So remember when the news story about Tea Party challenger Erick Bennett's (R. ME) domestic abuse conviction surfaced and Bennett claimed his conviction showed "integrity"? If you don't, here's the story:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bennett was convicted of Class D assault in a 2003 District Court ruling after attacking his wife. The two since have divorced.
He fought the conviction until 2004, when it was affirmed by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled that “the court did not commit clear error or abuse its discretion in excluding irrelevant evidence at trial,” and that “sufficient evidence does exist in the record to support his conviction.”
Still, Bennett claims he is innocent and said the justice system is stacked against alleged attackers in domestic violence cases. When asked about his specific case, he said he was “railroaded” by the court after declining to accept a plea agreement.
“All that needs to be done is you have to repeat what you wrote down in the police report and that allows the victim to be viewed as a credible witness,” he said. “So basically, if someone writes something down, it doesn’t have to be true. All they have to do is repeat that on the stand. … That’s grounds for anyone to be convicted of domestic violence.”
Bennett said Collins had supported laws that made it easier for victims to obtain convictions, but would not give any specific examples of which laws. He said he could provide specific information at a later date. - Bangor Daily News, 12/30/13
And here's Bennett's quote about integrity:
Well more details have surfaced about Benett's past with his ex0wife and it's pretty sickening:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
"The fact that I have been jailed repeatedly for not agreeing to admit to something I didn’t do should speak to the fact of how much guts and integrity I have," Bennett said. "I've noticed some people questioning that." - TPM, 1/24/14
Well the story is about to get much, much worse:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Mother Jones published a report Friday revealing that Bennett's then-wife Angela filed a report with the Bangor police, detailing the attack on the night of Jan. 16, 2004. In the report, she states that Bennett "repeatedly" assaulted her, squeezed her neck and threatened to kill her in front of the couple's young children.
"I knew I couldn't argue with him or he would hurt me worse," Angela wrote. "This isn't the 1st time he has hurt me. He tries to find excuses to hurt me. Fighting back makes him say I am the crazy one and he has to defend himself."
Angela subsequently moved with her children to her parents' home. In May that same year, Bennett was found guilty of assault and sentenced to 60 days in prison. According to Mother Jones, a judge later waived the sentence and instead ordered Bennett to one year's probation and the completion of a batterer's intervention program.
Bennett denied his wife's version both in court and in an interview with Mother Jones, in which he said his former wife initiated the attack and he simply tried to stop her. His efforts to fight the charges were denied by the Supreme Court of Maine in 2004. - Huffington Post, 1/24/14
You download the police report from Mother Jones but here's some more information:
http://www.motherjones.com/...
Bennett claims that one reason he's running for office is to try to change domestic-violence laws that he contends enable fraud. "Anything can be considered domestic assault in Maine," he says. Bennett adds: "All I would have to do is go to the police station and write down something. Then, once I get on the stand, I just need to recite that…And that is enough to get you convicted of domestic assault…I never saw it coming."
Christopher Almy, the district attorney for Penobscot County, where Bennett's trial was conducted, counters that obtaining a domestic-assault conviction in Maine "is not that simplistic. It's like any case: If there's going to be a conviction, you have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, you have to have witnesses provide credible evidence. The judge would have to believe what the witnesses have to say… It's about the same anywhere in the country."
"We have excellent judges here," says Jim Aucoin, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case against Erick. "If they found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, I'm sure it happened."
The chair of the Maine Republican Party, Rick Bennett (no relation), has denounced Erick Bennett's candidacy. "The Maine Republican Party stands firmly with Gov. [Paul] LePage, a leader in the battle against domestic violence, and the hundreds of Maine lawmakers who have put partisanship aside on this important issue," he says. "The Maine Republican Party expects its candidates to uphold the law and promote the sanctity and security of family life. Domestic violence is a gravely serious issue, and actions speak louder than words."
Erick Bennett's assault conviction is not the only controversy he brings to the race. He once compared Nelson Mandela to Joseph Stalin. He likened apartheid to "the system" of government under Obama. He called Maine Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud "a homo." ("I did abbreviate 'homo' for 'homosexual' because I'm lazy," he explains.) He is the founder of the Maine Equal Rights Center, a constitutional rights group that opposed the state's successful 2012 ballot initiative to legalize same-sex marriage. - Mother Jones, 1/24/14
With a clown like Benett, I highly doubt Senator Susan Collins (R. ME) has a lot to worry about losing to Benett. Then again, with Republican voters wanting a more conservative candidate, who knows. I am not cancelling anything out. However, I do like that Shenna Bellows (D. ME) is preparing herself for campaign against Collins, who would be tougher to beat. But she's doing an excellent job defining her candidacy compared to Collins:
http://www.pressherald.com/...
Although Collins is widely viewed as a safe bet for re-election in 2014 – with strong approval ratings even among Democrats and independents – her Democratic opponent, Shenna Bellows, plans to make the NSA and its sweeping information-gathering programs a major focus of her campaign.
Civil liberties issues often make strange political bed fellows, bringing together far-left liberals, tea party Republicans and hardcore libertarians outraged by what they see as dangerous government infringement on private lives.
As the former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, Bellows is obviously hoping that she can peel off enough of those disenfranchised tea partiers and libertarians to boost her numbers.
Whether Bellows will be able to make a large dent in Collins’ armor remains to be seen. On Friday, she said Obama’s proposal “falls short of real reform.”
“I’m running for United States Senate to stand up against the Washington pattern of sacrificing our liberties for a false sense of security,” Bellows said in a statement. “We need to stop dragnet surveillance and restore our constitutional freedoms to protect individual liberties and restore trust in our government again.” - Portland Press Herald, 1/19/14
Bellows has had an impressive first campaign cash haul:
http://www.kjonline.com/...
Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is trying to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, has been fundraising for only a few months, but on Monday her campaign committee announced more than $332,000 in donations.
The total, for the fourth quarter of 2013, is not yet posted with the Federal Election Commission. Collins’ fourth-quarter filings haven’t been published, either, but her most recent reports – and her previous defeats of well-financed opponents – show that Bellows has some catching up to do.
Collins’ campaign committee took in more than $3.3 million from 2009 to the third quarter of 2013.
However, Bellows’ team is touting its opening performance, particularly the number of small-dollar donations and the fact that her campaign didn’t officially launch until Oct. 23.
According to the campaign, 81.7 percent of the 1,771 contributions were $100 or less, while more than 80 percent of the donations came from Mainers.
“Our fundraising represents our values,” Bellows said in a prepared statement. “One of the biggest threats to our democracy is big money in politics, so it is refreshing to see that grassroots giving can triumph over special interests from out-of-state.”
She said, “That is what a US Senate campaign should look like: local, grassroots-funded and representative of the entire state.” - Kennebec Journal, 1/7/14
And by the way, here's another reason you should be excited about Bellows' campaign:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Shenna Bellows, the Democratic candidate for the 2014 Maine Senate race, calls herself a progressive and a libertarian. A former director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, Bellows supports bold action on climate change, a higher minimum wage, and less government surveillance. She is also the most prominent Senate candidate to boast her support for legalizing marijuana during a campaign.
Bellows faces a very tough road. In November polling, her opponent Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) remained among the top five most popular senators in the country, with a 61-percent approval rating.
Perhaps because of this, Bellows isn’t interested in avoiding controversy or tough questions. In the past, positions that could be considered soft-on-crime were the third rail for political candidates. There have been early signs this is changing, as now-Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) was successfully elected with criminal justice reform as a prominent feature of his campaign, and the Obama administration has conceded over the past few months that the United States imprisons too many people for too long. Unlike other candidates, Bellows is explicitly linked to support for marijuana and criminal justice reform through her ACLU experience, and says she’s proud of the ACLU’s leadership on this issue. So she’s taking another tack, in a move that could test the political viability of supporting marijuana legalization at the federal level.
In a conversation with ThinkProgress, Bellows explained that she envisions herself as a Senate leader on marijuana reform.
“Right now on the Senate side, there doesn’t seem to be a leader who has the courage to move that forward,” Bellows said. “I would be that leader.” In fact, no senator seems to have explicitly supported federal marijuana legalization, although some including Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Booker have at least spoken out against the current prohibition regime. Although several marijuana reform bills have been proposed in the House, none have been proposed in the Senate.
“I’m not gonna win by being overly cautious or afraid of what people think about who I am or what I represent,” Bellows said. “I may win by being bolder and more honest about the change this country needs. So supporting marijuana legalization is being smart on crime because there are real crimes that do harm to our communities, crimes against persons, that we absolutely need to address. And we need to fund our police departments and our local infrastructure. But when we waste government resources in locking nonviolent offenders up and more resources on spying on ordinary Americans, then that is reducing resources available to really focus on those people who would do us real harm.” - Think Progress, 1/13/14
Bellows is a bold candidate who may have a tough climb ahead of her, but she does deserve our support. Bellows has been called "the Elizabeth Warren of civil liberties" and just like Warren, she's a progressive populist running up against a center right Republican in a New England state and she's running against the Senator who helped create the Department of Homeland Security with Joe Lieberman. It's still early in the game and Bellows has a long road ahead of her but I'm ready to take that road and help get her in the Senate. If you want to join me, click her to get involved with or donate to Bellows campaign:
http://bellowsforsenate.com/