Blue America Contest- The 5 May Senate Primaries

Although Blue America's Senate work this cycle thus far has been confined to helping raise money for funding a fellowship for David Waldman (KagroX) to work at Progressive Congress on reforming the filibuster rule, in the past Blue America-- while always being more House-oriented-- has helped elect Russ Feingold (D-WI), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), John Tester (D-MT), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). This year we've been concentrating on the House again (as well as on shining a special spotlight on corrupt and reactionary Senator Blanche Lincoln). However...

There are five crucial Senate primaries in May-- North Carolina, Ohio, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Each pits a more progressive grassroots candidate against a more conservative Establishment candidate, respectively Elaine Marshall vs Cal Cunningham, Jennifer Brunner vs Lee Fisher, Bill Halter vs Blanche Lincoln, Joe Sestak vs Arlen Specter and Jack Conway vs Daniel Mongiardo. Blue America would like to see each of the progressives fight it out with a Republican in November, a way for Democrats to capture all 5 of these crucial seats. These five primaries will go a long way towards determining if 2011 and 2012 will find the Senate a more progressive place or a more conservative place-- and, yes, it could easily be even more conservative than it has been. (Blanche and Snarlin' Arlen, for example, are on "best behavior" lately because they're trying-- believe it or not-- to win the Democratic base, but if either is re-elected we can expect them to return even more strongly to the reactionary politics that has marked their entire political careers.)

So... what could these candidates-- in the words of Barenaked Ladies-- do with a million dollars? Well, they could start to match the huge influx of corporate cash the Supreme Court has guaranteed would flow into the campaigns of corrupt Wall Street shills like Richard Burr (NC), Rob Portman (OH) and other conservative corporate suck-ups for starters. So Blue America has an idea for a little contest. We don't have a million dollars to deploy yet but we do have something no Wall Street banksters have. We have a genuine RIAA-certified Barenaked Ladies multi-platinum award for STUNT. We're going to give it to the campaign that gets the most votes at the Blue America May Senate Primaries page. A vote is a donation to your favorite candidate-- whether one dollar of one-hundred dollars. The candidate with the most votes gets the award disc to auction or to give away to one of their donors.

So, please take a look at the page and make a contribution-- no matter how small-- to either Jennifer Brunner (OH), Jack Conway (KY), Bill Halter AR), Elaine Marshall (NC) or Joe Sestak (PA). It'll be too late in November if, for example, Kentucky voters are forced to choose between Rand Paul and Daniel Mongiardo, two conservatives or between Arlen Specter and Pat Toomey, two Republicans indebted to Big Business.