Congressman Marty Meehan is resigning his congressional seat this July to become the new chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. His desire to succeed John Kerry as Senator has now been thwarted by Kerry not running for president in 2008 and running for reelection instead in 2008. Meehan is the most assiduous fundraiser in Congress ...a talent that commended him to the UMASS-Lowell board.
Indeed Meehan leaves ...at the moment anyway...5.2 million or so in his campaign account. Money that we all asked him to donate in 2006 so we could get more Democrats elected.
We should all remember his name from the "Use it or Lose It" campaign. To update people this was a campaign begun by Chris Bowers of MyDD in the fall of 2006 to get Democrats with large warchests in very safe seats to donate to party committees when it became apparent that we could not only win but win big.
He was a major target because he had so much to donate and he didn't. Fortunately we won back Congress without him but we could have won even bigger with him. With this Iraq war vote it would sure be nice to have a few more Democratic votes to play with...maybe even crucialto the right outcome.
What can he do with his money...I'm still checking out.
I suggest that Rep. Meehan can still do the right thing and donate that money to some upstart campaigns that almost won in 2006 and who are trying again...like Larry Kissell, Darcy Burner, and Eric Massa. Of course there is the DCCC and the DNC.
I am waiting to see what he does. I am pretty sure he's allowed to keep it, but I don't know what all the rules are on how to spend it. I do know that he can keep it to donate to political campaigns as John Kerry did with the Washington State governor's race. So keep some of it but set out a plan of how to spend it to benefit the Democratic party.
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO DO THE RIGHT THING
See links for stories re Meehan
http://www.politico.com/... 7/3113.html
http://www.examiner.com/... has_been_key_UMass_Lowell_backer_in_Cong ress.html