Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley introduces US President Barack Obama at Prince Georges Community College on September 26, 2013 in Largo, Maryland. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

WASHINGTON (CBS DC/AP) — Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley says he’s not worried about any presumption that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

O’Malley says “every year, there is the inevitable front-runner.” He says he’ll decide this spring whether to run and that he expects “a robust conversation” within the party.

Speaking Thursday on MSNBC, O’Malley refused to be drawn into a substantive discussion of Clinton’s email controversy. He says that even if there were a uniform email policy across all levels of government, “none of that would make a hill of difference” to people struggling to pay their bills.

O’Malley says the email question is “not the issue that’s going to restore our economy…People don’t care so much about email policies.”

O’Malley declined to make direct criticism of Clinton, but did tout his own record as the mayor of Baltimore and that he would only enter a race he’s intending to win. But numbers show he has a long way to go with Democratic voters.

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According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of Democratic voters, two-thirds (67 percent) “don’t know [O’Malley’s] name,” 20 percent “can’t see themselves supporting” him and 11 percent said they would put their support behind the former Maryland governor.

Eighty-six percent of Democrats backed Hillary Clinton.

Asked how to restore the middle class and curb increasing income inequality, O’Malley suggested the reinstatement of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act to “prevent banks from gambling with our money and wrecking our economy and running roughshod” over the backs of American workers. He said many Democrats are in favor of “Dodd-Frank light” and “don’t want to offend Wall Street.”

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“I would be running not only to win but to govern well, to make the case to the people of our country that there are better choices we can make together that will make wages go up and will make college affordable again.”

“We don’t have any announced candidates yet,” added O’Malley. “But I’ve never run a bad race and I’ve never gone all out when I’ve gone all in.”

O’Malley also jokingly explained where Matt Drudge [of the Drudge Report] is “getting all these photographs of you in tight t-shirts playing the guitar.”

“I’ve been playing in a band since I was in high school. Unfortunately, Matt is finding older pictures.”

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