O'Malley Watch: EPA? Vatican? Trade Press Is Buzzing

Former Gov. Martin J. O’Malley (D) is being touted for a top job at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a leading environmental publication reported Tuesday.

But two other specialty news websites this week suggested O’Malley may be under consideration to become U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

E&E News scooped Tuesday that Maryland’s two U.S. senators, Benjamin L. Cardin (D) and Chris Van Hollen (D), along with Virginia Sens. Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D), wrote to EPA Administrator Michael Regan last month suggesting that O’Malley be hired as an adviser to lead the agency’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts.

“The senators expressed their enthusiasm for this appointment, his skills bringing stakeholders together, and how Governor O’Malley will bring ‘credibility and stature to federal efforts on the Chesapeake Bay that few, if any, other candidates could bring to this great work,'” Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky told E&E News. O’Malley did not immediately respond to the news website’s queries.

Meanwhile, America, a Jesuit magazine, on Monday listed O’Malley among eight possible candidates to become U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under President Biden, the second Catholic to serve as president. Another news website, Irish Central, did its own take on the Vatican vacancy, citing the America article to list O’Malley.

During the Trump administration, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican was Callista Gingrich, wife of former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

The EPA gig sounds consequential and important. But a posting in Rome? To quote the early Italian Renaissance scholar Francesco Petrarca, “A fool is one who admires other cities without visiting Rome.”

https://www.marylandmatters.org/blog/omalley-watch-epa-vatican-trade-press-is-buzzing/?

'to lead the agency’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts.'