65 Facts About Martin O'Malley

Martin Joseph O'Malley was born on January 18,1963 and is an American politician who served as the 17th commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 2023 to 2024.

Martin O'Malley was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999 after a surprise win in the Democratic primary.

Martin O'Malley won a second term as mayor in 2004.

Martin O'Malley won the 2006 Maryland gubernatorial election, unseating incumbent Republican governor Bob Ehrlich.

Martin O'Malley served as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association from 2011 to 2013.

Long rumored to have presidential ambitions, Martin O'Malley publicly announced his candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination on May 30,2015.

One of six major candidates, Martin O'Malley struggled to gain support, and he suspended his campaign on February 1,2016, after finishing third in the Iowa caucuses.

In November 2024, Martin O'Malley announced that he would run for chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2025, seeking to succeed Jaime Harrison.

Martin O'Malley's father served as a bombardier in the US Army Air Force in the Pacific theater during the Second World War, and recalled witnessing the mushroom cloud rise over Hiroshima while on a routine mission.

Martin O'Malley attended the Our Lady of Lourdes School in Bethesda and Gonzaga College High School.

Martin O'Malley graduated from the Catholic University of America in 1985.

In December 1982, while still in college, Martin O'Malley joined the Gary Hart presidential campaign for the 1984 election.

In 1986, while in law school, Martin O'Malley was named by then-Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski as state field director for her successful primary and general election campaigns for the US Senate.

Martin O'Malley served as a legislative fellow in Mikulski's Senate office in 1987 and 1988.

In 1990, Martin O'Malley ran for the Maryland State Senate in the 43rd State Senate District in northeast Baltimore.

Martin O'Malley challenged one-term incumbent John A Pica in the Democratic Party primary, and lost by just 44 votes.

Martin O'Malley was considered an underdog when he first filed to run, but "came out of nowhere" to lead Pica on election night.

In 1991, Martin O'Malley was elected to the Baltimore City Council representing the 3rd Councilman District and served from 1991 to 1999.

In 1996, Martin O'Malley became a chief ally of City Council President Lawrence Bell at a time when Bell was engaged in a power-struggle with Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

Fellow 3rd district councilor Joan Carter Conway joined Martin O'Malley in aligning with Bell's positions on key votes.

Martin O'Malley had previously been politically partnered with Curran, with the two having co-endorsed each other in the 1995 City Council election.

However, due to Curran's alignment with the mayor, in October 1996 Martin O'Malley wrote an open letter assailing him.

Martin O'Malley is 34, tall, leading-man handsome, with a Chiclets smile that seems to make his face glow.

Martin O'Malley announced his decision to run for Mayor of Baltimore in 1999, after incumbent Kurt Schmoke decided not to seek re-election to a third term.

Martin O'Malley had to wait more than a year to run in the general election because of a conflict between Maryland election law and the Baltimore city charter.

Martin O'Malley has been accused by many of establishing a zero-tolerance policing strategy, aimed at reducing the city's high murder rate but that instead led to the targeting and abuse of black communities.

In 2002, Martin O'Malley submitted a bid for the city to be the host of the 2004 Democratic Convention.

In 2002, at the age of 39, Martin O'Malley was named "The Best Young Mayor in the Country" by Esquire; and in 2005, TIME magazine named him one of America's "Top 5 Big City Mayors".

Martin O'Malley considered a run for governor in the 2002 election but decided not to run.

Martin O'Malley selected Delegate Anthony Brown of Prince George's County as his running mate for lieutenant governor.

Martin O'Malley was able to reverse course in all of these areas.

Martin O'Malley led by margins of several points in most polls during the campaign, but polls tightened significantly in the last week of the campaign.

Governor Martin O'Malley's spokesman said there was no "quid pro quo," and a spokesman for the County Executive said the project had been a county transportation priority since before both Martin O'Malley and the executive were elected.

In 2010, Martin O'Malley announced his intention to run for re-election while Ehrlich announced he would run, setting up a rematch of 2006.

Martin O'Malley has said that President Obama has looked at StateStat as a potential model for tracking stimulus funding.

Martin O'Malley supported a bill considered by the General Assembly to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland in 2011, even though Archbishop of Baltimore Edwin O'Brien had urged him as a Catholic not to support the bill in a private letter sent two days before Martin O'Malley voiced his support.

In 2013, Martin O'Malley signed a bill to ban the practice of shark finning in Maryland, making it the sixth US state to enact this regulation.

Martin O'Malley opposed a 2011 lawsuit filed by the Waterkeeper Alliance, Inc against Perdue Farms, a poultry agribusiness corporation based in Maryland.

Also in 2014, Martin O'Malley approved the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in western Maryland but only on condition of tight regulations.

Martin O'Malley had previously blocked the technique from the region for three years, awaiting the report from the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission on the risks and benefits of this controversial procedure.

Martin O'Malley publicly expressed interest in a presidential run in 2016 on multiple occasions.

Four months later, on June 9,2016, Martin O'Malley officially endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Martin O'Malley was appointed chairman of the advisory committee and made a senior fellow.

Martin O'Malley was made a fellow of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC After the Democratic primaries, Martin O'Malley explored a potential run for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Martin O'Malley later withdrew interest after Minnesota representative Keith Ellison received the endorsements of several major Democratic figures.

In June 2016, Boston College Law School's Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy announced that Martin O'Malley would be its inaugural Jerome Lyle Rappaport Visiting Professor and teach at the law school during the Spring 2017 semester.

The Baltimore Sun reported on May 31,2017, that Martin O'Malley admitted that he along with other Democrats gerrymandered the state's 6th district in a successful effort to oust long-time Republican incumbent Rep.

In November 2019, Martin O'Malley encountered acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli II, in a Capitol Hill bar and confronted him with what The Washington Post reported one witness described as a "shame-invoking tirade" centering on the Trump administration's immigration policies.

Also in 2019, Martin O'Malley was elected to be a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Since Martin O'Malley was confirmed merely to complete the remainder of the unexpired term to which Andrew Saul had previously been appointed, his appointment would have expired in January 2025 had he not resigned sooner.

Lisa Rein of The Washington Post described Martin O'Malley as assuming leadership of an agency that had been afflicted by numerous challenges, including the impact left by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a shrunken agency workforce, poor employee morale, and issues with efficiency.

Martin O'Malley described improving its customer service as his first priority.

Martin O'Malley instituted a number of changes to the agency's operations after assuming leadership.

Martin O'Malley has worked to increase the shared distribution of workloads between different offices.

Martin O'Malley has increased digitization, which has including expanding document upload and esignature access for staff and increasing the agencies "digital-first" approach to mail.

Martin O'Malley has utilized his data-driven approach to leadership in this role.

At the time that Martin O'Malley assumed leadership, the agency was struggling with a significant backlog of pending claims in its disability program.

Martin O'Malley analyzed data to find that the two greatest contributors to the length of processing times for claims were in state agency reviews and Social Security Agency-run hearings.

Martin O'Malley resigned from the Social Security Administration on November 29,2024, in order to launch his candidacy in the February 2025 election of a new Democratic National Committee chairperson.

Martin O'Malley appeared in the 2014 Travel Channel documentary The War of 1812 Trail.

Martin O'Malley met his wife, the former Catherine "Katie" Curran, in 1986 while they were both in law school.

Martin O'Malley has said that he grew up surrounded by Irish music.

Martin O'Malley's March continues to perform following Martin O'Malley's decision to end his 2016 presidential campaign.

Martin O'Malley's father was of Irish descent; his paternal ancestors come from An Mam, County Galway.

Martin O'Malley is a member of the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution and the General Society of the War of 1812.