Larry Kissell: It's Time To Elect One Of Us

John Edwards lends Larry Kissell a hand

"This election in 2008 is not about Democrats and Republicans. It's about putting the interests of the common people, the regular people, the working people ahead of the special interests of corporate America that is controlling this country."

-Larry Kissell (D-NC)

In 2006 the Inside the Beltway careerist establishment took a look at Larry Kissell and his populist, pro-working families platform-- and promptly moved on to corporate stooge Heath Shuler in another North Carolina district. Rahm Emanuel, the DCCC chairman whose misguided, antidemocratic policies kept Democratic victories to a minimum sensed Kissell was too-independent-minded and too committed to the agenda of working families in his district-- rather than to power politics, personal agendas and cash-laden corporate special interests-- to invest in. The DCCC ignored his grassroots campaign. (Blue America raised around $11,000 for him, part of $178,000 that came in through the netroots, and he came within 329 votes of beating reactionary rubber stamp Robin Hayes.)



Instead Emanuel invested in Heath Shuler, who won-- and has been voting like a Republican ever since. Shuler has the 6th most Republican voting record among House Democrats and when it comes to substantive matters, he scores a 39.61 on the ProgressivePunch Chips Are Down ranking, out of 100. Emanuel and Hoyer have been able to count on him as one of their most mindless puppets whenever they needed a reactionary vote to thwart the will of the will of the majority of the Democratic caucus-- as happened last week when Shuler dutifully joined Emanuel and Hoyer in making sure the Iraq war would keep going full bore and that Bush would be able to read all our e-mails and listen in on all our telephone calls with a court warrant. That's not the kind of congressman Larry Kissell will be. Not by a long shot.

Larry's multimillionaire opponent, Robin Hayes, spent $2,475,169 to Larry's $779,341. (With DCCC help Shuler spent $1,804,365.) This year Emanuel has been kicked upstairs and the new chairman, Chris Van Hollen, immediately made Larry a top DCCC priority.

So what kind of congressman will Larry Kissell be? Take a look at this short film he sent us today and see if you can't get a good idea.



And if you want to help Larry raise much needed funds to get that kind of populist message out, our Blue America page is open for business.