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O'Say Can You See PAC
O'Say Can You See PAC
"Belief" +
3:33 video from Nov. 16, 2013.
Female Police/EMS Dispatcher:
...I
copy,
shots fired on Mission just south of the off-ramp of the 15.
[Portentious Music]
Male Announcer:
It's hard to know where dreams end, but we know where this one
began. Baltimore in the late 1990s. For many in the city
back then a cauldron of crime, drugs and profound despair.
So one city councilman ran for mayor by walking its mean
streets. Maybe it was right here at the intersection of Park
Heights and Belvedere where the intersection between what was and what
could be took hold.
Assaulted by batteries and bottles hurled by drug dealers angered at
having their business interrupted, Mayor O'Malley formulated an assault
on hopelessness. He didn't make a campaign promise to make the
city safer, he made a pledge and he kept it.
[Music up tempo]
Mayor
O'Malley
implements
a
data-driven
initiative
called
CitiStat,
because you need to konw where the problem is before you can fix it,
and things that get measured...are things that get done.
After two terms, crime was driven down—the greatest 10-year
reduction in any major U.S. city. Drug overdoese were driven
down, racial tension was down, and for most families in the city things
were finally looking up.
And this belief began formulating inside Mayor O'Malley, if it was
possible to turn things around in Maryland's most troubled city, why
not Maryland itself, a state that had a $1.7 billion structural deficit
and some severly underperforming schools. If CitiStat helped
O'Malley change a city, couldn't StateStat help change a state?
Because each statistic told a story, about a child needing a better
education, a new father needing a job, a state worker needing pension
security, and a community needing neighborhood security.
And in 2007 Mayor O'Malley became Governor O'Malley and things that
were measured did get done and the things that were done got measured.
Maryland became number one in education five years in a row, number
one in holding down the cost of college tuition, number one in
innovation and entrepreneurship, number one in research and
development, number one in median family income, with a certain public
official named number one in the nation.
And as StateStat was transforming a state, BayStat was transforming
the Chesapeake Bay, halting decades of decline from pollution, sewage
and runoff, and making it a healthier place for blue crabs, oysters and
the numerous fishermen, restaurants and people that depend on
them.
And because O'Malley believes in the dignity of every individual, he
transformed a few other things, allowing two people who happen to be
the same sex to join in the same union everyone else can, and giving
new Americans a chance to dream the same dreams as every American by
giving them the opportunity for a college education.
And while he was cutting statewide pollution, crime and illegal
guns, he was cutting the cost of statewide government. Because
sometime you need to prune in the present to foster growth in the
future.
Way back when, Martin O'Malley forged a belief while walking the
streets of Baltimore, and a belief that changed a city, changed a
state,
and changed more than a few lives along the way.
Notes: This video introduced Gov. O'Malley before his speech at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Expo Center at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester on the evening of Nov. 16, 2013.