Mayor Martin O Malley

Mayor Martin O'Malley spoke at City Hall with Richard C. Gross, the editor of The Sun's Opinion * Commentary page. What was the biggest surprise of the mayor's office? Every day is a surprise. The biggest surprise was what it is to manage one's time. And the former mayor warned me about that ... You could spend 16 hours a day going through events and being accessible or you could spend 16 to 20 hours a day working on government and managing all of the various aspects of government ... What I've tried to do is to strike a balance between those two ... You have to also be accessible and be able to hear what people's concerns are. But there is a point at which some days you feel like the Oriole bird -- like you are going to a lot of events and waving and shooting hot dogs into the stand when you should be fixing things involving the police department.

Compared with her predecessor, Mayor Sheila Dixon is a giant when it comes to fighting crime ("January killings fewest since '78," Feb. 2). For seven years, Mayor Martin O'Malley blustered, name-called, wasted millions on police overtime pay, futilely arrested thousands of innocent people for petty misdemeanants, alienated the citizenry, prosecutors and many police officers and stubbornly refused to consider more rational approaches that were working to...

A century later almost to the moment, Mayor Martin O'Malley, Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr. and other city fire officials commemorated yesterday the day a fearsome blaze began burning down vast swaths of downtown Baltimore. The outdoor centennial ceremony on Hopkins Place marked the time - 10:48 a.m. - that the fire began Feb. 7, 1904, by re-enacting telegraph messages sent to signal boxes in the city. The signals calling for all firefighters to report for duty were translated into English for those not versed in Morse code.

Del. Jill P. Carter said yesterday she plans to enter next year's race for mayor of Baltimore and that she expects to formally file for the office as soon as next month, making her the fifth candidate to jump into the crowded field. Carter, 43, has represented the 41st District in Northwest Baltimore since 2003 and has become increasingly critical of the city's police practices under Mayor Martin O'Malley, who will become governor next month. "At this point, I don't see any evidence that there is any other potential candidate that would bring the needed change and fresh perspective and independence to that office," Carter said yesterday.

A NEW POLITICAL term offers an opportunity to look ahead -- and glance backward. That's what Mayor Martin O'Malley did, in broad strokes, in his inaugural speech for a second term Tuesday. And that's what the mayor, accompanied by CitiStat director Matthew D. Gallagher, did over lunch last week at a table dubbed "O'Malley's Corner" at the James Joyce Restaurant & Pub. The springboard for the discussion was a PowerPoint presentation developed by Gallagher that looks at the progress the city made during the mayor's first term in meeting the recommendations developed by several local business groups before O'Malley took office in 1999.

Mayor Martin O'Malley stood in the CitiStat room in City Hall, lobbing questions at six neighborhood liaisons recently enlisted to act as his eyes and ears on Baltimore's residential streets. At the evening drill late last month, O'Malley heard from a gathering of about 100 community leaders about a litany of problems: Leakin Park on the west side was looking worse; the 2500 block of McHenry St. was pitch dark at night because of broken street lamps; tennis shoes were left hanging over telephone lines.

Surrounded by portraits of past city solicitors gazing down at him from the walls of his Victorian-style office in City Hall - many of them white men in handlebar mustaches and bushy beards - Thurman W. Zollicoffer Jr. pointed at the pictures of the city's first black solicitors. "Before I took office, I sat down with these two gentlemen to find out what the job was like," Zollicoffer, the city's top lawyer since 1999, said of George L. Russell and Benjamin Brown, who held the job back-to-back from 1968 to 1987.

SELLING THE NAMING rights to Oriole Park at Camden Yards doesn't feel right in his gut, Mayor Martin O'Malley said last week. The mayor's gut also would have suffered recently at Stanford University in California and the University of Maryland, College Park. Stanford's athletic department proudly announced a deal with a New Jersey company that places virtual advertisements in the televised broadcasts of sports events. The technology, widely used in the broadcasts of major-league baseball, allows TV viewers, but not fans in attendance, to see computer-generated corporate logos.

WHEN MAYOR Martin O'Malley outlined a vision this month for Baltimore in 2010 in which "our Hispanic/Latino population rivals that of Washington, D.C.," the Rev. Angel Nunez had a one-word reaction. "Yes!" Nunez said in a stage whisper. Nunez, who was on hand to give the benediction at O'Malley's State of the City address, is the pastor of the Bilingual Christian Church, or Iglesia Cristiana Bilingue, in Highlandtown. The story of Nunez's congregation reflects the kind of growth -- and optimism -- that the mayor hopes to build on in increasing the number of Hispanics in the city.

`Right now, it is more dangerous to be a child in the city of Baltimore than it is to be a police officer in the city of Baltimore." -- Mayor Martin O'Malley at a City Hall news conference Friday.

Buoyed by a national tide against Republicans, Mayor Martin O'Malley declared victory in the governor's race last night, appearing to have prevailed in his long and difficult campaign against a popular incumbent. Despite a poor showing in the crucial Baltimore suburbs, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said he will not concede until thousands of absentee ballots are counted. With more than four-fifths of the state's precincts reporting, Ehrlich, Maryland's first Republican governor in a generation, faced a large deficit that he could overcome only by capturing the vast majority of absentee votes.

As he kicked off a bus tour that is expected to carry him to all corners of the state, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley said he is confident in his lead over Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and said he will not change his strategy despite a poll in The Sun that indicated he is losing ground in key counties. As the Democrat traveled through Western Maryland yesterday - stopping off in Frederick and Hagerstown - he could not escape questions about the poll, which found that he is in a virtual dead heat with Ehrlich less than a week before the Nov. 7 general election.

The Maryland governor's race is a virtual tie less than a week before Election Day, as Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s relentless attacks on Mayor Martin O'Malley's record on crime and schools have eroded the Democrat's support in the Baltimore suburbs, a new poll for The Sun shows. O'Malley, who led by 6 percentage points in The Sun's September poll, has seen his advantage drop to just 1 point, well within the survey's margin of error. Ehrlich, who has spent months trying to convince voters that O'Malley's record as mayor makes him unqualified to lead the state, appears to be consolidating the base of support that in 2002 made him Maryland's first Republican governor in a generation.

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley refused yesterday to offer any details about his 1987 drunken-driving charge and acquittal, and said he did not remember if he disclosed the incident on his application to become a lawyer. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. denied that Republicans had anything to do with the 19-year-old incident being revealed two weeks before the Nov. 7 election against O'Malley. "I'm surprised he didn't claim it was George Bush," Ehrlich said, dismissing the incident as an issue in the race.

After two gubernatorial debates, we know more about the two leading candidates, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Mayor Martin O'Malley. We might know even more had the two men spent less time glaring and sniping at each other. Politics 101 suggests that Mr. O'Malley won - by showing up. But maybe both were winners by this measure. Mr. O'Malley is less well-known statewide than the governor. And it was free media for a campaign with less money for TV. At the same time, Mr. Ehrlich has been behind in the polls in what looks like a Democratic year.

WHAT: A debate between Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee. The event was taped Saturday afternoon at the WJZ studio. WHEN: 7 p.m.. WHERE: WJZ-TV and Maryland Public Television. TOPICS: Education, crime, taxes and utility rates, transportation policy, the environment and the candidates' visions of leadership.

WHAT: A debate between Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee. The event was taped Saturday afternoon at the WJZ studio. WHEN: 7 p.m.. WHERE: WJZ-TV and Maryland Public Television. TOPICS: Education, crime, taxes and utility rates, transportation policy, the environment and the candidates' visions of leadership.

Back in January, Mayor Martin O'Malley and police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm went to the War Memorial Building for a public meeting on crime and policing that turned raucous and defiant. Comments from the crowd put O'Malley and Hamm squarely between the rock and a hard place: Some citizens complained that they've been abused by aggressive police tactics, while others said the city needs to do more to fight crime. Since Baltimoreans eager to see crime reduction made him mayor in 1999, O'Malley has been hearing complaints that his aggressive zero-tolerance police strategies, influenced by Rudy Giuliani's tenure as mayor of New York City, have led to thousands of bad arrests and stop-and-frisks that jailed or intimidated law-abiding citizens.

Hours after his quest for U.S. Senate ended in a narrow defeat in Tuesday's Democratic primary, Kweisi Mfume was faced with a simple question: What next? One of the first possibilities to surface was Baltimore mayor. Mfume, who launched his public career 27 years ago at City Hall, showed Tuesday that he remains influential in Baltimore, winning his hometown by nearly the same margin that Mayor Martin O'Malley posted in his 2003 Democratic primary victory. If O'Malley succeeds in unseating Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in November, City Council President Sheila Dixon will automatically become mayor until the city's 2007 elections.