The American Ireland Fund has honoured Democrat rising star Martin O’Malley
GOVERNOR MARTIN O’Malley of Maryland received the American Ireland Fund’s distinguished leadership award at a gala evening last night.
The award underlines 48-year-old O’Malley’s position as a rising star in the Democratic Party, and Irish America’s best hope of winning the White House again.
O’Malley thanked the fund “for the invaluable work they continue to do to bring about peace and reconciliation” and announced he will lead a trade mission to Northern Ireland, at the invitation of First Minister Peter Robinson, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Hillary Clinton’s economic envoy Declan Kelly.
Previous winners of the award include former US president Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, the late Senator Edward Kennedy and a host of philanthropists, including Bono and Paul Newman.
A $3 million donation by Loretta Brennan Glucksman, the chairwoman of the fund, this week put the group’s Promising Ireland fundraising campaign half way to its goal of $100 million, several months early.
O’Malley would not confirm speculation that he could be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016. “I consider myself to be very, very fortunate to be able to serve people in my state in these times,” he said. “That’s entirely my focus. We already have a president and I’m doing everything in my power to make sure he gets re-elected so he can continue to move us out of this recession.”
The Washington Posthas called O'Malley a workaholic who often takes an "in-the-weeds approach" to running Maryland's government. He loves Irish poetry. The late poet and philosopher John O'Donohue is his current favourite, he says.
A third-generation Irish American, O’Malley traced his ancestry back to the Maam Valley in Galway. Irish Ambassador Michael Collins describes O’Malley as someone who “just breathes Irishness; one of the few Americans I know who sings the Irish anthem in Irish”.
When he was growing up, “the Clancy Brothers filled our house year-round,” O’Malley says. “Not just in March . . . I was taught mostly in Catholic schools, by a lot of holy men and women, many of them Irish.”
Since he became governor in 2006, he’s had less time to jam with his band, O’Malley March. But he remains close to Galway’s Saw Doctors, who played at both his inaugurations.
When O’Malley’s fellow Democratic governors elected him to chair the Democratic Governors’ Association last year, commentators recalled that Bill Clinton also used the post to gain national notoriety.
In recent weeks, O’Malley has been a vocal critic of union-bashing legislation promoted by Republicans in Wisconsin and Ohio. “Some Republican governors are using budgetary difficulties to try to do away with pensions and the collective bargaining rights of unions,” he says.
“I think it’s sad and I think it’s wrong. It’s a tyranny of a temporary majority.”
A devout Catholic who prays every morning, O’Malley tried to rescind the death penalty in Maryland. Last week, the Maryland legislature voted against legalising same-sex marriage. O’Malley was disappointed. A fellow parishioner had expressed her displeasure at his position on the issue. “I told her respectfully I don’t do sacraments. I do equal rights.”
