California Democrat Russ Warner Announces Another Bid For Congress

With everyone preoccupied with Arlen Specter's label switch, I imagined that the only big news out of California today would be the appropriately stiff sentence for former Republican Party crown prince, "America's Sheriff," Mike Carona. One of the most overtly crooked politicians in California history got a stern lecture, a $125,000 fine and five and a half years in prison, of which he'll have to serve a minimum of 4 years and seven months. But an announcement of far greater significance for California progressives just came down the transom.

One of Blue America's hardest working candidates from last year, Russ Warner, just announced what grassroots and progressive Democrats were hoping against hope he would do: Russ has decided to finish the job he started and he'll be running against David Dreier again. First a little background. Obama won the suburban L.A. area district 51-47%. Ironically, Russ-- while bringing Dreier's 2006 winning number (57%) down to the incumbent danger zone (53%)-- didn't win largely because of a massive Mormon turn out for the bigoted Prop 8 their church was pushing. I say "ironic," because few of those anti-gay Mormon voters understood that by pulling the lever for Dreier, they were voting for one of Washington's most notorious and hypocritical closet queens.

At the California Democratic Party Convention Saturday, Howard Dean presented Russ with the Ron Platt Courage Award on behalf of the Red to Blue Coalition and Russ told the participants he would run again next year. It's official now! And Russ is already out there swinging. "Don't be fooled," says Russ Warner. In announcing he would take on Dreier, who spent $2,919,351 last year told hold onto his seat (Russ spent $1,261,171), Russ reminded Democratic activists that "This is the same David Dreier who voted against the best interests of this district and stuck with House Republicans in an effort to block President Barack Obama's $787 billion economy recovery package in February. It's high time Dreier stop playing party politics and start looking out for the needs of the people he was
elected to represent."

The former chair of the House Rules Committee, and now ranking member, Dreier has routinely voted for every single special interest bill the banksters and crooked realtors have asked for. He's been a fanatic deregulation extremist. And, what a coincidence, he's taken $367,750 from the finance/insurance/real estate sector in "donations," far more than the average corrupt member of Congress. The banksters are delighted that they always get what they pay for from Dreier, who even voted against allowing bankruptcy judges to re-adjust mortgages on families being threatened with foreclosure, despite the fact that CA-26 is one of the three-dozen hardest hit districts in the country by the foreclosure blight. (It is estimated that 13,487 families have been kicked out of their houses in the district, something that has had a devastating impact on property values.) Dreier, who lives in DC and Kansas City doesn't have much contact with the district and knows nothing at all about the strains on area homeowners.

Anyway, please help me welcome Russ back into electoral politics with a donation to his campaign. He's going to need all the help he can get if he's going to finally retire Dreier. Volunteers are welcome and can sign up at his website.