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Malden City Councilor Ryan O’Malley is asking voters across the 5th Middlesex state Senate district to send him to Beacon Hill on a platform built around education funding reform, government accountability and the stewardship of shared public resources.
O’Malley, who has served roughly a decade on the Malden City Council representing Ward 4, is seeking a seat that reaches well beyond his home city into Winchester, Melrose, Reading, Stoneham and Wakefield. His candidacy will test whether a political identity rooted in one gateway city can translate to communities he has not previously represented.
In a recent interview, O’Malley framed his decision to run as a response to the political moment.
“Anyone who can get involved should get involved,” he said.
A graduate of Malden High School and the College of Holy Cross, where he studied classics, O’Malley has described himself as a product of the Malden Public Schools and a former Title I reading student. He is now an attorney.
O’Malley’s first official role in public service, he said, was as a seasonal park ranger with the state Department of Conservation and Recreation — a job he cites when talking about the parks, rivers and reservations his future district shares.
“When people hear my name, I hope that they understand it’s about reform and renewal of our public assets, whether it’s our parks or our beaches or our public library,” he said.
O’Malley’s Ward 4 district includes Malden’s downtown, commercial corridors and two Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority stations, a geography that has shaped a council portfolio ranging across housing and zoning, public records compliance, infrastructure and labor. He was re-elected last year.
Campaign message
O’Malley has identified the Chapter 70 formula, the state’s foundation budget for public school aid, as his top legislative priority.
“Our education funding formula is just completely broken,” he said.
He credited state Sen. Jason Lewis, the retiring incumbent whose seat he is seeking, with helping pass the Student Opportunity Act, but said those reforms, together with the Fair Share Amendment, sit atop a flawed underlying structure.
“When you take these changes that are good on paper but apply them to a broken foundation formula, they actually can exacerbate inequities,” he said.
He pointed to out-of-district transportation costs for students with specialized needs, which are not counted toward a municipality’s net school spending under the current formula, as one example of what he called a low-hanging target for reform.
Transparency is his second pillar. O’Malley has said he supports state Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s push to audit the Legislature and to extend the state Open Meeting and public records laws to lawmakers.
“We don’t separate powers in order to make each power completely unaccountable,” he said. “The reason why we separate powers is for there to be checks and balances.”
The library dispute
O’Malley’s accountability message intersects with the most scrutinized episode of his council career.
In May 2025, O’Malley filed a complaint in Middlesex Superior Court, in his capacity as council president, against the trustees of the Malden Public Library and the library’s director.
The suit rested on Chapter 146 of the Acts of 1885, which chartered the library and names the city council president as an ex officio member of its board of trustees.
According to the complaint, the trustees adopted a policy denying ex officio members the rights of other trustees, including voting, committee service and access to records. At a January meeting, the board’s president, John Tramondozzi, told O’Malley, “You are not a real trustee. You are ex officio only,” according to the filing.
The Malden City Council voted 10-0, with one recusal, on June 3, 2025 to withdraw the suit and restrict city resources for it. Later that month, the council voted 7-3 to remove O’Malley as its president.
An August 2025 memorandum filed in the same case disputed the legality of his removal, arguing that council rules are silent on removing officers and that Robert’s Rules of Order require cause, notice and a formal trial. The case was dismissed with prejudice in February 2026.
Asked what the experience taught him, O’Malley framed it as a lesson about principle rather than procedure.
“Leading with integrity can come with great personal and professional costs,” he said. “Being able to sleep well at night and to live with integrity is absolutely worth taking a loss from time to time.”
Beyond Malden
For voters in the rest of the district, a practical question is how much of O’Malley’s council-level work translates to communities whose tax bases, housing stock and school demographics differ from Malden’s.
“Most of these issues do not respect town borders or city borders,” he said, of housing, climate and municipal finance.
On development, O’Malley said his thinking has evolved. He described a tradeoff familiar across the district between attracting new growth and operating under Proposition 2 1/2, the state law capping local property tax levies.
“People think they can milk developers and reduce the scope of their projects,” he said, “but the best way to get really high-quality community benefits is for proponents to be able to make the money on their projects.”
He said he remains a supporter of historic preservation and of inclusionary zoning, which he cosponsored in Malden, but sees financial viability for private developers as a precondition for public parks, streetscape work and the restoration of historic buildings.
A progressive willing to dissent
O’Malley described himself as a progressive Democrat who is willing to challenge his own party’s leadership when he believes it is warranted.
“I can be that, and also question and challenge Democratic leadership when they are not acting up to the standards that we expect of our elected officials,” he said.
He pointed to his early years on the Malden City Council, when he said he and one other member pushed unsuccessfully for transparency measures, as a template for how a small minority can move an institution over time.
“Sometimes losing a fight, it helps you win the war in the end,” he said.
With his name certified for the September Democratic primary ballot, O’Malley now faces the job of making that case in communities where his record is not yet known.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He runs The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
