Would You Invest In Six New Paul Wellstones?

New Paul Wellstones? Don't stay up late looking through the DCCC Red-to-Blue list for one. Steve Israel, Joe Crowley and Debbie Wasserman Schultz aren't looking for reformers or independent thinkers for the Democratic caucus. They're looking for replications of themselves-- slimy, corrupt careerists who do what they're told. A few decent progressives have slipped through onto their list but, over all, if you want more of the sick and degenerate politics in DC that hacks like Boehner, Cantor, Hoyer, Israel and Wasserman Schultz preside over, their list is just right for you.

I've asked you to look at the Blue America list of House candidates before, but today I want to go in a completely different direction-- state legislative races. That IS where the next Paul Wellstone is-- or, hopefully-- Paul Wellstones are-- going to be coming from. And there is literally no one in the United States of America who has been better-- and who has a better track record-- in identifying these leaders than ProgressiveKick. This cycle they've identified 6 rock star progressives running viable races for state legislatures in swing districts across the country. These stupendous six are our future progressive Congressional candidates and the alternative to the politics of corruption enforced by the rotten careerists like Hoyer, Boehner, Wasserman Schultz, Cantor and the rest of the congressional bandits on both sides of the aisle.

Progressive Kick made that awesome video above attacking sleazy GOP incumbent, Greg Brower in Washoe County, Nevada. Beyond ads like that they're financing critical door-to-door canvasses and online advertising in the six states where they have found exemplary progressive leaders running for the state legislature. You can contribute to their efforts here. These are the candidates they're trying to give a boost:

•Shemia Fagan (Oregon House 51)

Shemia is a small business attorney and a member of her local school board. Shemia’s work ethic is exemplified by her rigorous door-to-door canvassing in the district almost until the day she gave birth to her son just a few days ago.

•Zach Dorholt (Minnesota House 14B)

Zach Dorholt is a mental health counselor who helps people get back into the workforce and co-owns a natural foods restaurant with his mom. Zach’s platform includes restoring education funding, supporting workers’ rights and livable wages, investing in sustainable energy sources, ensuring equal rights for everyone, and reforming campaign finance.

•Marci Blaze (New Mexico House 23)

Marci Blaze’s strong progressive ethos includes support for government transparency, clean energy, reproductive choice, raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, & safeguarding seniors.

•Bud Sizemore (Washington House 47-1)

Bud Sizemore’s an 18 year veteran firefighter and city councilman whose priorities include ensuring children’s services, parks & open space, making taxes fairer and of course public safety.

•Sheila Leslie (Nevada Senate 15)

Sheila Leslie is the leading progressive in the entire Nevada legislature, the go-to woman whenever a progressive group needs anything accomplished by the Nevada government. For 14 years she’s been a passionate advocate for child welfare and has fought to protect the state’s environment and achieve better health care for all.

•Daniel Kagan (Colorado House 3)

Daniel Kagan is a successful small businessman & environmental champion who’s been a state rep for three years. He’s fought for public education funding, giving Colorado companies the first crack at state contracts, and increasing jobs training for under- and unemployed people.

Progressive Kick bills itself as "an organization of pragmatic progressives, dedicated to construction of a society that values the needs/rights/responsibilities of all of its members-from the most powerful to the least. Since the most powerful are already being taken care of, our capacity building focuses on the rest of us." They were the first organization to ever introduce Blue America to Rep. Patsy Keever and to help her get elected to the North Carolina legislature. Now she's fighting the good fight in a pretty red district against Wall Street shill Patrick McHenry. I trust Progressive Kick to find the next Patsy Keever-- and the next Paul Wellstone. Again, you can help them accomplish their goals here, through ActBlue.

One more ad, this one about Brian Watson in Colorado:

Will The DCCC Blow The Democrats' Chances Of Re-Taking The House?

Those gloves are meant for progressives.

Friday we saw what a farce the DCCC claim to neutrality is when it comes to primaries between progressives and reactionaries. They always come down on the side of the more conservative, less grassroots candidates. After Rahm Emanuel left, Chris Van Hollen dialed this back a bit, but the new chairman, "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel, is, if anything, even worse than Emanuel. And he's also either much stupider than Emanuel... or something far worse.

As you probably know, the DCCC released the cycle's first iteration of its "Red to Blue" list. It could have been worse-- I suspect that Donna Edwards and Jared Polis being on the committee ameliorated the worst and most aggressive tendencies of Israel and his cronies to lard the list up with all conservatives. But it's still plenty larded up with the kind of crap that, if they get into Congress, will proceed to vote with the Republicans. Like #1 on the DCCC's Front Line list, John Barrow (GA). Barrow has voted 75% of the time on crucial rollcalls with Cantor and Boehner and against the Democrats. Yet that's where the DCCC puts its cash. And in this new list, they've embraced every slimy corporate crook the Blue Dog caucus demanded they endorse. Worse yet, in his mania to destroy the Democratic Party from within by dragging it to the right (where he has always been), Israel is ignoring any real shot at winning back the House for the Democrats. In fact, Israel's strategy precludes any possibility of winning a majority in the House.

As Joshua Grossman from ProgressiveKick pointed out when the "Red to Blue" announcement was made last week, there are over two dozen swing districts where they haven't bothered to do anything at all, not even put a candidate on what I call their phony-baloney "Emerging Races" or "Emerging Districts" list. "When we say 'Swing District,' " Joshua told me, "it's an assessment of the district itself, not the strength of the incumbent in the district. Some of you will look at these districts and scoff, saying they're unwinnable. Sabato's Crystal Ball has only 154 seats rated as Strong Dem (similar to our ratings). If we don't target these districts, Democrats could win every toss-up race in the USA and still come up short of the 218 seats needed for a majority."

Joshua's list includes districts where Democrats have a really good chance to win, like four in Florida-- FL-10 (where they seem to be waiting for Charlie Crist to jump in or something), FL-16 (where clueless plutocrat Tom Rooney could be vulnerable to a well-financed challenge from progressive Dave Lutrin), FL-24 (where Nick Ruiz is battling teabagger extremist Sandy Adams), FL-25 (where incumbent David Rivera is always just one small step ahead of being indicted). Other excellent targets on the list include Charlie Upton (MI-6), Mike Rogers (MI-8) and Frank Guinta (NH-1), being challenged by, respectively, progressives John Waltz, Lance Enderle and Carol Shea-Porter, independent-minded grassroots Democrats whom Steve Israel fears.

As long as we're talking about targeting, Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress Green pointed out the 40 House Republicans who make up the Koch Caucus. Each had a perfect 100% score last year from the Koch brothers’ astroturf group Americans for Prosperity.

AFP judged Congress on their votes to protect the Koch brothers’ right-wing petrochemical empire on such issues as the repeal of President Obama’s new health care law, pre-empting EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget to end Medicare, ending ethanol subsidies, several Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval to overturn new regulations, and the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.

The list is below; you can click on it to enlarge it. The DCCC isn't going after many of them, although some, like Tim Walberg (MI), Patrick McHenry (NC), Scott Garrett (NJ) and Steve Chabot (OH). would be obvious targets if the DCCC wasn't being led by someone as clueless as Israel.

Tuesday Is Election Day-- Just A Small Number Of People Will Decide The Fate Of A Whole State... Iowa

You can't have missed the merciless attack on working families that has been underway in every single state where the Republican Party has managed to grab power. The gloves are off and the fangs of no-holds-barred fascism are out for real-- from Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Alabama... wherever a right-wing legislature and a right-wing governor can get away with whatever they want with no checks and no balance. Last month we took a look at what's behind the latest Republican powergrab in Iowa. Authors Mike Lux and Corey Robin set the stage what GOP reactionary politics and their historical imperative to attack the basis of emancipation for working people. Now we have to face the actual election... in three days.

There's a deranged Republican governor (and lieutenant governor) and a GOP majority in the lower House. A thin-- one vote-- majority in the state Senate has kept the Republicans in check. That 26-24 majority is on the line Tuesday because the Governor Branstad appointed a Democratic senator, Swati Dandekar, a very conservative, Blue Dog-type, to a statewide board, just so he could call a special election that could allow Republicans to take control of the Senate-- and thereby and the entire Iowa state government. If Republicans win, there’ll be a 25-25 tie which would be broken by the Republican Lieutenant Governor. There are 50,000 voters who can decide the fate of all Iowans-- and the GOP has a 140 person registration advantage. This is going to be tight. This week the NY Times covered it like some kind of a reality show-- more exciting than whether or not Nancy Grace will finally be kicked off Dancing With The Stars or whether or not the Kardashian "marriage" was ever consummated.

By any standard, the midterm election had been a landslide for Iowa Republicans. Last November, the party won back the governorship, gained a majority in the General Assembly and nearly took the Senate, leaving a perilous 26-to-24 edge there as the Democrats’ sole claim to power.

But, as frustrated Republicans would soon discover, that sliver of a majority was enough to halt much of their conservative legislation from ever being debated, let alone voted on, including bills on property taxes, business regulation, education, abortion and, most controversially, a ballot measure to reverse the state’s distinction as one of the few to permit same-sex marriage.

Now Republicans see a second chance to resuscitate their agenda. In a move his opponents call both shrewd and cynical, Terry E. Branstad, the Republican governor, pushed aside more than a dozen applicants for a high-paying post on a state board and instead recruited a moderate Democrat, Swati Dandekar, who happened to be a state senator from a Republican-leaning district.

...Michael E. Gronstal, who, as the Senate majority leader, decides what legislation comes up for debate, promoted obstruction as an accomplishment. He has warned that without the divided government, Republicans would overreach, and he specifically cited the situation in neighboring Wisconsin.

“We were able to stop them from passing a whole bunch of bad legislation,” Mr. Gronstal said.

Though both candidates have insisted that the race will be decided on local issues, the statewide implications have consistently risen to the fore-- staff members for both party leaders in the Senate have been out knocking on doors. Most discussed is the future of same-sex marriage in the state, an issue that has featured prominently in state elections since the unanimous 2009 ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court that overturned a state law limiting marriage to unions between a man and woman.

Groups opposed to same-sex marriage, including the National Organization for Marriage, are sending fliers for Ms. Golding, and supporters of same-sex marriage have been volunteering on behalf of Ms. Mathis.

“We see it as a great opportunity to break the handcuffs, to advance some pro-family issues, primarily the marriage vote,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Family Leader, who led the successful effort last year to vote out three State Supreme Court justices because of the same-sex marriage ruling.

Troy Price, executive director of One Iowa, a gay rights organization, said that if Republicans took the seat, a statewide vote on banning recognition of same-sex marriage would become more likely, though Mr. Price noted that such a referendum could take place no sooner than 2014.

Our friends at Progressive Kick are handling an aggressive absentee ballot campaign for the Democrats and we've been helping them raise money for the kinds of boots on the ground efforts that can win this contest and hold back the right wing horde. BleedingHeartland.com is reporting promising trends in the early voting. "As of 2 November, the Democrats have exceeded their 2010 general election return total, while the Republican ballot requests (thus far) fall short of 2010 early voting, with a substantially larger lag in returns." That is exactly the work Progressive Kick has been doing with the generous contributions online. "Poor GOP performance," they report tentatively and hopefully, "coupled to elevated Dem and NP returns in the more youthful precincts that posted some of the more favorable results for 2010 judicial retention bodes well for Democrats retaining the senate majority."          

Sneak Attack In Iowa

Liz Mathis-- all that's standing between Iowa and a total right-wing takeover

Our friends in Iowa need help-- and they need it badly. Progressive Kick is stepping up to the plate on this one.

Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania are just five states that were Kochified last year-- electing extreme right Republican governors and extreme right legislatures guaranteeing no checks, no balances. All 5 immediately started implementing pieces of the ALEC agenda for anti-democratic domestic fascism. Disenfranchising millions of voters has been a constant policy objective for conservatives worldwide and for the Republican Party here in the U.S. Let's turn again, for a second, to trusted historian Corey Robin (The Reactionary Mind). How perfectly does this describe far right governors Rick Snyder, John Kasich, Rick Scott, Scott Walker and Tom Corbett?

[C]onservatives have argued that any demand from or on behalf of the lower orders, no matter how tepid or tardy, is too much, too soon, too fast. Reform is revolution, improvement is insurrection. "It may be good or bad," a gloomy Lord Carnarvon wrote of the Second Reform Act of 1867-- a bill twenty years in the making that tripled the size of the British electorate-- "but it is revolution."

...Today's conservative may have made his peace with some emancipations past; others, like labor unions and reproductive freedom, he still contests. But that does not alter the fact that when those emancipations first arose as a question, whether in the context of revolution or reform, his predecessor was in all likelihood against them. Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is one of the few contemporary conservatives who acknowledge the history of conservative opposition to emancipation. Where other conservatives like to lay claim to the abolitionist or civil rights mantle, Gerson admits that "honesty requires the recognition that many conservatives, in other times, have been hostile to religiously motivated reform" and that "the conservative habit of mind once opposed most of these changes."

What changes does he mean? Remember our pal Mike Lux and his brilliant book, The Progressive Revolution-- How The Best In America Came To Be? Let me remind you of a list of progressive reforms adamantly opposed by conservatives throughout of country's history-- and many still being contested by contemporary Kochified domestic fascists like the aforementioned governors Rick Snyder, John Kasich, Rick Scott, Scott Walker and Tom Corbett-- not to leave out GOP governors in Maine, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona... you get the point:

• The American Revolution
• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy
• Universal white male suffrage
• Public education
• The emancipation of the slaves
• The national park system
• Food safety
• The breakup of monopolies
• The Homestead Act
• Land grant universities
• Rural electrification
• Women’s suffrage
• The abolition of child labor
• The eight hour workday
• The minimum wage
• Social Security
• Civil rights for minorities and women
• Voting rights for minorities and the poor
• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites
• Consumer product safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

Every single one of those reforms, which are literally the reforms that made this country what it is today, was accomplished by the progressive movement standing up to the fierce opposition of conservative reactionaries who were trying to preserve their own power. American history is one long argument between progressivism and conservatism.

As we see in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and all over the country, conservatives are still fighting these battles as their very raison d'etre. And, believe it or not, the battle is about to boil over in, of all places, nice "moderate" Iowa, where a hard core right-wing governor, Terry Branstad, already controls one House through House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, an ideological freakshow from Hiawatha, and has a plan for capturing the second. Our good friends at Progressive Kick sounded the alarm today:

The Republicans have mounted a sneak attack-- trying to send Iowa down the same terrible road as Wisconsin and Ohio. Progressive Kick is partnering with our Iowa friends, Working Families to fight back. Iowa’s future is hanging in the balance and YOU can tip the scales!

Democrats were clinging to a 26-24 majority in the State Senate, but the Governor appointed a Democratic senator [Swati Dandekar, a very conservative, Blue Dog-type] to a statewide board, just so he could call a special election that could allow Republicans to take control of the State Senate and the entire Iowa state government. If Republicans win, there’ll be a 25-25 tie which would be broken by the Republican Lieutenant Governor. This snap special election will be held in less than three weeks on November 8. The super-thin Dem majority in the State Senate is our only finger in the dike against all kinds of evil Republican.

The Republican governor and State House want to kill HAWK-I, Iowa’s health insurance program for low- and middle-class children. They want to kill universal pre-school.

They want to kill collective bargaining rights for hard working teachers, nurses, firefighters and other community heroes.

They want to discriminate by taking away the rights of some Iowans to get married.

In a district of approximately 50,000 voters, there are 140 more registered Republicans than Democrats. The Democratic candidate, former KCRG-TV 9 news anchor Liz Mathis, is a passionate advocate for children. The Republican, lobbyist Cindy Golding, noisily campaigns against unions on her web site.

As of last week, over $400,000 had been spent on this special election. Progressive Kick, Working Families & Citizen Action are taking on the somewhat unglamorous, but utterly crucial task of making sure they wring every possible absentee ballot out of this small district. Our old friend Joshua Grossman, president of Progressive Kick, reminded me this morning why contributing to this effort is so important and so useful. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime for small contributors to swing an election-- 2% of Iowans will be deciding the entire control of Iowa government. $50 let's us collect 5 extra absentee ballots and the race is that close with a 193 vote registration difference between the parties out of 50,000 voters!" Every cent collected for Progressive Kick's Iowa Fund here will be matched dollar for dollar-- so if you give $25, they'll have a total of $50-- and all administrative costs have already been paid. Every dime goes right into the field work.

Progressive Kick-- Win Big by Thinking Small

I hope by now all DWT readers are aware that we participate in the Blue America PAC to help encourage a more progressive-- and more fearlessly progressive-- Congress. Most of our candidates are running for the House (although we have a separate page for Senate challengers as well). What we don't do-- or at least haven't so far-- is endorse people running for President. I don't think we've endorsed any gubernatorial candidates either and we haven't been endorsing legislative candidates. That isn't because we don't think that's important work. In fact, it's crucially important work. And I'm excited to tell you about an organization that is doing just that, Progressive Kick. As you can see they have already endorsed progressive state legislative candidates in Oregon and Pennsylvania.

Right now they've set up a matching fund to be able to deliver a quarter million dollars across several down-ballot races around the country. A quarter million dollars doesn't do all that much anymore in U.S. Senate races and certainly doesn't win a House seat anymore-- but it is really powerful in local races and can make all the difference in the world-- a difference that impacts redrawing of districts as well as the all-important existence of a deep and well prepared "bench." Aside from the Oregon and Pennsylvania candidates, by next week they'll have candidates up from Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

So basically, what Progressive Kick is committing to is a minimum of $125,000 that they've already received from major donors as a dollar-for-dollar matching-fund for whichever candidates generate some money on the ActBlue page. In other words, if you want to see progressive Frank Bovalino take out right-wing lemming Jim Christiana in Pennsylvania's 15th House district, by donating $20, you guarantee that Bovalino's campaign gets $40. These are all carefully vetted candidates in close but winnable races. Progressive Kick is concentrating exclusively on races that will lead to control of Congressional redistricting in the respective states.

All their candidates are progressive leaders with real backbones, unlike some Democratic members of Congress who we’ll have to hold our noses to vote for in order to keep a majority. Many of the candidates in this effort will be the progressive congressional candidates of the future. Does this sort of thing work, you ask? Let me share a couple of success stories with you, direct from candidates who have benefited. Patsy Keever is currently the progressive Democratic nominee for North Carolina House District 115. After winning her primary last month she wrote Progressive Kick that “I originally decided to run for the NC Legislature when I read in the local newspaper that my current legislator was ranked at the very bottom of all NC legislators by the nonpartisan organization, Environment NC…. I was up against all the 'powers that be' in the state, and it was a real shot in the arm to get the surprise support from Progressive Kick at a time when we were unable to get support from the groups I had expected to have… we won our primary by a 60 - 40 margin against an entrenched incumbent who outspent me five to one…”

Rep. Rick Glazier is one of the most progressive members of the North Carolina House and he represents that 45th District. This is, in part, a letter he wrote to Progressive Kick:

“…we have been able to create a strong progressive-center coalition that has enacted a series of social and economically progressive legislation that has made an enormous difference in the lives of families and children:

minimum wage legislation well before Congress acted several years ago, a substantial earned income tax credit, public funding of elections of judicial and some executive branch offices, comprehensive sex education in middle schools, the nation’s first actual innocence commission modeled on the only one in the world in the UK, a series of mortgage protection bills now viewed as a national consumer model, elimination of predatory pay day lending practices, a comprehensive homeowner anti-scam protection law, an anti-bullying bill which protects all children, including those on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, which is the first in the south and one of the most comprehensive in the country, the first bill that removes the cap on damages for any oil spill damage off the east coast in light of Deepwater Horizon, and a series of laws aimed at reforming the criminal justice system, including videotaping of all homicide interrogations, a detailed witness identification procedures bill, a model DNA and biological evidence preservation bill, and the nation’s second state to pass a Racial Justice Act…

All of this progressive legislation passed in North Carolina in the last 2 sessions and much of it by the slimmest of margins, including four of these bills passing by one vote with the Speaker in each case breaking the tie and after bitter and extended ideological attack from the opposition…

… the work and funds of Progressive Kick are critical if we are to maintain control. Democrats, particularly progressives, win here because we have better candidates, are far better organized with strong ground games, and have significantly greater resources than our opponents. When any of these three factors do not exist we lose, so resources at the state level make an incredible difference. For example in my House district, which is a swing district with a 47% Democratic performance margin and which went hard for George Bush in 2004 and John McCain in 2008, I still won by 123 votes in 2004 and 700 votes in 2006 because of work and time and resources in my district, but my seat now costs over $275,000 to hold…

… redistricting will occur in 2011 and how that proceeds in our state will decide control of the General Assembly and our congressional delegation for a decade…”

So, yes... it works. Again, please consider helping out our colleagues at Progressive Kick-- and remember, whatever you donate will be doubled by the matching fund.