O’Malley Helping State-Level Democrats, Forming PAC for More Down-Ticket Action

Maybe Democrats can get over all their Hillary/Bernie angst by rallying with Martin O’Malley at his next rally for state and local candidates.

Yes, Martin O’Malley, former governor of Maryland, who has bounced back from his early out in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primaries by forming a political action committee to help down-ticket Democrats around the country:

O’Malley has been more active than nearly any other party member in campaigning for local candidates around the country in 2017, visiting 21 states for fellow Democrats since last year’s election. His new Win Back Your State PAC will allow him to chip in for more hopefuls.

…“We kind of fell into a trap that thinking president of the United States or United States senator were the only offices that mattered in our country, and the truth is every state matters,” he said. “It’s my hope, and I believe, that when we focus our efforts on winning back our states, that we’re going to restore a better balance and progress for our whole country. But we need the Democratic Party to start acting like a party again: no more ‘flyover’ states, and no more declaring any states permanently blue or permanently red” [Gabriel Debenedetti, “Martin O’Malley’s New PAC Aims to Help Down-Ballot Democrats,” Politico, 2017.11.16].

Debenedetti notes that O’Malley stumped in Washington and Virginia, where Democrats scored significant legislative wins. O’Malley also helped that nice young Democrat in Oklahoma flip a legislative seat this week in a district that Trump carried last year by 40 points.

We felt the Bern; now it’s time to Get Smart with Mart! Or Rally with Martin, and ‘Pubs Be Smartin’! Or Boost Your Tally with O’Malley! Or….

Related Reading for Democrats: Trickle-down politics doesn’t work any better than trickle-economics:

Jessica Post, the executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, argued in an interview last month that “the first wall of resistance against Trump is in the states.” Acknowledging Democratic ineptitude in state politics through the Obama years, Post told Soledad O’Brien, “We thought that if we invested in the presidency, if we spent more money on paid communications, all of that would simply trickle down and legislative candidates would get elected. The reality is all of these candidates need to run their own campaigns with shoe leather, smart digital engagement, and better funding to get their own messages out. They can’t just run under the banner of the national presidential campaign, which I think was a longtime assumption” [Graham Vyse, “What Virginia Taught Democrats About Winning Back the States,” New Republic, 2017.11.15].

Under the notably successful, moral, gentlemanly, and competent President Obama, Democrats lost over 1,000 state legislative seats. In South Dakota, we went from 38 Democratic legislators in 2009 to 16 right now. Governor O’Malley, come help us get those 22 seats and then some back!