please excuse the shameless self-promotion by posting my own article. (I didn't get paid for it, if that helps.) But it's almost March, people, this candidate needs your time, money and voice.
also on:
http://race2006.blogspot.com
2/14/2006
Why a Progressive, Sunday School Teaching, College Professor Might Beat Sensenbrenner
By Mary Ann Swissler, c 2006
GOP Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, normally considered a brick wall when it comes to unseating him from office, is probably going to have an interesting year.
Accustomed to little or no opposition every two years since winning the seat in 1978, this November's midterm election promises to be a real bruiser, according to state party officials and activists interviewed.
"In a normal year you might say, 'Boy this is a tough district.' But seats that were not competitive or only marginally competitive are now competitive," declares Joe Wineke, state chairman of Wisconsin's Democratic Party. Sensenbrenner's office declined comment for this article.
Wineke says that the congressman is already vulnerable in 2006, because of the well-publicized scandals of the national Republican Party.
The stakes were raised last June when, during a Democrat-led, House Judiciary Committee hearing on human rights abuses, Sensenbrenner famously hammered the gavel down, turned off the microphones, and pronounced it adjourned.
Many, such as AirAmerica broadcaster Randi Rhodes called for his ouster. "Violating House rules should disqualify Mr. Sensenbrenner from being a member of the House let alone the chairman of one our most important committees. This is the committee which is charged with maintaining civil liberties, free speech, and checking the power of the executive branch with judicial oversight."
And, according to National Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean in a conference call with all 50 state party chairs, this 5th District race in Wisconsin is the "most crucial" in the country.
He appears vulnerable on his home turf as well, said blogger (SensenbrennerWatch.com) and Milwaukee schoolteacher Jay Bullock. "One, there is a sense that he has 'gone Washington' - he identifies more with the governing class in D.C. than with regular people.
"You can see this in his pushing of the bankruptcy bill, for example, or in his holding up of the child abduction bill a couple of years back because it wasn't good enough for him, even though the rest of the House was ready to pass it," said Bullock.
"The second thing is that he's just plain mean. Since his re-election, Sensenbrenner's had shouting matches with his constituents at town hall meetings. He's stormed out of Judiciary Committee meetings, taking his gavel with him. He re-wrote Democratic amendments to the interstate abortion bill to make it sound like Dems were trying to protect child molesters (not true), and he personally meddled in the sentencing of a drug offender in Illinois for no good reason." That last move failed in court.
Enter the Democrat's unlikely conqueror: Bryan Kennedy, of the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee associate professor.
Kennedy, 36, has never held public office and isn't even a history or political-science wonk. His discipline is Portuguese language and culture, begun after spending years researching Brazil's poor populations.
Yet as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel noted in 2004, "(Kennedy) is a veteran of academic politics, which can be just as brutal and petty as the kind practiced in Washington."
That year, Kennedy ran against Sensenbrenner and of course lost, but earned respectable numbers, 129,384 to Sensenbrenner's 271,253. He won four wards in outlying, conservative Waukesha County, and it's those inroads that Kennedy says he's building on. He scored higher in more urban, more Democratic Milwaukee County, receiving 42,780 votes to Sensenbrenner's 47,296. Overall, Kennedy won 17 wards in Milwaukee County.
In person, Kennedy has the same effusive smile and button-down style seen on his Web site. He's pro-choice, pro-labor, and pro-gay. And another thing: He's a Sunday school teaching Mormon who derides his church for siding with conservative Christian leaders. "I'm actually very offended by ideologues that want to push their ideas and their religious beliefs on me," he commented.
His take on anti-gay agendas, for instance? "I think it's really one of those situations where you ask, `Do you stand for freedom, do you stand for liberty, do you stand for an individual's right to make decisions without government getting in the way?'"
He said, "It should be a matter of whom you choose to be in your family, without government interference."
Rhodes says converts should be commended. "Many (Republicans) are coming into (the Democratic) party, and I hope we will welcome them with the respect and care they deserve. They have been lied to and abused.... It's hard for someone to admit they have been voting against their own best interests. Let's just tell them they have a home in our party."
Kennedy sounds like most Democrats at this point in history. He said, "I'm not anti-business. I just want business to be responsible; I want it to provide a living wage and benefits. And still be profitable. But not so profitable that they end up shirking their social responsibilities to take care of families by providing health insurance benefits."
Bullock says Kennedy's moderation would fit in much better with the district as a whole than "Sensenbrenner's extremism."
"I think that if the district really gets a chance to know him, he will win over disaffected Republican and independent voters easily," he says.
Bullock, who lives next door in U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore's 4th District, commented, "Bryan is perfect for the district because he embodies the values and fiscal sense that the voters in the 5th District want. For a long time, Bryan was actually a Republican, until the early 1990s. He has seen how far the current crop of Republican leaders has moved the party from the values of Lincoln or even Eisenhower."
But Waukesha native and Madison broadcaster Shawn Prebil says he's not so sure Kennedy will win this November. Prebil says she admires Kennedy's efforts but doubts he can overcome the district's intense dislike of Democrats. "Being a Democrat in the 5th District, having that `D' after your name on the ballot, you do yourself in," he says.
Eventually, though, if Kennedy keeps doing what he's been doing over the past few years, people will get to know him and he can take over Sensenbrenner's job. Says Prebil, "I give him a lot of credit. He's out there pounding the pavement and doing the work. ...He's doing all the right things, he went to the right places. He went to the labor halls; here's a guy who's actually shown up. "
Bullock believes that despite the uphill battle, it's Kennedy's year to prevail. "The 5th District may be conservative, but they won't tolerate Sensenbrenner's kind of grinchy, mean-spiritedness."
-Swissler, a Madison-based writer, can be reached at eyewryt@gmail.com.