Jason Noble

jnoble2@dmreg.com

Former Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley said he’ll do anything to help elect Hillary Clinton president, but has no “hopes or desires or expectations” to serve in her administration should she win in November.

“I’m going to do everything I can everywhere I can,” O’Malley said Thursday evening in Des Moines. “Anything she asks of me, I will do.”

But when asked if he has any aspirations for a Clinton administration in January, O’Malley deflected.

“That’s not why I’m doing this,” O’Malley said. “I do know how important this election is, and I’m going to put all my energies into making sure we don’t careen over the fascist cliff as a nation. But I don’t really entertain any hopes or desires or expectations of doing anything in a Clinton administration.”

The former Maryland governor placed a distant third in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses last February, and ended his campaign immediately afterward. He endorsed Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, earlier this month after the final primary contest in Washington, D.C.

His visit to the Iowa Democratic Party’s Des Moines headquarters on Thursday marked his first trip to the state since the caucuses. He was to meet supporters in Beaverdale later Thursday and visit another campaign office on Friday en route to a speaking engagement in South Dakota.

In a short and off-the-cuff appearance, O’Malley hugged supporters, showed off photos from his daughter’s wedding on his iPad and stopped mid-sentence while taking questions from reporters to note now “rusty” he was a meeting the media.

But in his prepared remarks, O’Malley was on-message with the Clinton campaign, echoing the candidate’s talking points, emphasizing the significance of the upcoming election and several times referring to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a “fascist.”

“This year the difference — the stark difference — between our candidate and the fascist takeover of the Republican Party couldn’t be more clear,” he said.

In a statement, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Lindsay Jancek dismissed O’Malley as a “failed” candidate.

“If the best surrogate Hillary Clinton can find is the former mayor of Baltimore, who barely surpassed half a percent in the Iowa Caucuses, then her campaign is more like her failed policies: a train wreck of epic proportions,” Jancek said.