I ain't rolling in dough, but I'm a little better off now than a few years ago. I can afford to make (small) political donations and decided to do so in time for the end of this quarter. I went through a few steps to make my decisions.
I looked at Palin's crosshairs map on Facebook. I looked at votes on Stupak. I thought about who the sitting Congresscritters defeated to get into office. I looked at potential gains in Senate seats. And mostly went for freshmen or sophomores in the House. Bill Halter, challenging Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, is the only candidate chosen for Orange-to-Blue by kos. A few other things came into play, too.
You can get to any candidate you like through the ActBlue candidates page.
I'm curious who y'all have made donations to, and why. Here's mine:
- AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick. One of the crosshairs seats, but that's off balance from 2008, because of McCain's favorite son status. Kirkpatrick's a fluent speaker of the Navajo language, which gives her a lot of points from me. She won the open seat formerly held by corrupt Rick Renzi before he declined to run again.
- AZ-05: Harry Mitchell. He defeated Abramoff-challenged J.D. Hayworth in 2006. Hayworth apparently misses the perqs of power, because he's now challenging McCain in the GOP primary for Senate.
- AZ-08: Gabrielle Giffords. Won the open seat after Jim Kolbe, openly gay Republican, retired in 2008. District includes Tucson, and borders Mexico. 2008 was the year we got border "bingo" - every district along our southern border is represented by a Democrat. People along the border don't like Republican attitudes about immigration and border security.
- AR-Sen: Bill Halter, for all the reasons kos has put forward on the FP.
- CA-11: Jerry McNerney. Wind engineer with a PhD in mathematics. He defeated hyper-noxious Richard Pombo in 2006. They called him "Dragon Slayer" in the House honor of knocking off one of Delay's henchmen and committee chairs who was up to his ears in Abramoff. I worked hard to help him get elected in 2006, so am continuing to send some support.
- CA-36: Marcy Winograd. She's challenging Jane Harmon, who is arguably too conservative for her constituents in and around Venice, CA. Harmon's a Blue Dog DLC member.
- CO-04: Betsy Markey. She took two tries to defeat the dreadful Marilyn Musgrave (who didn't even have the decency to concede in a timely fashion when she lost the 2008 election.)
- FL-24: Suzanne Kosmas. She defeated Abramoff-challenged Tom Feeney, and is now on Palin's hit list.
- MN-01: Tim Walz. This district caught my fancy in 2006, because of the bizarre lunacy of incumbent Gil Gutknect - who seems to have fallen out of Garrison Keillor tale.
- MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan. One of the reasonably good chances for a Democratic pick-up for retiring Kit Bond's seat.
- NH-Sen: Paul Hodes. The sophomore Congressman is running for the seat Judd Gregg's retiring from. Another pickup opportunity.
- NM-01: Martin Heinrich. Favorite son from NM, and a million (or more) times better than its previous occupant, Heather Wilson. Wilson had an unsuccessful run for Senate, losing in the GOP primary in 2008. She's Abramoff-tainted, plus US-Attorney scandal vis-a-vis David Iglesias.
- NM-03: Ben Ray Lujan. He's my Congressman, and I like him.
- OH-Sen: Jennifer Brunner. She's running for Republican Voinovich's seat. He's retiring. She did a lot of good cleaning up elections in Ohio in the wake of that dreadful Kenneth Blackwell.
- VA-05: Tom Pereillo. The only "Yes" vote on Stupak. A gesture of support because of the violence intended for him. Plus he's pretty good on energy.
Sardonyx is providing matching funds for donations for his selected list of candidates in Top Comments tonight. So you can multiply your giving that way.
I'd love to hear who you're donating to, and why. Of course, not everyone's in a position to give, but I've seen donations as low as $1 on Act Blue so it doesn't take much.
If you don't like what someone's doing (Obama on offshore drilling, or single payer or whatever...), you can always find a Democratic candidate you like to donate to and/or volunteer for.