As Governor Steers Maryland to the Left, Talk Turns to 2016

But the opponents had no chance, as allies of the governor passed sweeping gun restrictions, the final victory in a series of triumphs that capped one of the most successful 2013 legislative seasons of any governor in the country.

Besides gun control legislation, Mr. O’Malley coaxed a liberal wish list from the General Assembly session that ended Monday: repeal of the death penalty, a $1.7 billion subsidy for offshore wind turbines and a bump in the gasoline tax to pay for mass transit and roads.

Republicans fumed that Mr. O’Malley had steered well to the left of Maryland residents’ concerns, and denounced his agenda as a punch list for a 2016 Democratic presidential primary campaign. Mr. O’Malley — largely unknown outside Maryland, though he is mentioned in presidential speculations alongside Govs. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado — said the bills were smart policy and in step with state residents.

“I don’t think the relevant question for Maryland families is whether we’re moving left or right; it’s whether we’re moving forward or back,” he said in an interview. To voters under 35, who represent a generational shift in American politics, especially on social issues, “these are pretty mainstream things,” he added.

In a relaxed mood a few days before the adjournment of the General Assembly, Mr. O’Malley, 50, offered a tour of the fine art in his office. He pointed out a Rembrandt Peale portrait of George Washington, whose distant eyes are the most arresting feature.

“They have the look of a man who knows how the conversation is going to end before it begins,” Mr. O’Malley said.

It was a comment that could apply as well to Mr. O’Malley, who is in his next-to-last year as a governor facing term limits. That he is looking ahead to a presidential campaign “is the worst-kept secret in Annapolis,” said Anthony J. O’Donnell, the Republican minority leader in the House of Delegates. Mr. O’Donnell added that the governor was “planting his flag as far to the left as possible” with left-leaning Democratic primary voters in mind.

Mr. O’Malley would not confirm any such thing. He said he was flattered that people noticed “the tough things we’ve accomplished here.”

“I haven’t put a whole lot of brain power or effort or time into 2016,” he said.

His successes come on top of others a year ago, when lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled legislature approved same-sex marriage and in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants. After opponents forced both measures onto the state ballot in November, Mr. O’Malley campaigned hard for them, and voters upheld the changes — victories that provided political capital that allowed the governor to pass his even more ambitious agenda this year.

But with lawmakers in Annapolis increasingly on the ideological wings of each party, it is an open question whether Mr. O’Malley has left Maryland residents behind. Protests against his gun restrictions, including an assault weapons ban and fingerprinting for handgun buyers, were the largest and most inflamed in memory. In a Washington Post poll last month, a plurality of Maryland residents, 48 percent to 41 percent, said the state was on the wrong track.

A former mayor of Baltimore, who despised the city’s dark portrayal in the television show “The Wire,” Mr. O’Malley is not a traditional liberal. His arguments to abolish the death penalty were practical, not moralizing, in keeping with his reputation for shaping policy by analyzing data. He argued that capital punishment failed as a deterrent and did not reduce violent crime.

Similarly, his defense of same-sex marriage and tuition breaks for illegal immigrants is an economic argument, aimed at attracting the well-educated and socially tolerant “creative class” to Maryland. “We believe that openness and inclusiveness are good for creating jobs and expanding opportunities,” he said.

Mr. O’Malley has succeeded with a fiscal policy balanced between tax increases and spending cuts, of the sort President Obama has sought with less success in talks with Congressional Republicans. He has nearly wiped out a $1.7 billion structural deficit he inherited in the Maryland budget, partly by slowing the rise of spending. He won re-election in 2010 in part by pointing out that spending went up less in his administration than under the previous governor, a Republican.

But Republicans denounce his tax increases, including on individual incomes above $100,000 — a definition of “high earner” that is lower than the $250,000 threshold Mr. Obama campaigned on during his re-election race. Critics say Maryland has chased entrepreneurs to lower-taxed Virginia.

“Since 2007, we’ve lost 40,000 jobs in this state; we’ve lost 6,500 small businesses who have closed their doors to move across the border,” said Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, the Republican minority whip in the legislature’s lower house.

Mr. O’Malley has been called a rising star in the Democratic Party since he rode on the back of garbage trucks as mayor. But he has picked his battles with care. He decided not to challenge Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the Democratic primary for governor in 2002. When she lost the general election, Mr. O’Malley had a clean shot at Annapolis four years later.

He went on to lead the Democratic Governors Association, raising his national profile as a happy partisan warrior who attacked “the dinosaur wing of the Republican Party.”

Strategists who have worked with him do not believe he will seek the presidency in 2016 if Hillary Rodham Clinton commits to the race. The governor is close to Mrs. Clinton, whom he supported in her unsuccessful 2008 primary campaign. A generation younger, he will presumably have many options when his term ends in 2014, including a run for the Senate or a cabinet position in a future Democratic administration.

Mr. O’Malley pointed out that he had begun campaigning to overturn the state’s death penalty in 2007, his first year in office, long before Republicans in the General Assembly accused him of checking boxes for a presidential race.

“These guys would be sorely pressed to say that that was some sort of appeal to the base in Keokuk, Iowa, or Manchester, N.H.,” he said.

He turned to an aide, Teddy Davis, his director of strategic communications. “They still have the death penalty in New Hampshire, don’t they?”

Mr. Davis said they did. “They had passed a repeal bill about 10 years ago. Governor Shaheen had vetoed it,” he said, referring to Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who is now one of the state’s senators.

And how did an aide to Maryland’s governor know policy details in New Hampshire, which holds the first presidential primary?

“Just learned my New Hampshire stuff,” said Mr. Davis, whom the governor recently hired to help with the next phase of his career.

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Leading Maryland and Virginia, With Stars on the Rise

Both Martin O’Malley, the Democrat who leads Maryland, and Bob McDonnell, his Republican counterpart in Virginia, are rising political stars. Each is chairman of his party’s national governors’ association, and each is a standard-bearer for his party’s presidential nominee. Each is also mentioned as a possible 2016 presidential candidate.

Some people say that much of the talk about a Maryland-Virginia face-off is overblown. As for the governors, each says that if there is in fact a rivalry, his state is winning it.

“I’m just trying to do what is right for Virginia, and I’m sure Governor O’Malley is trying to do the same, but we have different philosophies and different outcomes,” said Mr. McDonnell, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates and a former state attorney general.

Much of that difference has to do with taxes. Mr. McDonnell, elected in 2009 and limited by law to one term, takes pride in his efforts to burnish Virginia’s reputation as a low-tax, business-friendly state. Sales tax is 5 percent in Virginia and 6 percent in Maryland. Top-bracket income-tax payers pay 5.75 percent in Virginia while those in Maryland pay 9 percent. Virginia’s corporate tax rate is 6 percent and Maryland’s is 8.25 percent. Virginia’s unemployment rate is 5.9 percent, compared with 7.1 percent in Maryland — both lower than the national average.

Working with Republican majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, Mr. McDonnell has been able to balance the state’s budget without raising taxes, though critics have derided some of his solutions as gimmicks, notably some approaches to financing future state pensions. And, like other Virginia governors from both parties, he has been chided for putting off long-term investments in highways and mass transit.

Mr. O’Malley, a former Baltimore mayor, has a reputation, for better or for worse, of raising taxes — more than 20 separate increases since becoming governor in 2008. It is a legacy that a Republican opponent might find an irresistible target if Mr. O’Malley ever runs for president.

Early in his first term he called a special session in the General Assembly that resulted in $1.4 billion in increases in taxes on sales, tobacco, personal income and corporations. He also levied a temporary tax on millionaires. More recently, with the state facing a $1 billion budget deficit in 2013, he signed a tax increase on Maryland’s top earners that ensured them one of the highest income tax rates in the country.

Mr. O’Malley argues that tax rates are just one measure of a state’s standing.

“On the other side of the river, especially under Governor McDonnell, they would have you believe that it all begins and ends with tax rate,” Mr. O’Malley said. “We all strive to be competitive on that score.” He added, “But there are other things that determine whether or not your state is well-equipped and whether your children are more likely to be winners or losers in a changing economy.”

He mentioned that Maryland is first in median income, while Virginia is eighth, and that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranks Maryland first in innovation and entrepreneurship, while  Virginia again ranks eighth. He also noted that Maryland had the fourth-highest percentage of workers in “green jobs,” in 2010, compared with Virginia at 20th, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Green Goods and Services Survey released in March.

Mr. O’Malley noted that Education Week ranks his state as No. 1 in K-12 public education. He also argued that he has been more committed to investing in public education than has Mr. McDonnell. For the 2012-13 school year, Virginia’s financing for K-12 education decreased by 10 percent compared with 2008 levels, while Maryland’s investment increased 7.4 percent.

Mr. O’Malley says he has invested in human capital to urge Maryland toward “building an economy for the future that will last,” through maximizing educational attainment, developing worker skills and focusing on emerging sectors including life sciences and biotechnology.

The roles of Mr. O’Malley and Mr. McDonnell as leaders of their governors’ associations put them on a national stage as stewards of their parties’ message and approach to governance. There are now 29 states with Republican governors, 20 headed by Democrats and one with an independent. Eleven states have governors’ elections this year.

“Yeah, I want to win as many governors’ races as I can,” Mr. McDonnell said. “But not because I’m in competition with Governor O’Malley, but because I really do believe the 29 Republican governors are doing some unique things in reforming government in their states and giving new birth to federalism. Because they focus on fiscal responsibility and low taxes and limited government they are getting better results for their people.”

He added, “I say this not just about Virginia and Maryland, but I could say it about Wisconsin and Illinois or other Republican governors.”

Mr. O’Malley, of course, is not so upbeat about the impact of Republican governors.

“Some of these newly elected governors who were elected in 2010 or even 2009 promised they would restore the economy,” Mr. O’Malley said. “Instead when they got in, they governed by rolling back individual rights — rolling back women’s rights, rolling back voters’ rights, rolling back workers’ rights. The people in a lot of the states — Ohio, Florida and others — are scratching their heads and feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse for putting in people with such a narrow right-wing ideology.”

Despite their differences, Mr. O’Malley, 49, and Mr. O’Donnell, 58, are friendly on the regional level and have more in common than just their Irish-Catholic backgrounds and rising fame. They have worked together on regional issues, including the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay, public safety in the capital region and transportation issues. By most accounts, the men and their staffs have a good working relationship with each other.

Both men said they would be open to a different type of partnership: “I understand he is a pretty good guitar player,” Mr. McDonnell said of Mr. O’Malley, who plays and sings in an Irish rock band. “We ought to get together; I play the drums, although I don’t play them well.”

Mr. O’Malley sounded intrigued by the prospect.

“Does he have a practice tape or anything he can send us?” he asked. “I’d love to jam with him, it’d be fun. I’m totally open — music is nonpartisan.”

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