O'Malley Launches Campaign in Fells Point

Governor Martin O'Malley launched his re-election campaign just before noon today at the Bond Street Wharf. Before the event began, I ran into City Councilman Bill Henry—always up for a chat—who joked that he was looking up at the Wharf building's windows for one or two lanterns, to see if the Governor would be arriving by land or by sea. After introductions by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Senator Barbara Mikulski, and Lt. Governor Anthony Brown, O'Malley arrived by land (above, left) with his wife and kids, and offered a stump speech citing his administration's achievements on education, crime, and the economy, all-too-frequently punctuated with his new campaign slogan, "Moving Maryland Forward." The slogan is an inherent jibe at his returning Republican challenger Bob Ehrlich, as O'Malley made clear when he said, "Some run for public office to take Maryland back, I run for office to move Maryland forward." There were a few protestors at the event. Three held up signs urging the Governor to save Maryland's film industry (above, right). "When Governor O'Malley came into office, Maryland offered $6 million dollars [a year] in tax incentive [for the film industry]. We were sorta holding our own," says Michael Davis, a set-builder based in Highlandtown. "Now, it's down to $1 million." As a result, he says, filmmakers that once flocked to Maryland are going elsewhere. Davis worked four days in Maryland in all of 2009 (on David Fincher's Social Network, about the founder of Facebook, which briefly filmed on Johns Hopkins' campus). "If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have had a day of work in Maryland for the first time since 1986," he says. See our story on the state of the Maryland film industry, "Flicked Off," in the current May issue of Baltimore. And on the next dock, there was a lone protestor referring to the Governor as "Owe Malley," lampooning him for "the largest tax increase in history." I could be wrong, but I would bet that O'Malley is likely to see more of this kind of protestor on the campaign trail than film industry advocates.