O’Malley sick of Clinton ’email drama’

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Wednesday say he is a “little sick of the email drama” surrounding Hillary Clinton.

O’Malley is Clinton’s most likely challenger in a 2016 primary, but he declined to pile on the former secretary of State’s use of a private email address while at the State Department.

“I’m not [an] expert on federal requirements or state requirements, and I’m frankly a little sick of the email drama,” he said during a talk at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“But in our state, whether you used a personal email or a public email or a carrier pigeon, it was all a public record subject to disclosure in response to any [Freedom of Information Act request],” he added.

O’Malley, who again expressed serious interest in a White House run, said his administration retained records in compliance with the law. He noted that Maryland does not, however, have an archiving requirement.

He avoided a question about whether he was satisfied with Clinton’s handling of the issue, noting he did not watch her news conference Tuesday because, “I was working.”

“I didn’t watch the press conference yesterday, so I don’t know,” he said.

The former governor was at Brookings to talk about his administrations’ use of open data when he served as governor of Maryland and previously as mayor of Baltimore.

“You see the old ways of governing, bureaucracy, hierarchy, these things are fading away and a new way of governing is emerging. And it also calls for a new way of leadership at every level,” he said in his speech.

O’Malley touted a system developed in 2007 called StateStat that uses open data to track the performance of the Maryland government. The program was modeled on a city-based program that was implemented in Baltimore when he was mayor in 1999.

Both were based on New York City police initiative that tracked where and when crime took place. O’Malley specifically cited crime reduction in his state during his tenure, as well as decreases in infant mortality rates and reducing preventable hospitalizations.

“Splitting the difference between the way things have always done and some extremist view of the way things might be is not going to move us forward. We have to be clear about our principles as a people,” he said in response to a question about the political tactic of triangulation.

The former Maryland governor, and potential 2016 candidate, has embraced a number of tech issues over the last year, at one point calling Wi-Fi a human right and also publicly supporting the FCC’s new rules on net neutrality.

When faced with skepticism about whether data-driven government will fire up the Democratic base in a presidential race, he said the public is interested in effective governing and a person with executive experience. He will also be giving a number of talks over the next few months, including a speech about improving the economy.

He has previously said he will make a decision on a presidential run in the spring.

–This report was updated at 11:53 a.m.