DCCC Is Spending A Lot Of Money-- But They Missed Someone

He's also a jazz drummer

At the very end of the last election cycle, Blue America found itself with some extra money that hadn't been budgeted-- mostly due to a steep uptick in last-minute donations. We decided to spend it on TV ads in suburban Detroit where a progressive Democrat, Tony Trupiano, was battling a garden variety Bush rubber stamp, Thaddeus McCotter. We had a big problem though. All the ad space in late October was sold out. We wound up with an awful lot of ads on the Gardening Channel and the Golfing Channel and not any on CNN.

Today the DCCC announced an $18 million dollar ad buy in a number of congressional districts around the country, a nice follow-up to last week's announcement of $35 million worth of ads. They don't get a discount for volume or for ordering in advance; they just get the prime time slots. The FEC rules guarantee that everyone pay the same rates but at the rate the DCCC is buying up time, if the NRCC ever gets anyone to donate any more to it, they'll be reduced to an aggressive campaign of smoke signals and tom-toms.

Among the recipients of DCCC largess are Charlie Brown (DC-04), Annette Taddeo (FL-18), Joe Garcia (FL-25), Darcy Burner (WA-08), Jon Powers (NY-26), Eric Massa (NY-29) and Dan Maffei (NY-25). Last week their announced ad buys will go to help Blue America candidates Howard Shanker (AZ-01), Jim Himes (CT-04), Mark Schauer (MI-07), Gary Peters (MI-09), Larry Kissell (NC-08), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), and Martin Heinrich (NM-01).

Conspicuously not on the list-- at least not yet-- is New Jersey's most outstanding congressional candidate, Dennis Shulman, first endorsed by Blue America back in November. Even if the DCCC hasn't stepped up to the plate for Dennis yet, Jeffrey Toobin in the new issue of the New Yorker certainly has. Toobin explains why the lack of blind rabbis serving in the Congress may well be about to come to an end.

Shulman, a Democrat, is running in New Jersey’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes such suburbs as Ridgewood and Tenafly, in Bergen County, and some rural communities along the Pennsylvania border. Since 2002, the incumbent has been Scott Garrett, a Republican with the most conservative voting record of any member of the House from the Northeast. “He’s a Neanderthal,” Shulman said. (Garrett declined to comment.)

...Starting as an unknown in the district, Shulman won sixty-one per cent of the vote in the June primary against two candidates, Camille Abate and Roger Bacon. (“My favorite headline from the primary was ‘BLIND RABBI’S OPPONENT IS BACON,’” Shulman said.) Like New Jersey as a whole, the district has been leaning Democratic in recent years, but in 2006 Garrett won with fifty-five per cent of the vote. Still, the Congressional Quarterly has upgraded Shulman’s chances, changing the district’s rating from “Safe Republican” to “Republican Favored.” Yet getting attention from the New York media for a corner of New Jersey is difficult. “The people in my district know what Mike Bloomberg eats for breakfast, but they don’t know Garrett’s voting record,” Shulman said.

Here at DWT we do know Scott Garrett's voting record, which is unique among New Jersey Republicans and looks more like a typical Texas or Georgia Republican's than a New Jersey Republican's. The last of the far right congressional extremists in the northeast United States scores a dismal 3.36 (out of 100) on the votes he cast in the current House sessions (2007-2008). Mainstream New Jersey conservatives like Chris Smith (35.78), Frank LoBiondo (32.84), Mike Ferguson (28.30), Jim Saxton (25.52) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (18.90) have virtually nothing in common with Garrett's insane right-wing agenda, which often shows him as the only New Jersey congressman-- from either party-- on issues that have ill-effects on New Jersey residents. He represents a moderate and well-educated suburban district but votes as though he were some backwater congressman from rural Alabama.

Dennis Shulman may get help from the DCCC later on. Meanwhile, he needs us to help him get his message out. Today it was the New Yorker and last week it was Time Magazine recognizing him as an extraordinary candidate who would significantly bring up the quality of Congress if he were to win in November. The Blue America ActBlue page is open and taking donations for Dennis' campaign. Any contributors who give over $30 in the next 24 hours will get a Blue America thank you-- a copy of 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Fight The Right.