Can Pot Save The Democrats?

Last night I interviewed Lee Rogers on KPFK, the Los Angeles Pacifica station. The show will run tomorrow evening. As you probably know, unless this is the first time you've ever read DWT, Rogers is a progressive Democrat running for Congress in the northwest corner of L.A. County-- Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley and Simi Valley. After nearly losing to Rogers last cycle-- followed by some come-to-Jesus-moment polling-- arch-conservative incumbent Buck McKeon recently announced he would be retiring from elective politics.

CA-25 has come a long way but still leans a little red, especially in regard to turning out Democratic voters in midterm elections. The rearview mirror oriented Cook Report rates the PVI an R+3. Obama beat McCain under the new boundaries 124,377 to 123,454 but lost to Romney 4 years later 125,258 to 120,701. Rogers is engaged in a tough three-way jungle primary with two Republicans, Tony Strickland and Steve Knight, each trying to prove he's more of a right-wing, bigoted extremist than the other. Republican voters can sort that out among themselves, but Lee Rogers still needs a way to get Democrats to the polls June 3.

Rogers is an internationally prominent surgeon who strongly and articulately backs medical marijuana legalization. Why? Neither one of us uses it. But Rogers has been a big advocate for ending prohibition way beyond what California allows today. It isn't one of his big issues-- he's campaigning on jobs, healthcare, raising the minimum wage, protecting and expanding Social Security and comprehensive immigration reform. But, ironically, marijuana legalization could be of paramount importance in his race, where turnout in the June 3 primary is crucial. Consider this from Alex Seitz-Wald:

A new poll, conducted by a Democratic and Republican polling firm in partnership with George Washington University, suggests voters would be overwhelmingly more likely to go to the polls if they could vote on a ballot measure to legalize marijuana, something Democrats may want to keep in mind as they work to boost turnout.

Facing a tough map and perennial low turnout in midterms, Democrats are hoping to minimize losses in this year's elections by enticing their voters to the polls in any way possible, which in some states includes marijuana liberalization. At least six states are expected to have marijuana questions on the ballot this year.

Colorado and Washington, which each had referenda to legalize the drug on the ballot in 2012, saw the youth share of the vote jump between 5 and 12 percentage points that year over 2008, even as it increased only marginally nationwide.

The GW Battleground Poll of likely voters, conducted by the Tarrance Group and Lake Research Partners, asked voters how much more or less likely they would be to go to the polls "if there was a proposal on the ballot to legalize the use of marijuana."

The top response: "Much more likely," an option selected by 39 percent of respondents. The next most popular choice was "somewhat more likely," which garnered 30 percent of responses. Just 13 percent said they'd be somewhat or much less likely to vote, and 16 percent said it would make no difference.

Together, when rounded, that suggests that 68 percent of likely voters would be more likely to go to the polls if they could vote on a measure to legalize pot.

A breakdown of the numbers provided to National Journal shows liberals are more enthusiastic than moderates or conservatives, with 76 percent saying they would be more likely to vote if marijuana legalization were on the ballot, compared with 64 percent of conservatives and 61 percent of moderates.

"These numbers provide even more evidence that marijuana reform is a mainstream issue and that smart politicians would do well to start treating it as such," says Tom Angell, the founder of the pro-legalization group Marijuana Majority. "More politicians might want to find reasons to start saying good things about this issue."

Of course, Rogers isn't the only progressive Democrat running who wants to end prohibition. “Politicians, and I know a lot of them, tend not to seek out controversy,” said Daylin Leach, a state senator in Pennsylvania who is running for an open congressional seat in suburban Philadelphia and who has made legalization a central plank of his campaign. “You know the Wayne Gretzky line, ‘I don’t skate to where the puck is, I skate to where it will be.’ Well, most politicians want to skate where the puck already was.”

Leach introduced a bill in the Pennsylvania Senate this year that would have legalized marijuana. Passage remains unlikely, but if there were a secret ballot, he said, “it would pass overwhelmingly.” A conservative lawmaker who was publicly opposed to the bill, Leach said, told him privately, “I hope it passes so I can stop smoking pot in my living room and start on my front porch.”

The state senator is in a crowded field, but if he wins, he will join a small cadre of members of Congress who are backing full legalization. A bill introduced this year to decriminalize marijuana and turn regulatory power over to the states has 10 Democratic co-sponsors, and Republican Steve Stockman, who announced Monday that he was running for the Texas Senate seat now held by Republican John Cornyn, supports a bill mandating that the federal government respect state marijuana laws.

“We shouldn’t put people in the criminal justice system for smoking a plant which makes them feel giddy,” Leach said. “We are now requiring everyone, including our kids, to buy pot from behind the local bowling alley from someone they have never met before, instead of going into a state store in a strip mall, as you would to buy a bottle of vodka.”

The 2014 candidates’ pro-pot stance appears mostly to be a way for them to distinguish themselves in primaries where the candidates largely share the same views, particularly on social issues. In Maryland, for example, the candidate pushing legalization, Heather Mizeur, also is vying to be first openly gay governor of the state and is running a campaign designed to appeal to liberals and young people. Mizeur rejects “old paradigm assumptions about conventional wisdom and what is and isn’t safe to do in politics,” she said. “I am a candidate who never plays it safe. I always stand up for what I believe in. In the past, politics has been about catching up to where people are.”

This is, in part, a guest post Bellows did for DWT just over a month ago:

A few years ago, as executive director of the ACLU of Maine, I was discussing marijuana policy with a prosecutor. As we debated, he started reminiscing about his days as a pot smoker. At that point, I had to tell him that I’d never smoked pot due to my severe asthma. He thought this was funny, but I was troubled by the hypocrisy. When the prosecutor who is locking people up for marijuana laughs about his own use, something is terribly wrong. And when our last three U.S. Presidents have acknowledged marijuana use at the same time that poor kids-- particularly young males of color-- are getting thrown in jail for the same activity, we need change.

As a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate, I support marijuana legalization. We need to end the war on drugs and reform our criminal justice system, and we cannot afford to wait. The United States incarcerates more people in total and more people per capita than any other country in the world, and the racial disparities are alarming. Even in my home state of Maine, which is the whitest state in the union, blacks are 2.1 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. Government spends billions of dollars each year enforcing counterproductive drug laws, which are truly the New Jim Crow. The economic and human rights costs are enormous.

Our limited public resources would be much better spent investing in drug treatment facilities and community education in a regulated system that promotes community health and safety. Instead of spending billions on a prison industrial complex, we could invest those funds in education, prevention and rehabilitation.

We should treat drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. Mainers have been using medical marijuana safely now for over a decade. I met a senior citizen recently whose wife just died of lung cancer. He told me that marijuana was a necessary part of her palliative care. His daughter risked arrest time and time again to bring them marijuana in her mother’s last months. Medical marijuana patients all across the country have similar heart-rending stories.

Maine is already a leader on marijuana policy. Maine voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana, first in 1999 and then again in 2009. Portland citizens just voted in a landslide to approve the recreational use of marijuana in small amounts for adults over 21. Now is the time for federal reform. We need a commonsense approach to drug policy based on science and liberty; we need to end prohibition. With your help, I will be a voice in the United States Senate for sensible drug policy.

Another Democratic Senate candidate, Jay Stamper, has a great deal of appeal to principled libertarians in South Carolina who detest Lindsay Graham's Big Brother/NSA-backing stands. Republican elected officials in the state are notorious drunkards and coke-heads… and hypocrites. This morning, Jay took it right to them: "I think it's time for politicians to put down their scotch and sodas and vote to legalize marijuana. Prohibition of marijuana, like alcohol before it, serves only to enrich and empower violent criminal cartels that turn our cities into war zones and corrupt our public institutions."

If you'd like to help Shenna Bellow's and Jay Stamper's campaigns, you can do it here. And Heather Mizeur's is here. Lee Rogers and Daylin Leach can both be found on this page.

The California Democratic Convention Would Have Been Better Off Inviting Heather Mizeur To Speak

Many California Democrats experienced Martin O'Malley for the first time last week. He was a keynote speaker at the state's Democratic Party convention. He's trying to offer himself up as an alternative to Hillary Clinton. But the way he's governed Maryland belies the progressive image he tried so, so hard to portray when he's outside of Maryland. This weekend the machine boss may have fooled some credulous Democrartic Party delegates in Los Angeles, but no one was fooled back home. You may be aware that Blue America has endorsed an actual progressive, Heather Mizeur, seeking to succeed the termed-out O'Malley. The publicly-financed gubernatorial candidate, whose purely progressive stances run from marijuana legalization to a full “living” minimum wage of $16.70 an hour by 2022, is the only Democrat Blue America is currently backing for governor anywhere in the U.S.!

Two of O’Malley’s establishment guardians, Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Mike Busch, have been force-feeding a $400 million estate tax giveaway through the easily controlled legislature, where the Democrats hold a 35 to 12 seat majority in the Senate and a 98 to 43 majority in the House of Delegates, where Mizeur serves. O'Malley's two legislative lieutenants claim this will keep more millionaires from moving away during retirement, despite the fact that Maryland already has the most millionaires per capita in the nation. In reality, this is nothing more than election-year pandering to the state’s wealthiest three percent.

Right before the House easily passed the conservative legislation, Mizeur was the only legislator to stand up for the working and middle class, pointing out how the bill would take public funding from education and health care reform to pay for the handout. She then called on O’Malley to veto the legislation. But O’Malley was too busy running to the right of Hillary Clinton to give a straight answer. Same thing for his hand picked successor, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, who instead gave a vague talking point about the need for comprehensive tax reform.

But that’s not all. After years of waiting, O’Malley and Brown have finally taken up an increase in the minimum wage now that it will be fresh in voters’ minds. But after corporate interests were allied to rip out a provision to index the wage to inflation, it was Mizeur who stood up on the House floor to offer an amendment to put it back in place. How did the New Democrat-controlled House of Delegates-- much of which cosponsored the bill when it had the original indexing provision-- vote? They voted it down 124-8, claiming it would ruffle feathers in the Senate.

This is the stark difference that Maryland faces in its June gubernatorial election: protectors of the status quo versus a proud and principled progressive. Maryland could lead the way on the progress for which we have waited far too long. But Heather’s opponents are already putting up television ads with their corporate cash. For her to come out on top in June, she needs as many donors as possible-- no matter how small. Under the public finance system, she can accept contributions of up to $250 and each contribution will be matched by the state. Here's the place where you can help turn Maryland into a true progressive powerhouse.

Is Marijuana Legalization Now Part Of The Political Mainstream?

Over the weekend, David Freedlander did a story for the Daily Beast on The New Politics of Pot: The 2014 Candidates Who Want to Legalize It. "Forget decriminalization or medical marijuana," he wrote in way of introduction. "Bolstered by state ballot victories, top-tier contenders in 2014 are seeking full legalization, the drug’s highest-profile advocacy ever… Advocates for marijuana legalization say the 2014 elections represent the first time that serious, top-tier candidates for major state and federal offices are advocating for full legalization of the drug.

The pro-pot candidates of 2014 have been bolstered by state ballot initiatives in Washington and Colorado that legalized marijuana starting next year and by a Gallup poll in October that showed 58 percent of Americans support legalization. It was a 46 percent increase since 1969, when the polling company first started asking the question, and the first time a majority has backed legalization.

But if legalization is as popular as advocates insist it is, how come more candidates aren’t backing it?

“Politicians, and I know a lot of them, tend not to seek out controversy,” said Daylin Leach, a state senator in Pennsylvania who is running for an open congressional seat in suburban Philadelphia and who has made legalization a central plank of his campaign. “You know the Wayne Gretzky line, ‘I don’t skate to where the puck is, I skate to where it will be.’ Well, most politicians want to skate where the puck already was.”

Leach introduced a bill in the Pennsylvania Senate this year that would have legalized marijuana. Passage remains unlikely, but if there were a secret ballot, he said, “it would pass overwhelmingly.” A conservative lawmaker who was publicly opposed to the bill, Leach said, told him privately, “I hope it passes so I can stop smoking pot in my living room and start on my front porch.”

The state senator is in a crowded field, but if he wins, he will join a small cadre of members of Congress who are backing full legalization. A bill introduced this year to decriminalize marijuana and turn regulatory power over to the states has 10 Democratic co-sponsors, and Republican Steve Stockman, who announced Monday that he was running for the Texas Senate seat now held by Republican John Cornyn, supports a bill mandating that the federal government respect state marijuana laws.

“We shouldn’t put people in the criminal justice system for smoking a plant which makes them feel giddy,” Leach said. “We are now requiring everyone, including our kids, to buy pot from behind the local bowling alley from someone they have never met before, instead of going into a state store in a strip mall, as you would to buy a bottle of vodka.”

The 2014 candidates’ pro-pot stance appears mostly to be a way for them to distinguish themselves in primaries where the candidates largely share the same views, particularly on social issues. In Maryland, for example, the candidate pushing legalization, Heather Mizeur, also is vying to be first openly gay governor of the state and is running a campaign designed to appeal to liberals and young people. Mizeur rejects “old paradigm assumptions about conventional wisdom and what is and isn’t safe to do in politics,” she said. “I am a candidate who never plays it safe. I always stand up for what I believe in. In the past, politics has been about catching up to where people are.”

In Pennsylvania, former governor Ed Rendell told the Daily Beast that he thought Hanger’s position on marijuana was what distinguished him most among voters with the Democratic primary five months away.

Hanger said he agreed.

“This issue alone could win me the Democratic primary,” he said. His plan would expunge the record of those who have been convicted of marijuana possession. “I would like Democrats to reclaim the word liberty or at least not surrender it completely. I put this issue in the same category as marriage equality for gays and lesbians or reproductive choice for women. To me, this is a question of individual autonomy, and it is rooted in some fairly traditional values of letting people live their lives how they want to unless they are hurting others.”

When Blue America is considering which candidates to endorse, marijuana legalization in not a question we have ever asked. We've been more interested in making sure our candidates back equality under the law for minorities and oppose neoliberal schemes like Chained CPI. But now candidates are bringing the issue up to us. Aside from Barney Frank, who was already in Congress when he started talking out about legalization, the first candidate who ever talked to us about it was Jared Polis, in 2008. We endorsed him, though marijuana wasn't the reason why, even if his forthright advocacy helped us to see his leadership potential, courage and willingness to buck conventional wisdom. Polis is now the congressman from Boulder and is likely to replace Steve Israel as head of the DCCC when Israel has another failing cycle next year.

As Freedlander pointed out, there are more candidates than ever who have legalization as part of their platforms. And without even trying-- or overtly considering the issue-- Blue America has endorsed many of them. Kenyan-born John Hanger is certainly one of our favorites running for governor of Pennsylvania and there's no way I could conceive a cautious conservative like Allyson Schwartz-- the dull, careerist Establishment pick in that primary-- to ever get out front on any issue that "radical." Ironically, the candidate who are backing in the primary to win the House seat Schwartz is giving up, state Senator Daylin Leach of Montgomery County, is probably the most outspoken advocate of legalization of anyone running for the House. Watch the video he made on the subject up top. "I don't know," he says, "how any progressive can say that we should continue a policy that is so harmful to our kids and so harmful to the minority community, and costs us so much money that we could be using on other things." You can help Daylin win his primary here.

And Blue America is big time behind two other top tier candidates aggressively calling for legalization this cycle, Heather Mizeur, who is running for governor of Maryland, and Maine's progressive U.S. Senate candidate, Shenna Bellows. You can watch a local TV interview with Mizeur about why she's calling for legalization at the bottom of this post. This is, in part, a guest post Bellows did for DWT just over a month ago:

A few years ago, as executive director of the ACLU of Maine, I was discussing marijuana policy with a prosecutor. As we debated, he started reminiscing about his days as a pot smoker. At that point, I had to tell him that I’d never smoked pot due to my severe asthma. He thought this was funny, but I was troubled by the hypocrisy. When the prosecutor who is locking people up for marijuana laughs about his own use, something is terribly wrong. And when our last three U.S. Presidents have acknowledged marijuana use at the same time that poor kids-- particularly young males of color-- are getting thrown in jail for the same activity, we need change.

As a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate, I support marijuana legalization. We need to end the war on drugs and reform our criminal justice system, and we cannot afford to wait. The United States incarcerates more people in total and more people per capita than any other country in the world, and the racial disparities are alarming. Even in my home state of Maine, which is the whitest state in the union, blacks are 2.1 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. Government spends billions of dollars each year enforcing counterproductive drug laws, which are truly the New Jim Crow. The economic and human rights costs are enormous.

Our limited public resources would be much better spent investing in drug treatment facilities and community education in a regulated system that promotes community health and safety. Instead of spending billions on a prison industrial complex, we could invest those funds in education, prevention and rehabilitation.

We should treat drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. Mainers have been using medical marijuana safely now for over a decade. I met a senior citizen recently whose wife just died of lung cancer. He told me that marijuana was a necessary part of her palliative care. His daughter risked arrest time and time again to bring them marijuana in her mother’s last months. Medical marijuana patients all across the country have similar heart-rending stories.

Maine is already a leader on marijuana policy. Maine voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana, first in 1999 and then again in 2009. Portland citizens just voted in a landslide to approve the recreational use of marijuana in small amounts for adults over 21. Now is the time for federal reform. We need a commonsense approach to drug policy based on science and liberty; we need to end prohibition. With your help, I will be a voice in the United States Senate for sensible drug policy.

Another Democratic Senate candidate, Jay Stamper, has a great deal of appeal to principled libertarians in South Carolina who detest Lindsay Graham's Big Brother/NSA-backing stands. Republican elected officials in the state are notorious drunkards and coke-heads… and hypocrites. This morning, Jay took it right to them: "I think it's time for politicians to put down their scotch and sodas and vote to legalize marijuana. Prohibition of marijuana, like alcohol before it, serves only to enrich and empower violent criminal cartels that turn our cities into war zones and corrupt our public institutions."

If you'd like to help Shenna Bellow's and Jay Stampers's campaigns, you can do it here. And Heather Mizeur's is here.

Heather Mizeur (D-MD) Is Helping Make Marijuana Legalization Part Of The Progressive Agenda

Back during the summer, I wrote about a Democratic candidate for governor, Heather Mizeur. If she wins, Heather would be the first woman governor of Maryland and the first openly gay governor in the country. But as she says, she’s not running to make history, she’s running to make a difference. And over the past several weeks, her campaign has lived up to the progressive dream we knew her candidacy would be.

In Maryland, the gubernatorial candidates pick their lieutenant governor before the primary, and Heather wasn’t afraid to make a bold choice-- she now has a progressive change agent by her side. His name is Delman Coates, an African-American pastor who runs an 8,000 member church. But he’s not your typical reverend. He played a significant role in the 2012 campaign for marriage equality in Maryland, speaking at rallies and appearing on TV ads. His works stretches to several social justice issues, including common sense gun reform, immigration reform, health care, and voting rights, and has been recognized by the ACLU.

Heather released her 10-point jobs plan and it reads like a progressive wish list. She proposed a millionaire’s tax, with the revenue going to income tax cuts for 90 percent of Marylanders. She wants to turn Maryland’s minimum wage into a living wage-- $16.70 by 2022, with sizable increases along the way. She even wants to close corporate tax loopholes and use the money to give small business tax rebates. And her plan also includes paid sick days for all workers, more funding for job training and adult education, and the building of major transit projects, schools, and bridges.

Most recently, Heather has called for marijuana legalization, drawing a clear line of distinction between her and her establishment opponents. While there is now sizable public support for legalizing marijuana, our politicians haven’t caught up. But Heather took the bold step of not only supporting it, but also pledging to make it a gubernatorial priority when she gets elected. And what would she fund with the $157 million in annual tax revenue? Universal pre-k.

This is why Blue America was so excited to endorse her candidacy during the summer. With our help, Heather will be one of the next great leaders of the progressive movement. You can donate to her campaign on our Blue America page for gubernatorial candidates. Can you imagine what Maryland would be like with a progressive income tax system, a $16.70 an hour minimum wage, paid sick days, universal pre-k, and legalized marijuana?

Guest Post from Heather

The last time I wrote a guest post for DWT, I told you I wasn’t interested in business as usual at the Maryland State House, and I wasn’t willing to settle for the status quo. Whether it’s a $16.70 an hour minimum wage or progressive tax reform, my campaign is about putting people over conventional politics. It’s about returning Annapolis to the people of Maryland, and taking it back from the special interests and party leaders.

My proposal to legalize marijuana in Maryland comes from these values. Maryland had the third most marijuana possession arrests proportionally of all states-- over 23,000. It’s easy to see that this system is not working. By legalizing marijuana we will save tens of thousands of people from unnecessary run-ins with law enforcement, imprisonment, or worse.

Marijuana's time as an illegal substance has run its course. Marijuana laws ruin lives, are enforced with racial bias, and distract law enforcement from serious and violent crimes. Our criminal justice system should keep people safe, treat them fairly, and use limited fiscal resources wisely. Legalizing marijuana is the first step to ensuring that happens.

Marijuana criminalization costs our state $281.7 million every year without making us any safer. A Maryland with legalized, regulated, and taxed marijuana will mean safer communities and fewer citizens unnecessarily exposed to our criminal justice system.

It will also provide Maryland with a dedicated revenue stream to make overdue and critical investments in early childhood education. The new annual revenue will provide 23,625 children with a full day of prekindergarten. Our plan will help ensure that prekindergarten is available to all children in our state.  

This campaign is not just about me-- it’s about what we can do when we all come together. The election won’t be won by special interests, lobbyists, or backroom deals in Annapolis. It comes down to which candidate’s vision creates a large enough movement of people to win on Election Day and then lift our communities up when we govern.

You can find comprehensive plans for all of my proposals on my website. If you believe in my progressive vision, I would really appreciate a small contribution so we can turn these plans into real results for Maryland’s families.

Heather Mizeur--A Love At First Sight Candidate For Governor!

I was positively giddy after I started getting to know Maryland sate Rep. Heather Mizeur. She was like the ideal candidate and I could barely contain my enthusiasm. Few candidates for political office are this perfect and she told me she would be running for governor of Maryland. I asked John and Digby to examine her with a critical eye because I was already just a mushy fanboy and wanted to fast track her Blue America endorsement process, especially after I examined her record in the state legislature. John and Digby arranged to meet her in person and-- sure enough-- they had the same reaction to her that I did. We endorsed her and Digby put together the following letter, Who'll Be The Next Elizabeth Warren?, to our members for today, the day Heather officially declares her candidacy.

Meet the future of the Progressive Movement: Heather Mizeur.

One of my oldest friends lives in Maryland, way out in the country. She's a hard working single mother, trying to get by in this bad economy. It isn't easy. I visited her this summer and we talked about the pressures that are upon her and she told me that for all of her struggles to keep up, she was immensely grateful that she lived in a state that provides her daughter with health care. Maryland is the only state in the union that offers universal coverage for all kids, no matter what.

I didn't know at the time that my friend could thank one particular Maryland Assembly delegate for that little bit of peace of mind in her tumultuous life, a woman by the name of Heather Mizeur. And when I told my friend about her and how she shepherded that bill through the Assembly, she was devastated that she didn't live in her district so that she could vote for her.

Well, now she can. Today, Heather Mizeur is announcing her candidacy for Governor of Maryland and Blue America is honored to endorse her. She is the perfect embodiment of the progressive leaders we believe will lead the Democratic Party in the direction we must go if we are to change this country.

The daughter of a UAW member from Illinois, she aspired to public service from the time she was a little kid. "The experience of walking picket lines taught me the value of sacrifice and hard work and standing up for the courage of your convictions," she said. "Catholic teachings on social justice also inspired me."

And for someone who's only 40, she has amassed an impressive amount of experience in management and governance, with a decade of senior staff experience on Capitol Hill before her tenure in the General Assembly. A policy wonk who likes to delve into the details, (she wrote John Kerry's 2004 health care plan) she is also called the "Transparency Queen" by the Baltimore Sun, for sponsoring and winning passage of the Maryland Open Government Act. She is a leading anti-fracking activist and was one of 10 featured speakers at the huge Keystone Pipeline rally in front of the White House along with Bill McKibbon and leading climatologists. And last but not least, she was a leading strategist in the fight for marriage equality in Maryland and now lives in a state that fully recognizes her marriage to her wife of 8 years, Deborah. Yes, a Governor Mizeur will be breaking several glass ceilings as the first woman and first openly gay person to win the office.

John and I had the privilege of sitting down with Heather at Netroots Nation this year and both of us came away from the conversation believing that we had just met the future of the progressive movement. This is a person who can not only lead on policy (she's scary smart) but she can lead on strategy as well: as you can see, she gets things done. And more than anything she leads with her heart, up front and without apology, a true blue progressive in every way.

We don't often endorse in Governor's races, but this one is a no-brainer for us. We simply couldn't not support Heather Mizeur. We know she will be a great Governor of Maryland and we'd be grateful if you could help us get her there by donating to her campaign.

Heather Mizeur: Not Interested In Business As Usual At The Maryland State House And Not Willing To Settle For The Status Quo For Our Communities

Rarely does a candidate come along offering this dynamic trifecta-- an unabashed liberal... poised to break the glass ceiling as Maryland’s first woman governor... who would also be the nation’s first openly gay governor. I recently spoke with Maryland Delegate Heather Mizeur (D-Takoma Park, Silver Spring) and she quickly caught my attention when she spoke of courageousness and running to change the way we govern. "I’m fearless and I speak the truth. I’m not an establishment or insider candidate. We are a building a movement for positive social change."

She’s got an impressive background for managing and governing, with a decade of senior staff experience on Capitol Hill before her tenure in the Maryland General Assembly. She served as John Kerry’s Domestic Policy Director for four years and was the principal architect of his 2004 presidential campaign’s health care reform agenda. In a move that was a model for Obamacare, Heather's legislation expanded health coverage to young adults and foster children. One of her bills expanded access to free family planning to more women across Maryland and created innovative outreach efforts to find and enroll 50,000 more uninsured children in the state. Dubbed the “Transparency Queen” by the Baltimore Sun, she sponsored and won passage of the Maryland Open Government Act to livestream Committee hearings, eliminate government website paywalls, and to record votes online. And she and her wife an organic herb farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Heather Mizeur will make an amazing and inspiring Governor and we have an opportunity not only to make history but also change politics as usual by supporting her early and promoting her candidacy. Blue America will be working to help elect one of the sharpest candidates anywhere for the governor's chair in Maryland. You can donate to her campaign on the new Blue America page for gubernatorial candidates we're backing. Maryland will be one of the luckiest states in the nation if she's the next governor.

Guest Post By Heather Mizeur

My name is Heather Mizeur. I’m a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, a proud progressive, and later this summer, I plan to announce my candidacy for governor.

It looks like I’ll be running in a tough Democratic primary against two long-time politicians. Both have had designs on the governor’s mansion for years. They are political insiders, and that’s how they would govern.

And that’s why the insiders in Annapolis aren’t backing me-- I’m not interested in business as usual at the State House, and I’m not willing to settle for the status quo for our communities.

As a legislator and life long public servant, my record speaks for itself. I work tirelessly for what I believe in. From achieving marriage equality in Maryland (an issue that’s deeply personal to me and my amazing wife Deborah of eight years), to protecting the Western part of our state from reckless and dangerous fracking, I've accomplished a lot as a Delegate. As governor, I’d take on the many important issues we haven’t addressed yet and I’d win.

The next few months are crucial. I am working hard to ensure that when I announce my run for governor, I have the grassroots support that I need to beat the political establishment. I will be one of the most progressive governors in the country, but I can only win if I have support from people like you. The netroots can be the difference in a campaign like this one.

Help me make history and become the first woman governor in Maryland, and the first openly LGBT governor in the country. Click here and let me know that I have your support. It will go a long way in showing that we have what it takes to take on the establishment.

For far too long, the governor’s office in Maryland has been part of the old boys club-- recently, a columnist in the Baltimore Sun discussed the potential candidates in the race, and not only did he leave me out of the discussion, he even referred to the governor’s office as “the big daddy chair."

I want this campaign to be about the grassroots, not the grass tops. You can help us build a campaign that will make not just Maryland but all of America proud-- because we will always stand up and fight for our shared progressive values.

If you want to find out more about me, you can visit my website. And I would really appreciate a small contribution so that we can start our campaign in as strong a position as possible.

Thank you so much for your support.