Martin O’Malley’s campaign for president has not even begun, but already his plans to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination have been blown off course by the death of Freddie Gray and the violence that engulfed his home city of Baltimore last week.  In a long interview with the Guardian over chicken quesadillas in a north Baltimore Irish pub on Sunday, O’Malley, who is expected to launch a bid for the presidency in the next month, reflected on the turmoil that his adopted hometown had seen in recent weeks in the aftermath of Gray’s death in police custody. He also defended his record as mayor, which has been a linchpin of his potential presidential bid, while linking the recent events to a broader societal critique.  The disturbances in Baltimore have already altered the trajectory of his longshot bid for the White House. This past week, the former Maryland governor has probably received more media attention than he has in most months in the past. Crime in Baltimore was front-page news and he was the man planning a presidential campaign in which he would brag about his role fighting crime in the city.  Related: Can Martin O'Malley really become the Democratic presidential nominee?  O’Malley has had to pivot his embryonic presidential campaign to address these topics rather than the parade of issues beloved by liberal activists that he had previously been needling frontrunner Clinton on. On Sunday morning, O’Malley had proposed a “Marshall plan for cities” on Meet The Press. It’s an idea that’s very important to the mayor of a major city but of questionable impact on voters in more rural areas like Iowa and New Hampshire.  When asked if he thought this idea would appeal to suburban and rural voters, O’Malley responded: “We’re going to find out, aren’t we?” He argued that cities were the center of the 21st century economy: “We’re a metropolitan people. Eighty percent of GDP comes from metro areas and cities are the heart of that economic engine.” O’Malley buttressed this by noting: “When we cheer for pro sports teams, they usually have city names on them, not county names.”  Yet, while O’Malley saw cities having a universal appeal, he also thought they suffered from common blights and, in his opinion, the riots weren’t the result of factors unique to Charm City. “This week it was Baltimore; it could be another city in another couple of weeks,” he said. “There is such a tremendous amount of anger out there in cities. There are a lot of people who feel unheard, who feel unneeded, who feel unrecognized by their country and by their government.”  This was something that transcended race or region, he added. “This was not only about a tragic police custodial death and this was not only about policing and race. It was about the fact that our economy and country is making a lot of us feel like we’re not needed and our country and economy have no use for us.” To O’Malley, the sympathy rallies and protests in cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston show “that Baltimore is not some strange outlier here. We are in the center of this larger and very needed conversation about inequality, about permanent poverty, about in essence, what it’s supposed to be to be an American.”  But the racial tension boiling up from the streets of west Baltimore did not come as a surprise to the city’s former mayor, who was embarrassed to admit that for the first time in 15 years he didn’t have daily crime numbers in the city at the tip of his fingers. In O’Malley’s opinion “even if the Baltimore police department were 100% African American there would still be legacy issues from 300 years of a brutal racial history in our country and the way that law enforcement has been intertwined with that brutal racial history.”  Asked if he had heard about suspects before Freddie Gray being given “rough rides”, he took a pause before saying: “Sure – and everything else.” He recalled a conversation he had with a reporter about a recent corruption scandal in Baltimore City’s jail. O’Malley said he was asked: “How long have you known about the corruption problem in Baltimore City’s jail?” The former governor’s answer was: “Since my second week as a prosecutor in 1988.”  O’Malley said that there was “police brutality in every police department”. To him, “the question is do you have the will among civil authorities to confront it?” He cited his experience as mayor going to community meetings and bringing an internal affairs officer with him so that residents who had issues with the police could make their complaints then and there. O’Malley bragged about his efforts cracking down on corruption in the city police department and efforts to push for an effective civilian review board in Baltimore. He also went on the defensive about his tenure running the city, noting he only started the process of repairing the city. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. I never once declared ‘mission accomplished’.”  Yet the former Maryland governor also threw some elbows as well. O’Malley said that he thought “the Democratic party missed a huge opportunity with the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” In particular, with this legislation – popularly known as the stimulus – he thought that more money should have been funneled towards cities via community development block grants. “We failed as a party to put gas in the tank and it was a huge missed opportunity.” However, O’Malley didn’t point fingers as to why this decision was made. “I don’t know” he said with a wry, resigned smile. “It wasn’t for lack of asking.”  Further, while O’Malley declined to weigh in on the decision of the newly elected Republican governor, Larry Hogan, to suspend the section of the Maryland code requiring those arrested to be charged within 24 hours, he didn’t mince words about his successor. In his opinion, Hogan has “probably spent more time in Baltimore City in the past three days than he has in the past three years”. Yet he dodged the question of whether his anointed successor, the former Maryland lieutenant governor Anthony Brown would have done any better. “I don’t know,” he said mournfully. “I don’t know, not sure what good comes from thinking about that, I can tell you that.” (Some detractors have placed the blame for Brown’s loss in a normally solidly Democratic state on voter resentment towards O’Malley.)  Yet for all the elements of an old-fashioned local politician O’Malley displayed – he still seemed ready to tick off economic development projects and was visibly displeased that a gas station owner hadn’t been mowing a stretch of land next to the sidewalk when driving by – there was still an egghead side to him that appeared. He freely mentioned government programs by their acronyms and was ready to muse “about the life cycle costs and the circulatory nature of the economy”.  In the meantime, the former Maryland governor noted that police brutality is not new in Baltimore nor did it start with his tenure. “These are not problems that came about in 1999 or even 1995 or 1990 and this is part of the human condition,” he said. “They exist in one degree or another in every big city and they will exist in one degree or another so long as human beings are people that make up these public organizations.”
The former Baltimore mayor, Maryland governor and likely presidential candidate discusses police brutality and why cities are key to changing America