Martin O’Malley couldn’t let Hillary Clinton have all the controversy spotlight. Because O’Malley took most of the Governor’s Mansion furniture with him, new governor Hogan had to move his 20 year old furniture into the mansion. Perhaps he should call Annapolis Clean Carpet for an upholstery cleaning so the furniture will look like new.
O’Malley and his wife were moving out of the mansion and into a 4 bedroom home in Baltimore. They needed to furnish it and decided they liked the furnishings of the Governor’s mansion.
They decided to see if they could buy it. It went through a process and was declared junk and was sold to them for pennies on the dollar. To be more precise, what originally cost Maryland taxpayers $62,000 to buy was sold for $9,678. These 54 pieces were all purchased in the last 10 years.
It is quite likely that the furnishings were in very good shape. Unlike some tenants in inner city Baltimore who can put 10 years of wear on furniture and buildings in six months, we doubt that the furniture was abused by the tenants of the Governor’s mansion.
Governor Hogan said that he was excited to move into the Governor’s mansion after taking a tour of it after his election. Imagine his surprise when they went to move in and found it stripped bare or at least considerably more bare than when they last saw it. So he had to get his old furniture moved in from his house.
O’Malley says that he went through all the proper channels. But who was going to say no to the governor. He needed at least one person around him who wasn’t a Yes man who could have told him is was a bad idea and would look awful. Especially considering that he is running for President. He comes off as tone deaf to how things will be perceived much as Hillary has done several times over the last couple of years.
Former governor Marvin Mandel did something similar when he left office. He took almost all the furniture, all the liquor, and other supplies with him when he left the mansion. A lawsuit was required to get the items back and some were never recovered. It was filed by Attorney General Steven Sachs and took years in court.
In an ironic twist, this past January before he left the mansion, O’Malley wrote Mandel and asked for some items back that he has supposedly taken from the mansion. In his letter to Mandel, O’Malley say how he and his wife have appreciate the mansion and the contributions of past governors to the ambience of the house. Then he requests the missing items from Mandel’s time.
When Sachs was read this he cracked up laughing. Then Sachs commented that the O’Malley’s liked the mansion so much that they took a lot of things with them, including things that didn’t belong to them.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and what effect it will have on O’Malley’s presidential campaign.