking forward to a career as a backstage political pro. He thought he could help put Hart in the White House.
Then: "It was almost like the death of a close friend," O'Malley recalls. The story of Hart's dalliance with model Donna Rice broke two weeks after he entered the race. Hart quit, then returned seven months later. But his campaign was hopelessly damaged.
"Oh, gosh, I had a lot of different reactions," O'Malley recalls. "A lot of anger. Disbelief. Disappointment. All those things at once, I suppose."
Rumors of infidelity dogged Hart before the scandal. As mayor, O'Malley has faced similar whispers and has publicly denounced them as "despicable lies." He says he has always been faithful to his wife.
Married since 1990, he and Katie O'Malley, a state judge (and a daughter of Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr.) have four children, the oldest, 15.
"I was with Hart when he got back into the race," O'Malley says, sounding wistful. "I have a great deal of admiration for his courage, his insights, his patriotism and his intellect. And I always will, human frailties notwithstanding."
Drawing Blood
In his two City Council terms in the 1990s, O'Malley's Web site says, he was "known for his outspokenness and fierce devotion." That's one way of describing him.
Council member Nicholas D'Adamo Jr. (D) says O'Malley was "a pit bull" at meetings, relentlessly assailing Baltimore's police commissioner and other department heads about performance, spending, record-keeping. "When he got hold of someone's leg," says D'Adamo, an Ehrlich supporter, "he didn't let go until he drew blood."
Foes back then called him an arrogant grandstander, a young pol on the make. "Brash," said the press. A maverick. A rebel.
O'Malley shakes his head now. "People always overestimate my ambition and underestimate my conviction," he says.
