O'Malley earns endorsement of the Des Moines County Democratic Party's chairwoman at town hall.
'After months of neutrality and listening to the candidates speak more times than she could count, Des Moines County Democratic Party Chairwoman Sandy Dockendorff endorsed Martin O’Malley Sunday afternoon in Burlington.
Dockendorff introduced the former Maryland governor to a crowd of about 50 people at IBEW Local 13 Hall who gave him a standing ovation as the presidential hopeful began his remarks.
“I see him as being the only one with a real chance of starting the process of healing this country,” Dockendorff said after the town hall meeting. “I think there’s a lot of divisiveness out there — within our own party, within the two-party system and the country as a whole. A lot of issues are very divisive, but I see him as the kind of person who sits down and looks at a problem and tries to find solutions.”
O’Malley began his remarks by reminding the crowd he was not part of the Washington elite or the gridlock dividing the U.S. Congress. Rather, he said, he brings to the race more than a decade of executive experience between his time as governor of Maryland and Baltimore’s mayor.
“My experience is not the experience of the other two candidates in this race,” he said. “My background is the background of an executive — a mayor and a governor bringing people together, getting things done.”
America’s economy is not based on money, O’Malley said, it thrives on people.
“Great nations don’t build up generational opportunity and generational wealth by locking cash in a closet. We invest in the things, our common good that we share, so that it pays dividends over the generations.”
O’Malley spoke for 15 minutes, highlighting key points from his 15 “strategic goals,” including the opportunity for debt-free collage for all Americans, ending childhood hunger in the next four years and moving the nation to a clean energy electric grid by 2050.
“Another great challenge of our time is the challenge of climate change,” he said. “I believe the greatest business opportunity to come to the United States of America in over 100 years.”
Following his stump speech, O’Malley spent 30 minutes answering questions from an audience eager to differentiate the governor from the two leading candidates in his party, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A woman in the audience told O’Malley she knows several Democrats supporting Clinton based on her foreign policy experience. How, she wondered, would O’Malley better protect Americans at home and abroad?
“Governors have led us to victory in two world wars, and they’ve done it by doing what America does best, and that is to work in alliance and coalitions with other nations on this Earth in times of conflict,” he said. “Governors also develop an understanding that everyday there are different threats, and they always adapt. And I believe that there is no area of American policy in greater need of this thinking than America’s foreign policy. And that’s what I can bring to this work.”
Tim Schad of St. Louis currently living in Burlington and employed as an electrician at the fertilizer plant in Wever, said he supported O’Malley because of his “realistic” vision for the country and commitment to working with Congress.
“I think he’s very realistic and honest about what he can do and what he wants to do,” Schad said. “The one that really stood out to me was when he first addressed cooperating with the government, as far as Congress, and getting together to work together. I think that’s the one thing a lot of Americans are concerned about, is the divisiveness in the country.”'
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