Echo Focus: O’Malley on the March

But the 41-year-old O’Malley has also been dogged in recent times by controversy, from the firing of his police chief to the swirling rumors of marital infidelity.
The latter at least has been put to rest with the resignation of a member of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich staff who was behind an Internet campaign against the mayor.
In any case, meeting the taoiseach will provide O’Malley with a welcome respite from the rough and tumble of city politics.
And his campaign generally to strengthen ties between Ireland and Baltimore is not something that causes acrimonious debate.
O’Malley will bring Ahern to the Baltimore Railroad Museum to highlight the contributions Irish immigrants made to the building of the U.S. rail system.
“I invited the taoiseach when I was in Ireland last summer on a trade mission,” O’Malley said last week.
He was on what he called the “mayor’s rock and roll bus tour” to promote trade and investment between Ireland and Baltimore when he invited Ahern to “Charm City.”
Ahern, who has been called the “Teflon Taoiseach” for his political adroitness and sometimes muddled stances, may see something of himself in the dynamic and ambitious mayor.
O’Malley has been the darling of the left wing of the Democratic party, tipped by many as a future presidential candidate, even as he has struggled to bring Baltimore out of an abyss of underperforming schools and high crime rates.
In addition to his busy mayoral duties, O’Malley is campaigning to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2006 Maryland gubernatorial race.
But that image of a young, confident and handsome politician came under immense pressure when rumors of infidelity came to the surface and stayed there for over a year and a half.

Smear campaign
In January, the story that O’Malley had fathered a child with a television reporter living in New York was found to have been spread by the aide who subsequently was forced to resign, and who has apologized to O’Malley, the married father of four young children.
The mayor’s wife, Katie Curran O’Malley, as a district court judge is prominent in her own right. She also comes from a leading Maryland political family. Her father, Joseph Curran, has been a Maryland House of Representatives delegate, a lieutenant governor and, since 1986, the elected attorney general for the state.
The O’Malleys — who have two girls, Grace and Tara, and two boys, William and Jack — addressed the press after the resignation of Ehrlich’s aide.
“I have been faithful to my wife since our first date to this date,” he said.
Since the first week of February, Martin O’Malley has been reticent about speaking to reporters about the Web-based rumor campaign.
“It was very painful,” he said, recalling having to speak to his two oldest daughters about the gossip and rumors being spread about their parents. “They heard about it at school, and they’re just becoming a teenagers. Katie said, ‘We’ve been under sustained and orchestrated smear campaign and now we know it came from state offices.’ “
O’Malley worried that there will be damage beyond what’s already been done to himself and his family. He said partisan politics have descended to a new low.
“We volunteered for a lot, but not for this,” he said. “This type of effort drives decent people out of office.”
An investigation is now trying to find out if the rumor-mongering was generated during business hours on the state’s time and a state-owned computer.
Ehrlich has said although he is ultimately in charge of state workers, he would not apologize for what “one individual” did. Maryland state legislators are currently debating whether to launch a formal investigation into the matter.
The former aide — who logged onto conservative Web sites with the Internet screen name “MD4BUSH” — is also accused of operating a political “litmus test” that resulted in Democrats being fired in favor of GOP supporters.
“This is the modern-day breed of George Bush,” O’Malley said of Gov. Ehrlich, a big supporter of the president.
O’Malley maintained that the smear campaign, which lasted more than 18 months, was not a one-off from a low-level state employee.
“They were running it; they orchestrated and sustained this one and it was pushed at from the highest level,” he said.

Musical mayor
On a recent Saturday night, O’Malley trekked down the I-95 corridor to his hometown of Bethesda, Md., a suburb of Washington, where he played a gig with his Celtic rock band, O’Malley’s March.
O’Malley, who sings and plays lead guitar, finds time for music. He was joined on stage by bassist Bob Baum, drummer Jamie Wilson, flute player Paul Levin, guitarist Ralph Reinoldi and multi-instrumentalist Jared Denhard at a small local bar.
He sang a song whose music and lyrics he composed, “Wait For Me:

Back across the years so long.
He’s kept his grandpa’s promise,
His kids still sing the songs.

If the voters are as enthusiastic as the Bethesda audience was, he may well have a chance to prevail over Ehrlich in the 2006 race.
But looking forward to today’s visit by the taoiseach, O’Malley focused beyond domestic issues. He said he is concerned about this year’s barring of the North’s politicians from the White House St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
“All party talks are needed for peace and reconciliation in Ireland,” he said. “Our country helped to bring a peace process together. We endanger that process when we exclude any parties out.
“I worry that the Bush administration is not seen as really committed to peace in Ireland because they don’t want to get involved because it was a Clinton success.
“As difficult as it is, we must keep the communication open,” he said referring to the current crisis over allegations of Sinn Fein involvement in the Northern Bank robbery and money laundering operations.
“If there’s criminal actions, then the consequences will be at the ballot box and taken care of by criminal codes,” he said.