First, there's the name - O'Malley. Then there's the Celtic rock band, the affinity for Guinness beer and the rants about British aggression against Baltimore and Ireland.
Mayor Martin O'Malley has long worn his ethnic pride on his sleeve (when he wears sleeves) and, unlike the other candidates for governor of Maryland, O'Malley has turned his paternal heritage into an integral part of his public persona.
Now, as he runs for governor in a year when competition for in-state contributions will be tight, O'Malley is tapping out-of-state Irish ties for money. And the strategy is paying off, as Irish-Americans from Boston to Washington are donating tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
"We're interested in him for his Irishness," said Stella O'Leary, chairwoman of Irish American Democrats, a Washington political action committee that has given O'Malley $3,070 since 1999 and plans to give him $5,000 more this year.
O'Leary joined about 60 others to raise nearly $60,000 for O'Malley at a Dec. 15 fundraiser at the Georgetown home of Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, President Bill Clinton's ambassador to Portugal.
O'Malley's standing with Irish-American political players like Bagley stems mainly from Clinton's inclusion, when president, of the mayor in a delegation to Northern Ireland in December 2000.
Bagley met O'Malley on that trip and recalls that he displayed an impressive grasp of Northern Ireland. The mayor gleaned much of his expertise writing position papers on the issue as a 20-year-old campaign aide in 1988 for then-Sen. Gary Hart's presidential campaign.
Bagley said O'Malley also displayed his knowledge of Irish music by entertaining the delegation with his guitar and Gaelic songs, a talent he tapped at the December fundraiser.
"I think there is a large network of Irish-Americans," Bagley said. She said O'Malley's wife, Katie Curran O'Malley, and his four children only add to his appeal among Irish Catholics.
Matthew Crenson, chairman of the political science department at the Johns Hopkins University, said it is not surprising that Irish-Americans from outside Maryland are donating money.
"Their families struggled to climb up the ladder to become middle-class, and now they're reaching back to recover a sense of ethnic identity that their parents were trying to get away from," Crenson said. "O'Malley's a perfect object on which to project their ethnic longings."
