The Inside-The-Beltway Democrats Are Missing Two Winnable Races In North Carolina

There was an outstanding line in yesterday's fiery endorsement of Elaine Marshall in the Raleigh News & Observer. The Senate, the editorial explained, "could use someone who has never lost touch with ordinary working people and their worries." We agree, and we were enthusiastic about adding Elaine Marshall to our ActBlue Senate candidates list. Please consider making a contribution to her campaign.

Sleazy New Jersey ward boss and DSCC Chair Robert Menendez-- easily the most incompetent loser to ever head a national party committee-- is determined to prove he was right about Marshall, despite what North Carolina voters think. Menendez, an anti-Cuba fanatic as bad as any neo-fascist Republican Cuba-hater, was determined to block Marshall's bid to win the North Carolina Senate seat occupied by his anti-Cuba ally Richard Burr. Menendez recruited a reluctant nebbish and empty suit, Cal Cunningham, to run against Marshall in the primary. Cunningham made little headway but managed to drain over a million dollars out of Marshall's campaign, precisely what Menendez planned from the beginning. Needless to say, the DSCC hasn't spent a nickel in North Carolina, lavishing nearly $2 million on a campaign in West Virginia that seems to be about who hates Obama and the principles and agenda of the Democratic Party more, Menendez candidate Joe Manchin or GOP sociopath John Raese. Both candidates solemnly swear to vote against the Democratic agenda-- so of course Menendez is using Manchin's race as an excuse for not helping Elaine Marshall, a proven progressive fighter for the working families who have been the bedrock of the Democratic Party.

Burr & Menendez-- a match made in Hell

I sure hope Democratic senators who made the awful, if not fatal, mistake of trusting the execrable Menendez with the chairmanship of their election committee take a look at the News & Observer editorial. It isn't something a corrupt, sordid political hack like Menendez could ever hope to understand.

She grew up as a farm girl from Maryland who knew how to drive a tractor before she was a teenager, and who has slopped her share of hogs. She has cleaned a chicken house or two in her time. She has run a decorating and book business in a small town and struggled to keep them going. She has been divorced and twice widowed. She went back to law school later in life. She got into politics in Harnett County and won local and statewide office from the ground up.

Elaine Marshall's life is in many ways a mirror, many mirrors, of the lives of the people of North Carolina. It is a life marked if not defined by adversity. But it has been adversity overcome, and it's no overstatement to say that it very well could be a life inspiring to others.

Now Marshall, North Carolina's Democratic secretary of state, faces another big challenge, one that few "professional" observers think she has a chance of overcoming, and that is a bid to become one of North Carolina's two U.S. senators. She has the News & Observer's editorial endorsement for the office.

Her campaign for the Senate is based on her long-standing public profile as secretary of state, an office to which she was first elected in 1996, defeating the king of racing, Richard Petty. At that time, Marshall was the first woman elected to a statewide executive job in North Carolina. She's done some creative things with her office, making it more aggressive, for example, in the regulation of lobbying.

Her campaign is running practically on a shoestring, which no doubt delights special interests who fear they wouldn't get Marshall to do their bidding-- for example, on weakening a regulation here and there.

And that's just fine with Robert Menendez, who comes from the same mindset as Burr and the Republicans when it comes to the role of corrupt corporate cash in the electoral system. That, after all, is what he owes his own rise to power to. The editorial goes on to point out that the special interests who oppose Marshall are overjoyed at the thought of another six-year term for hopeless Wall Street shill Burr, one of the Republicans who never want to talk about their votes for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street TARP bailout in 2008, something Marshall opposed at the time.

Burr's sizable campaign treasury ($9 million at one point) included gifts from those connected to health care and drug companies, Wall Street and a host of others with an intense interest in seeing to it that the government does not get too far into their business. Burr can be relied upon to give regulation the stiff arm just as he did would-be tacklers when he played football in high school and college.

...Burr's votes reflect the senator he has been and his philosophy: He opposed health care reform and says he wants to repeal it. He voted against extending a children's health care program to be funded by a tobacco tax. He opposed an extension of unemployment benefits.

...Elaine Marshall's view of government is that it should serve the many, not the few, whether that means helping to shore up the economy and create jobs, protecting the sick from losing health insurance or ensuring that the predators of Wall Street are brought to justice. What a people's senator she would be.

Northwest North Carolina is the part of the state that gave us Burr. Once he ascended to the Senate, he was replaced-- in a fluke accident-- by notorious hate merchant Virginia Foxx. Last week we looked at North Carolina's other "impossible" race: Billy Kennedy's go at the seat Foxx is occupying-- and how it is looking more and more possible. The Winston-Salem Journal endorsement of Kennedy against Foxx was devastating to her, since she's always had the support of the district's biggest newspaper in the past. Last weekend, reading the first lines of the searing indictment against her must have driven her batshit crazy: "U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Watauga County, has not achieved any great accomplishments for the residents of the 5th Congressional District, and has angered and embarrassed many with her sometimes wild statements that seem designed to provoke. It’s time for a fresh, progressive voice in the 5th District. We believe that Democrat Billy Kennedy, a Watauga farmer and carpenter who says he’ll work to reverse the high rate of unemployment in the district, is that voice. He’s the best candidate in the Nov. 2 election for the 5th District." It got worse.

The DCCC has refused to recognize that there even is a race going on in NC-5. They haven't even given Billy Kennedy the kind of lip-service they give the Red to Blue candidates like Ami Bera (CA), Steve Pougnet (CA), Ann Kuster (NH), Joyce Elliott (AR), John Callahan (PA), Manan Trevedi (PA), Tarryl Clark (MN), Tommy Sowers (MO) and Suzane DelBene (WA). This year, if you're not frothing at the mouth and barking epithets against Obama and Pelosi-- and if you're not coated in mangy blue fur-- the DCCC has nothing for you.

And despite the similarity in some respects, Foxx is no Bachmann. A Fox TV favorite, Bachmann has raised over $10 million. Foxx, despite voting virtually exactly the same as Bachmann for the past four years, has managed to suck in only $789,390. (She does have $1,262,346 in cash on hand, left over from the DCCC's not challenging her in past years.) Billy has taken in $158,017, almost exclusively from small grassroots contributions, and had just $70,406 in cash on hand as of June 30.

In 2008 Foxx took 58% of the vote while the district was giving McCain 61%. Winston-Salem's WXII News 12 described the Blue America ad we did on behalf of Kennedy as "one of the best political ads this year." It won our on-line contest for who the Blue America blog readers wanted us to target. (Yes, Foxx even beat crackpots Michele Bachmann and Steve King.) But we didn't have much money to run it fully. So we ran it in the populous suburbs around Winston-Salem, and Foxx did the rest for us by calling attention to the ad. We'd like to run it again between now and the election. Please take a look at the whole ad and consider making a contribution here. Look how close we are to being able to get it up on the air. And look how the biggest news show in the district used it on Friday.