O’Malley to bring his long-shot bid for presidency to Austin
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley brings his long-shot campaign Thursday to Austin, where he will have lunch with an unauthorized immigrant family, speak to students at the University of Texas and raise some money.
He will also tape an interview with Texas Tribune editor-in-chief and CEO Evan Smith for his KLRU show, “Overheard.”
The Austin stops are part of a Texas trip that includes visits to Houston and Dallas in advance of the second nationally televised Democratic presidential debate Saturday at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, in which O’Malley will face off against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Carlton Carl, former CEO and publisher of the Texas Observer and one of the hosts of Thursday evening’s Austin fundraiser, said that O’Malley has two distinct advantages over his two rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
O’Malley accomplished more from a progressive perspective in his seven years as mayor of Baltimore and two terms as governor of Maryland than either Sanders or Clinton did in their careers in the Senate, Carl said.
And, at 52, O’Malley is a generation younger than the 68-year-old former secretary of state or the 74-year-old
democratic socialist.
So far, O’Malley has achieved little notice in the three-way Democratic race. Polls indicate that Clinton is securely in first, Sanders is solidly in second, while O’Malley was at 2 percent in the latest Fox national poll, and zero percent in the most recent Quinnipiac University national poll.
But Carl said it’s still early.
“If you looked back historically, where was Bill Clinton at this time in his race? Nowhere,” Carl said. “Where was Jimmy Carter? Nowhere.”
Carl, who served as press secretary to former U.S. Rep John Bryant, a Dallas Democrat, said he got to know O’Malley when he interned in Bryant’s Washington, D.C., office in the mid-1980s.
“Everybody in the office loved Martin, and everybody campaigned for him when he was campaigning for governor,” Carl said.
Bryant is among the other hosts for the Austin fundraiser at the home of Sylvia and Charles Zeller, and another one Friday morning in Dallas.
After taping the interview for “Overheard” on Thursday morning, O’Malley will have lunch with the Ramirez family at their East Austin home.
According to the O’Malley campaign, the family would benefit from President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans.
This week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals court denied the administration’s request to lift an injunction on the executive order the president issued to protect from deportation those in the country illegally and to provide millions of work permits.
The lunch with O’Malley is being organized by the immigrant advocacy groups America’s Voice, United We Dream Action and the Center for Community Change Action/ Fair Immigration Reform Movement as part of their “DAPA Dinners” campaign.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, O’Malley will speak to UT students at the Hogg Memorial Auditorium on campus.