Martin O’Malley says Wall Street would accept either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush as president — but wouldn’t be happy if the former Maryland governor won.
A day after the former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor officially launched his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination with tough anti-Wall Street rhetoric, he lumped both Clinton and Bush together in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
“What we need new leadership to accomplish is to actually rein in excesses on Wall Street,” he said, making reference to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
“And when you have somebody that’s the CEO of one of the biggest repeat-offending investment banks in the country telling his employees that he’d be fine with either Bush or Clinton, that should tell all of us something,” O’Malley said.
He made a pitch for himself that also offered a glimpse at one of his biggest challenges in taking on the universally known Clinton as a largely unknown challenger: Wealthy donors might be hard to find.
“I am not beholden to Wall Street interests,” O’Malley said. “There are not Wall Street CEOs banging down my door and trying to participate or help my campaign.”
O’Malley is a long-shot for the Democratic nomination at this point, barely registering in the polls. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is Clinton’s best-performing challenger, notching around 15% support in recent surveys.