>> from washington, "the mclaughlin group," the american original. for over three decades, the sharpest minds, best sources hardest talk. >> issue one, clinton vs. o'malley. >> it means raising the minimum wage, means raising the threshold for overtime pay, and it means respecting the rights of all workers to organize and bargain collectively. to make the dream come true again, we must expand social security benefits and not cut social security. and to make the dream come true, we must invest more in education, not less, which means universal pre-k to help all of our children reach their god-given potential. >> 52-year-old former governor

of maryland, martin o'malley speaking to a gathering of iowa democrats on march 20. o'malley is actively considering a run for the white house, and he's traveling the nation to make his case with democratic party bosses and primary voters. the governor's argument is unashamedly liberal. he favors a higher federal minimum wage and a major expansion of government benefits. as his populist agenda is running fans on the left. o'malley has a problem he needs to address right away. many democrats have no clue as to who he is. just watch what happens when bloomberg news asked a group of new hampshire democrats their opinion of the former governor. >> does everybody in the room know who martin o'malley is? >> don't. >> does anybody in the room know who martin o'malley? >> he's the governor. is he the connecticut governor?

>> he's the former governor of maryland. >> question, is hillary clinton's worst worry right now that o'malley might challenge her for the democratic nomination, pat buchanan? >> she has more problems than martin and he's not a serious one but he has a golden opportunity, there's no denying it, john, that hillary clinton has problems with her emails. he ought to be out there in iowa and new hampshire and around the country answering all those folks who said, who is he, and become the populist liberal, progressive candidate who runs a good positive campaign, who's solid on the issues, who does not attack hillary and build himself up as long as he can until she gets in or maybe somebody else gets in to eclipse him. so i think he's in an excellent position but as for being a serious threat to hillary rodham clinton, not now and not unless she drops a lot more in the polls than she has thus far. >> he's channeling elizabeth warren and he's trying to convey that populist rhetoric

and arouse that kind of fervor among the voters. he's not that great a messenger yet but it's early in the campaign. you can see him kind of working on his charisma, you might say. and he is kind of a cool guy. he was a good governor. he really cares about government working. he's got a band, o'malley's march. young people seem to like him. i think he has a lot going for him and he's going to spend most of his time in iowa because historically the clintons are vulnerable in iowa. you hang around iowa a long time, you get to know the people, the people get to know you. i mean, that has worked for previous candidates. that's the strategy, to do better than expected in iowa and new hampshire will then take care of itself. >> in 2008, a long shot challenger, barack obama, a freshman senator with no national experience, beat hillary clinton by running

through her left in iowa. it could happen again in 2016. do you agree? >> i think you can't rule something like that out. i think if mrs. clinton continues to have difficulties, it won't be enough she will continue to have difficulties. she will have to have a major blowup with a major scandal. democrats want her to be the nominee. a lot of democrats feel it's her time. she has the way to back it and the media perception, although it's becoming more critical, is saturated around her. but again, o'malley as the opportunity to go to make the populist case. what does he have to lose? he goes out there, presents his message. you saw the reaction in scott county there in iowa, people were excited by him. so there's an opportunity. what does he have to lose? >> do you share that view, paul? >> i agree he doesn't have anything to lose by running and i don't think hillary has anything to lose by running. she doesn't want a perfect clear field giving the sense she was given the nomination.

he endorsed hillary in 2008. they're actually quite close. if he has a problem it's that the populism doesn't really sit well with his record. this is a guy who was close to the d.l.c., the centrist wing of the democratic party, and sort of like howard dean discovered his left leaningest when he ran for president, martin o'malley's great accomplishments are on the managerial side. my magazine, "the washington monthly" called him the most skilled manager in government. he's very, very practical and skilled at the running of bureaucracies and running them very efficiently. that's not something necessarily endears him to the left or anybody else. not that he's not a liberal guy. >> let's see how devious hillary can be if she wants to be. will hillary clinton try to preempt o'malley in iowa by campaigning as a pseudo liberal? a pseudoprogressive? >> she's not a pseudoprogressive or a pseudoliberal.

over her career, she's been criticized for being too liberal. she's now considered centrist but i don't see any of the issues that o'malley is championing that she would disagree with. >> what hillary wants -- i think if i were hillary i would not only like to see o'malley in there, get bernie sanders in there. get a lot of little liberals in there spreading out that progressive vote. you're right, john, she's got to be somewhat progressive in the primaries, the income inequality is a red-hot issue. the fact that wages have not risen, everybody believes that's a problem and so she's going to have to be there. if she had o'malley in and as i say bernie in there, a good socialist in there, it would be excellent. >> remember, the democratic party is not predominantly liberal. if it's anything it's predominantly moderate. actually they're spread evenly. what hillary or any successful primary candidate has to do is

keep both -- come up with ideas that are acceptable to both camps. the clintons have always been good at that. >> clinton will have a tough time on foreign policy, i will tell you, because of the israeli situation and the real conflict inside the democratic party over netanyahu and the iran thing. i think that's going to be very big and -- it's a hard left wing inside the democratic party on that issue which she's going to have to deal with. >> yeah. but she was a senator from new york, and, you know, democrats are not suicidal. they're not going to walk away from israel and internal party stat. >> what about the iran deal? >> i think that the iran deal is something the democrats will applaud. it doesn't involve walking away from israel. it involves working -- >> let tom handle it. >> i think it's going to be interesting. bringing on the experience of the governor, as paul notes, he does have that managerial record. and i think for the democratic party,

regardless of who people decide to go for, the benefit that brings to the table of having a senator with foreign policy experience, a governor -- you would at least -- >> he wasn't all that popular. maryland, which is one of the five most democratic states in the nation, turned to a republican governor after o'malley left. so i'm not sure he's known as a huge guy inside the democratic party justifiably so and i think republicans would be delighted to see him as a nominee. >> do you think o'malley has the possibility of drying up her money? >> absolutely -- >> he'll be scratching -- >> he'll be in the couch -- he'll be in the couch looking for nickels before this is over. >> do you want to add anything? >> no. i think it's very well said. >> how about the sales of that magazine? >> doing well. >> on a scale of zero to 10, zero being the probability of escaping the event horizon of a black hole, and 10 being metaphysical certitude, what's

the likelihood of governor o'malley winning the democratic presidential nomination, zero to 10, pat buchanan? >> little less than 10, john, but it all depends what happens to hillary in the coming days. >> i give it a two. it would take a total collapse of the clinton candidacy for him to have any real shot at the nomination. >> tom? >> i think it would be about three. hillary clinton, those emails come out and she's engaged in some conspiracy with vladimir putin then maybe he has a chance but i think it's very unlikely. >> well, you hit it on the nose. it is a three. >> three. >> i give it a two just bus -- because showing up and running puts you in the race and he's a serious person who can look at his record and demeanor and say, yes, he could be president. >> ok. don't forget "the mclaughlin group" has its own website and you can watch this program earlier programs on the web, anywhere in the universe, even black holes at mclaughlin.com. could anything be easier,

mclaughlin.com, or more life enhancing. issue two, no pay ncaa. >> everything about this tournament is branded. even the famous moment where players cut down the net. >> warner ladder proud to donate to the general scholarship fund in this year's final four, warner the official ladder of the ncaa basketball championships. >> that's how hbo's john oliver recently parodied the business interests of today's national collegiate athletic association, also known as the ncaa. mr. oliver has a point. today, the ncaa's annual revenue is estimated at around $1 billion. most of this income is from tv networks that pay the ncaa for the rights to show its annual basketball tournament. but for the lavish salaries of the ncaa are attracting increasing attention.

whereas ncaa president mark emmert made $1.7 million in the 2011 calendar year, his athletes are treated quite differently. in recent years, the ncaa's unpaid athletes have been penalized for signing autographs, receiving discount services and even for eating free food. so today, a rising tide of voices is arguing that collegiate athletes must be compensated beyond their educational scholarships. here's how espn basketball analyst, jay bilas, explains the argument. >> why would we deny athletes the right to fair market value and compensation in this multibillion-dollar business when no other student is restricted from being compensated, let alone coaches and administrators? they're all getting their fair market value based upon this multibillion-dollar enterprise. and my thing is, if they're old enough to sell -- and we're

selling them like crazy -- they're old enough to be paid for it. >> others disagree. for one, barack obama, a longtime basketball fan, the president believes that paying student athletes would lead to quote-unquote bidding wars for players. yet, the president also said this to the huffington post. >> what does frustrate me is where i see coaches getting paid millions of dollars, athlete -- athletic directors getting paid millions of dollars, the ncaa making huge amounts of money and then some kid gets a tattoo or gets a free use of a car and suddenly they're banished. that's not fair. >> question, should student athletes be paid for their performances? eleanor. >> well, i'm with the president. i agree these minor infringements shouldn't be treated like serious crimes. they need to have a better

formula for that. i don't think they should get paid while in school. the theory is they get these lucrative scholarships but the problem is they don't get the worth of these scholarships. the scandal about the poor education that many of these athletes receive is really terrible. but what should happen is some sort of fund after they graduate where they get compensated because most of these young people will not go on to professional careers in sports. their days on the -- in the public eye are going to be over once they leave college. they have a substandard degree in many cases. i think they should just share in the profits of the money they have brought to the colleges. so there is a way to do it without adding to the corrupting influence of big money in college campuses. all we have to do is look at penn state and the money that was floating around there that led them to suppress years of child petoracy, whatever the word is.

not good. >> i'm not sure paying market rates for these 18-year-olds while they're playing makes a lot of sense. i think some compensation during the time they're there, maybe it's deferred. here's the thing, when you have 100 ncaa coaches making over $1 million, there's a reason that they're making that kind of money and that's because they got free labor. the money has to go somewhere. these are nonprofit institutions and the profits don't go to shareholders. they get sucked up, sopped up by the salaries of the people that work there. >> here's the thing. these athletes, they get room, they get board, they get a great deal, they get a full scholarship, they can study what they want and they get fame and fortune. they're big heroes on campus. some of them could probably make a million bucks a year, the quarterback of alabama things like that. for the other guys, they have a great start in life if they want to use it. but this -- i do agree with this idea that if you get a fund that at graduation but how

would you pay it out? would you pay it -- look, the guy that scored the most touchdowns, is he the guy that gets does he get it if he gets in the pros or something like that? amateurism is really dying out in america. >> somebody can figure out how to make that money equitably distributed because most of those people will not go pro. >> they do need a grant program for those athletes, the vast majority who are not going to play professionally. after maybe it's to get more education, training to be a coach or -- >> that's a good idea a graduate school scholarship would be a great idea. >> one of the big things, as eleanor notes, you have to have a situation where the colleges not allowed to manipulate the athletes right to the academics, that the sport has a major impact what they're spending their time doing but the academics is the key priority and that has to be enforced.

>> even if the fund if get it there. alabama, if you take kentucky's basketball team, they'll get an enormous amount of money to spread around. some of the schools that already got a disadvantage, it's going to be even more so so you'll get the semiprofessional teams in one league, as it were, the s.e.c. and you get the regular schools where the guys get the scholarships like harvard, yale, they play football but not the same level. >> the ncaa division i gave out more than $2 billion in sports scholarships in 2013. male players on average got $13,821. female players on average got $14,660. the averages are misleading because some players get full scholarships. some partial scholarships. and some players receive no aid. that's quite a sum. >> walk-ons at notre dame got no scholarship but they can try out for the team and they're on the team. >> every kid gets scholarships.

they're handing out merit scholarships left and right. i don't know if they got -- really, these basketball players and football players they're holding down two jobs. being a college athlete in division i is a 40-hour week minimum job, and they're trying to study for college. it's really not a sensible system at all. >> the blanket issue is that ultimately to some degree the sport has to become less of a priority and probably has to suffer to some degree. so the academics can support it. >> some of them will become -- that will be it. if you're at the university of alabama, that's it. and it's more than a job. you better be number one in the country or saban's job is at risk. some other school they don't care that much. >> and they're exploited. >> let's pull the pieces together. question, which would you rather have, a $14,000 a year athletic scholarship or an academic degree and $30,000 in student loan debt? paul.

>> i wouldn't -- i would rather have fair pay for the time i spent. remember, coaches 100 years ago were not paid and it was a big scandal and eventually they were. so will athletes. >> i'm not going to turn pro. >> $14,000 a year scholarship barely covers books and room and board. i mean, college tuition is up over $60,000. >> it's a little friday night recreation. here's the question, considering the size of their scholarships, are student athletes, a, undercompensated, b, overcompensated, c, properly compensated? pat buchanan. >> accept the free market. fairly compensated. >> they're mostly exploited or we wouldn't be talking about this. >> i would say a. i would say the free market is not operating as a free market because the regulations in terms of students supposed to be doing academics are being broken blanket across the nation so that reality does not conform with the stated reality. >> what do you think?

>> i think it's not at all free market. you have a captured market. with a monopoly by the ncaa. >> go somewhere else. >> i see reason here to believe it's overcompensated. if our colleges and universities put the same $3 billion into academic scholarships it would give the country a competitive edge on much more -- on much more than the sports field. you understand that? >> issue through. carly fiorina, u.s. president? >> like mrs. clinton, i, too, have traveled the globe. unlike mrs. clinton, i know that flying is an activity, not an accomplishment. i have met vladimir putin and i know that his ambition will not be deterred by a gimmicky red reset button. mrs. clinton, please name an accomplishment.

[applause] >> and in the meantime, in the meantime, please accept and explain why we should accept that the millions and millions of dollars that have flowed into the clinton foundation from foreign governments do not represent a conflict of interest. >> carly fiorina here speaking to a gathering of conservative activists. in recent weeks, mrs. fiorina has been gaining more and more attention from republicans for her fiery criticisms of hillary clinton and her rebukes of president obama's foreign policy. and thus far, mrs. fiorina is the only female republican considering a run for the presidency. so who is carly fiorina? born in austin, texas, ms. fiorina is 60 years old. she's married to retired at&t executive frank fiorina. prior to entering politics

mrs. fiorina served as c.e.o. of hewlett-packard. but in 2009, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was forced to undergo a double mastectomy. after making a full recovery in 2010 mrs. fiorina ran for the u.s. senate as the republican candidate in california. she was defeated by senator barbara boxer. today, although some republicans are unsure about mrs. fiorina for her moderate-conservative opinions and the fact she has never held elected office, her business experience is regarded by many as a positive for the republican party. indeed, in 2008, then-g.o.p. presidential nominee john mccain defended carly fiorina's record as a business leader. >> i know that she was a very successful business woman, started out as a part-time secretary and made

her way to the top of the corporate ladder as one of the biggest c.e.o.'s in the united states of america. >> question, could mrs. fiorina defeat hillary clinton in a presidential election? eleanor. >> well, i think she's smart in going after hillary clinton. all of them, male candidates on the republican side are busy attacking barack obama. he's not going on the ballot again. hillary is. she could be a vice president on a republican ticket who could go up against clinton ticket. so i think she sees the pathway. but when she asails hillary clinton for not having any accomplishments, i'd turn the question back on carly fiorina. she was a fired c.e.o. of hewlett-packard and she lost the senate race in california in 2010. that's not much of a record to run on. >> last november, "the

washington post" ran an in-depth article about fiorina's preparations for a presidential bid. she's lining up key campaign stops in new hampshire and iowa and otherwise appearing serious. what are your impressions of mrs. fiorina? >> i think she's a credible candidate. i she she's obviously attracting a lot of attention from conservative activists partly because she's a woman taking on hillary clinton, partly because of her business background where republicans are excited about because it is relatively unknown faces going in the race. i think carly fiorina is looking more towards the prospect of a vice-presidential slot. i think she would be even more aggressive now taking on some of the frontrunner republicans if she was seriously looking for that top ticket place. i think that's quite telling. in that regard, she has a very good chance of being potential vice-presidential nominee. >> hosting a republican fundraiser for her to make a

run, guess who it is? >> tell me i don't know. georgette. this is an able and accomplished woman john. let's go in the iowa caucuses. as we used to say, there are three tickets out of iowa. there's first class, coach and greyhound. and she's going to be hitchhiking out of iowa. it's going to be all over for her in iowa where she can't -- she doesn't have government experience, doesn't have political experience, doesn't have foreign policy knowledge or experience and i don't think you could put someone like that on the vice president of the united states of america. you know the lady from alaska had nor experience in government than she -- more experience in government than she did. >> sarah palin was the lady from alaska. if she runs creditly, first female treasury secretary in the administration she, too, has nothing to lose.

>> sarah had been a local official and tough governor and taken on exxon and she could light up a room like nobody else did at that convention and with due respect to carly fiorina, she doesn't do it. >> she said silly things and carly fiorina does not say silly things. >> and she has a reputation for picking winners. >> fiorina appeals to the donors. she did generate -- >> she goes after hillary which is a good thing to do. >> the saudis have intervened in yemen with airpower. they're bringing in the gulf council as well and have the egyptians gone in there. i predict there's going to be a very very serious blowback from this thing. the rebels are indigenous, they're tough, they're brave. the egyptians went into yemen in the 1960's and got a really bloody nose. and i think that's what's going to happen again and i hope the united states does not involve itself. >> hillary clinton has gotten a lot of criticism for not yet coming up with a rationale for

her candidacy but it is emerging. she's trying to make amends with the press. she joked with the media at a dinner last week saying it's time for something new, time for a new email account, new grandchild. new haircut, new relationship with the press. but she's going to run really it's not unlike the way she ran in 2008. she's going to run as a fighter, not a conciliator. she's going to talk about how she's on the side of working americans. you're going to think sometimes you're listening to elizabeth warren. >> tom, quickly. five seconds. >> yeah, extension to pat's, i will say the iranians will attempt to deter the sunni arab monarchies in pakistan who are putting pressure there in yemen. >> paul, can you work with three? >> one of the sleeper issues of the summer and fall will be chemical -- reform of our chemical safety laws and you're going to see barbara boxer who's retiring, being the kingmaker. >> well stated, paul. i predict hillary clinton will formally announce her candidacy

for the democratic nomination this month. she'll reinvent herself as an economic populist to stave off progressive challenges to her left. happy easter, blessed passover. bye-bye.

next, the mayors of san francisco, oakland and san jose. >> watch what i do and make sure you hold me accountable. >> we've got to preserve what makes oakland oakland. >> tech lead evers don't want to get involved with what government does. >> the plans to take on the region's toughest problems. ♪ good evening and welcome to a special edition of kqed newsroom. >> tonight, we have a rare opportunity. we're going to talk with the mayors of the bay area's three largest cities about the region's most pressing issues. joining us are the mayor of san jose, the new mayor of oakland,