Chad McGowan, An Opponent For The Senate's Most Extremist Member

Right after reading yesterday that the Democrats now have a candidate to run against the single worst member of the Senate-- yes, even worse than the two clowns from Oklahoma-- I called candidate Chad McGowan. The website had no policy positions and the reports in the press weren't encouraging (even if, later, he quoted Dylan lyrics and Monty Python dialogue to me on the phone):

McGowan, a trial attorney who has primarily handled medical malpractice cases, says he is a conservative Democrat willing to vote with Republicans or Democrats to improve conditions for South Carolina's working and middle classes.

"I don't think anybody can rationally say the middle class is being represented by anybody in Washington," he said.

McGowan's list of complaints about Washington politics includes a nearly $12 trillion national debt and the bailouts of the automobile and financial services industries, which, he said, have proved to be "a bill of goods."

I called him anyway; he wasn't there. I left a message. He was in DC meeting with Harry Reid and Robert Menendez at the DSCC. I was surprised that he called back; many candidates are too scared to, afraid they'll say something that'll get them in trouble. McGowan, 38, didn't strike me as being afraid of anything. I asked him how he's going to respond to the inevitable attacks from DeMint dismissing him as a "trial lawyer." McGowan said he'd point out that both he and DeMint have taken millions from the Insurance Industry. He sounds like an Alan Grayson in the making. Except for one thing-- he really is a moderate to conservative Democrat. He's good with the public option though and said he wouldn't have a problem voting for it. And he didn't hesitate one second when I asked him about Employee Free Choice. No one has to twist his arm on that; he's for it. In fact, he said that when it comes to weighing the interests of working families and the corporate interests of the rich and powerful he would always, instinctually, be coming down on the side of ordinary working families. Unless they're gay or need an abortion. I couldn't resist, but I wasn't being entirely fair. He said that 78% of South Carolinians voted for a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage and that he would feel bound to respect that. I didn't get the feeling he was some kind of raving homophobe like DeMint. And when it comes to women's choice, basically he adheres to a Lutheran doctrine that says the earlier in the pregnancy the more it's about the rights of the mother and the later in the pregnancy the more it's about the rights of the child. He and DeMint differ because DeMint is an absolutist about abortion being murder-- while McGowan is unyielding that in cases involving rape, incest or the health of the mother, choice must be protected.

His ideas about Afghanistan were nuanced as well, although he started with 2 suppositions-- one, that he needed to keep his mind open and learn more and two, that anything to do with nation-building was pie-in-the-sky crap that is destined to abject failure. He didn't mention that in 2008 he voted in the GOP primary (for McCain) and that in the general election he cast his ballot for Lindsey Graham (and Obama). He said he's going to run as a populist and he's been yammering about evil lobbyists. He said “I’ve fought all my life against some very powerful interests. I’ve fought for people who couldn’t fight these interests all by themselves. I intend to take that fight for people right to Washington." That all sounds good but I suspect Reid and Menendez are jumping aboard because he's rich, has rich friends and can self-fund and raise a ton. In the past he's donated mostly to Democrats but he also gave a grand to Lindsey Graham and this year maxed out to a far right Republican of the teabagger variety, Trey Gowdy, a personal friend who's taking on mainstream conservative incumbent Bob Inglis because he sounds like "a faint echo of the Democrat party." Something tells me Blue America-- as much as we'd love to see the political demise of Jim DeMint-- will be sitting this one out next year.