Martin O’Malley. (file photo)
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley is on a six-stop “town hall” tour of Iowa early this week.
O’Malley has spent far more time campaigning here than his rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, but that effort is not showing in the polls.
“I need your help and I know that when a guy stands in front of you and he says he’s got five percent national name recognition, he’s running for president and it’s going really well, that there’s a fine line between illusion and imagination,” O’Malley told a crowd in Ames on Sunday.
O’Malley has been arguing his record as the two-term governor of Maryland shows he’s been out ahead of his rivals on a host of progressive issues, from “gun safety” legislation to support of same-sex marriage.
“I am not delusional about this,” O’Malley said. “I know here in Iowa, for all of the truth that ‘big money’ and the bullies of Wall Street are trying to tell us what the outcome of our election should be, each of you matters. And I know that the polls in November never look anything like what the people of Iowa decide come February.”
O’Malley has so far today held events in Waverly, New Hampton and Decorah. He’ll stop in Waukon later this afternoon and in Elkader this evening.
“Look, we offer. You decide,” O’Malley says. “It’s democracy.”
O’Malley issued a written statement today in response to Republican governors refusing to accept Syrian refugees. O’Malley said the best way to respond to the terrorist attacks in Paris is to “be a moral leader of nations” and defeat the so-called Islamic State. O’Malley said the Republican governors are “scapegoating an entire religious community” and engaging in the kind of “persecution” that “the terrorists want.”
O’Malley will campaign in Dubuque Tuesday morning.