On April 26, 2011, there will be a special election to fill an at-large seat on the D.C. Council. As you might now, the D.C. government is not known for being the most effective governing body around. Thankfully we have made some progressive strides, such as passing our gay marriage law last year. However, these were contentious votes and we need more progressive voices on the Council. D.C. should be an example to the rest of the country.
I am leading an effort to draft Bryan Weaver to run for D.C. Council. Bryan has worked in progressive politics for years, he is a former staffer for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. His wife, Maria Cardona is a leading voice in Democratic politics. He ran a well received underdog campaign for D.C. Council last year. Bryan's main focus now is on at-risk youth and he runs a non-profit called Hoops Sagrado that uses basketball to teach leadership skills.
This draft campaign has gotten media attention from the Washington Post and various other local outlets. But we need to raise some money. We need to show that this would be viable in the event Bryan decides to run. We're using ActBlue to raise funds, and I urge anyone and everyone to consider chipping in a buck or two. We've got a lot of first-time political activists working on this, and if we could raise just a few thousand dollars it would go a long way to showing our movement has some steam.
Last week, the D.C. Democratic State Committee made a temporary appointment to fill the vacancy. This process has been criticized far and wide as being undemocratic. The D.C. DSC had promised the vote would be open, and not conducted with a secret ballot. Ultimately, though, the results were not made public. You can see more about that process here. Seventy-four people, many long-time political insiders were able to select who would represent 600,000 residents on the D.C. Council. There was literally backroom deals being made at the meeting, with the door shut in the face of Washington Post reporters who wanted to observe.
We're working hard here in D.C. to chip away at the status quo. We could use your help.