More News

O’Malley campaign organizes Montgomery

Friday, Dec. 16, 2005

Nine months will pass before the Democrats pick their nominee for governor, and supporters for Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley have already scoured Montgomery County looking for support.

Leaders have been selected in seven of the county’s eight legislative districts. One hundred-fifty diehards have been signed on, supplemented by about 300 reinforcements who will be expected when the election — and the temperature — heats up in the spring, campaign manager Jonathan A. Epstein said.

In years past, such high-level organization early in a gubernatorial campaign would have been highly unusual, but the accelerated campaign season is a political fact of life, observers said.

Matthew A. Crenson, a Johns Hopkins University professor, said the election cycle started early in part because of the March announcement that U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D) was stepping down, ‘‘unleashing the political ambitions” of the state’s assortment of elected leaders.

Plus, Democrats have not tried to unseat a sitting Republican governor in ages.

‘‘They know how hard it is to beat an incumbent. They have to work harder earlier,” said Gail Ewing, who teaches political science at Montgomery College and was once a Montgomery County councilwoman.

Organizing early can have a downside.

‘‘If you build up the crescendo too early, that can be a threat to any campaign,” Ewing said.

Although Montgomery County is the home of O’Malley’s rival, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, it is also the largest county in Maryland and a key battleground for the hearts and minds of Democrats. And those Democrats want to do something, almost anything, for a candidate.

‘‘I think there’s a lot of demand, pent up frustration from the last presidential election,” said Nathan Brown, O’Malley’s organizer in legislative District 16, which includes Bethesda. ‘‘There’s a lot of energy among voters. This is an election a lot of people care about, maybe more than most.”

For the past couple of months, O’Malley’s people have been engaged in literature drops, leaving brochures in targeted neighborhoods. Soon, the campaign will begin naming precinct captains, and in the spring the volunteers will be deployed to canvass homes for one-on-one contact between the campaign and the voters, said Patty Larson, the O’Malley campaign’s county coordinator.

Along the way, the campaign has picked up volunteers in part by making contact with people who have reached out to them, Brown said. He combs through e-mails looking for people who want to become involved.

The campaign is trying to be less reliant on the party structure, and the cadre of 50 or 100 Democrats who regularly attend party functions, he said.

Some of O’Malley’s support comes from people who oppose Duncan, Larson said. Some of the O’Malley faithful question Montgomery’s development and the developer money that supported Duncan’s county executive campaigns.

‘‘There’s a negative against Duncan and there’s a big draw for Martin O’Malley,” Larson said. ‘‘No one would leave Doug Duncan and go to any old candidate.”