About Us
Amigos de Martin O’Malley
Amigos O’Malley was born in 1999 when leaders of the Latino community in Baltimore City met at a local gathering place to publicly endorse then City Councilman Martin O’Malley who had only recently launched a fledgling campaign to become Mayor.
After a careful evaluation of all three candidates running in the Democratic Mayoral primary and their platforms and policies, we chose to endorse then Councilman O’Malley because his vision to transform Baltimore City called for concrete steps to restructure a bloated and unresponsive bureaucracy. Martin also called on all the city’s residents to play a greater role in civic governance, for Latinos, blacks and whites were all in the same boat that was taking on water.
At the time, almost no one gave O’Malley a chance to become mayor of a city that was 70 percent African-American. However, Latinos, African-American and whites judged Martin not “by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.” Martin went on to defeat his opponents in the primary and general elections.
Immediately, after being elected Mayor, O’Malley appointed Latinos to critical positions in his transition committees and Latinos were subsequently appointed and hired to work on all levels of city government. A city that witnessed an increase in crime, the flight of its residents to the suburbs a decline of its tax base and increase in its unemployment rate, made a dramatic turn around thanks to Mayor O’Malley’s revolutionary CitiStat program.1 During O’Malley’s tenure, the number of Latino contractors doing business with the city tripled.
When O’Malley announced that he would run for governor, we again rallied to his support. However, this time we came together on a statewide basis, forming political support committees in Montgomery, Prince Georges and Baltimore, Howard County and Baltimore City. As a statewide organization, we raised $90,000 for the O’Malley/Brown Campaign and volunteered countless hours in registering Latino voters, formulating campaign policy and engaging in “get out the vote (GOTV) during the elections. Again at the end of the election, the Latino community was rewarded by appointments to all levels of state government, including appointment to major cabinet positions and perhaps more importantly open access to the governor himself.
Please join us today in helping to re-elect Governor Martin and continue to work with others to transform the political and economic landscape of Maryland.