Melissa Bean is the Representative from Illinois House District 8. She is a Blue Dog Democrat who was elected from an historically Republican district in 2004. Republicans see her as vulnerable and will certainly target the district in 2008 the way they did in 2006.
Bean is a conservative Democrat from a conservative district. Like the other Blue Dogs, her voting record is a source of frustration to progressive Democrats. Sometimes it seems her only service to Democrats is that she is another caucus member that allows for a Democratic majority.
She published a letter in the Chicago Tribune recently about the recent House vote for ENDA, which prohibits discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace. As I was reading the letter, I thought it had been written by someone like Jan Schakowsky, and was shocked to see it written by Bean. It felt good to know that an issue like anti gay discrimination is now considered mainstream enough even for Blue Dogs.
Melissa Bean is serving her second term as the Representative from Illinois House District 8. She defeated 35-year veteran Republican Philip Crane in 2004, and held off a Republican challenge in 2006 for her second term.
IL-8 was considered a Republican stronghold (the Representative before Phil Crane was none other than Donald Rumsfeld before Bean's victory. While it now has a Cook Partisan Index of R +5, Bean was the first Democrat elected since the district was drawn up in 1935.
Bean is one of those Blue (Bush) Dog Democrats so frustrating to progressives. She has consistently voted in favor of the Iraq war, voted to extend Bush tax cuts, voted for the Military Commissions Act, for CAFTA, etc. She has an American Conservative rating of 48%, the highest of any Illinois Democrat, and an ADA Liberal Quotient of 60%, the lowest of any Illinois Democrat (as an example, Dan Lipinski is at 33% and 70% respectively). So far this session, she has voted with Democrats 80% of the time. Bean represents the dilemna that progressives face with the Democratic party--as a conservative Democrat, she often votes against the progressive agenda, but she represents a district that would otherwise vote Republican and would never elect a progressive. So, on the plus side, we get a caucus vote that results in committee chairpersons like Henry Waxman.
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I read this letter to the editor in the Nov 20 2007 Chicago Tribune, in support of ENDA, which prohibits discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace:
...Teary-eyed members, including myself, were touched not by Congressman Frank, Financial Services Committee chairman, but by Barney, their respected gay colleague, emotionally sharing how he has personally faced discrimination and his passionate pleas to finally remove such workplace barriers from the lives of gay Americans...
I was excited to tell my daughters about what Barney said on the floor and how Congress responded. He said: "Americans shouldn't fear losing their jobs because someone might find out who they love." We voted to make sure they won't have to.
A progressive couldn't have said it any better!
Once again--these are mainstream, American values that express the best of who we are as a nation.