Help Progressives Win is a WEEKLY column,
posting at 9 am Pacific Standard Time each Saturday.
There are thousands of Progressive candidates running for office across American in 2016, and they need your help to win.
Please don’t forget those running for office in your city and county this coming year — those down-ballot races make a big difference in your daily life, from deciding which Traffic Engineer to hire this spring which translates into which potholes get fixed on your daily commute to work; to which Port Commissioner gets elected and has a massive amount of influence determining if a foreign corporation wins a bid to build and maintain a new Oil Terminal at the port in your town, putting the safety and health of your family and those of all your fellow residents at risk, just to line the pockets of investors on another continent!
So please step up and make some time in your busy schedule to help local candidates, who often have no resources or staff. You can find a local candidate by contacting your Local County Democratic Party. If you don’t know how to find yours, start at at the website of the DNC and their link to State Parties.
Click on your state and look for a Get Local link, like this:
It begins right at home in our towns and cities and with our own family, friends and circle of acquaintances. Far too many of our fellow citizens refuse or forget to vote regularly. They tell themselves “it just doesn’t matter if I vote, no one listens to me anyway. Besides, I HATE politics. None of those politicians know what my life is like and they don’t really care about my family or our problems.”
The following candidates for office in 2016 DO CARE and they are espousing the policies and ideas which will help those dejected non-voters. But they need your help to be successful, to reach out to the millions who just can’t be bothered to be participants in their own democracy. So please, consider helping these candidates in any of the following ways…
VOLUNTEER
DONATE
SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
All three of these actions are helpful to a candidate trying to reach a larger audience or promote an event or action. Candidates need money to put on events and to pay salaries for staff and to buy the signs and ads which help to spread the messages they are putting out to the prospective voters in their city, county or state.
We need to start banging the drum for next year’s Progressive candidates today in order to have enough victories next November to stave off or even undo the advancement of the conservative lunatics who inhabit the current version of what’s left of the Republican Party.
Here are this week’s PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATES
They need your help TODAY, to win next November
John Fetterman
Candidate for US Senate
Pennsylvania State
Campaign website: https://JohnFetterman.com
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/JohnFettermanPA
Twitter: @JohnFetterman
the new Paul Wellstone of the Rust Belt
Pennsylvania born and raised, John was born to teenage parents who were just starting out on their own. At the time, his father worked nights to put himself through college. John grew up in York, and later followed in his father’s footsteps to Albright College, where he played offensive tackle for the Lions. John went on to earn a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where he focused on finding solutions in social work, business, and public policy to confront urban challenges and economic inequality.
John then returned to Pennsylvania to start a GED program in the town of Braddock. In 2005, encouraged by his students and motivated to do more to address the inequality that he felt was holding Braddock back, John ran for mayor. Mayor John was re-elected in 2009 by a 2-1 margin, and again in 2013 by an 8-1 margin, and now serves in his 3rd term as mayor.
During the last 10 years as mayor, John is most gratified by breaking the cycle of violence in Braddock that culminated with nearly 5 ½ years without the taking of a life. He’s applied a hands-on approach from AmeriCorps and his service experience to take steps towards progress and rebuild this community, creating jobs, getting youth engaged, and bringing creative urban policy solutions to Braddock.
John Fetterman is ready to put those skills and experience to work for the entire state of Pennsylvania. Help him send Pat Toomey (R) home for good next November!
Volunteer | Donate
Tom Fiegen
Candidate for US Senate
Iowa State
Campaign website: FiegenforUSSenate.com
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/...
Twitter: @tlfiegen
FREEDOM OF SPEECH DOES NOT MEAN THE FREEDOM TO BUY THE US GOVERNMENT
Oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, Wall Street bankers and other powerful special interests have poured money into our political system for years. Our democracy is under fierce attack. Billionaire families are now able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the candidates of their choice. These people own most of the economy. Now they want to own our government as well.
My parents were farm activists from the 1960s forward. They were members of the NFO (National Farmers Organization) and Farmers Union. They started taking me along to farm organization meetings when I was in 6th grade. My mother is also one of the original McGovern Democrats. They agreed with George McGovern on food and hunger issues, on family farm agriculture and on peace.
I worked with my parents to save their farm, and began volunteering at one of the first Farm Aid clinics, located in Hills, Iowa. That lead me to a career as an ag law and bankruptcy attorney for the last 27 years. I have always been an advocate for small farmers and business owners.
My biggest concerns for Iowa and the country are: the need to address childhood hunger (One in five of our children in America is food insecure); the need to democratize and decentralize our food production, to grow, process and market more healthy local fresh food (and revitalize local economies); and to clean up our water, by reducing and ultimately banning ag poisons like Roundup and Enlist herbicides. The number of cancer deaths in Iowa has increased over the last 40 years, despite tremendous medical advances, in large part because of the ag poisons in our drinking water.
I am also concerned about the downward economic spiral of working people, lopsided trade agreements, the ruthless big banksters aka gangsters like JPMorgan Chase, which dominate our economy and politics. I am equally concerned about the lack of access and affordability of health care and prescription drugs for Americans, and the $1.2 trillion student loan debt which is preventing our young people from getting married, buying a home or starting a family.
Volunteer | Donate
Gary Kroeger
Candidate for US House
Iowa State
1st Congressional District
Campaign website: www.KroegerforCongress.com
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/KroegerForCongress
Campaign Twitter: @KroegerIA01
Personal Twitter: @Gwaynek
Where is the District?
Full Scale GovTrack Map of the 1st District
I have always challenged the odds and I have always followed my heart
I am a proud, unapologetic, lifelong progressive Democrat.
For twenty years, I forged a career in the entertainment industry, which took me from Chicago to New York and, finally, Los Angeles — where I pursued another lifelong dream and opened a restaurant while continuing to work in television. I learned first hand the challenges of operating a small business and difficulties many hard-working entrepreneurs encounter when economic policies favor larger corporate interests over the successes of small business owners.
In 2003, I decided to leave Los Angeles and the entertainment field and come home to the Cedar Valley. Despite my success in the industry, as the father of two sons, I decided it was important to raise them with the “Iowa Values” that have guided me through own life. Values which I learned from my parents — members of a proud middle class who instilled their three sons with the values of hard work, the importance of a good education and a moral obligation to support equal rights and compassion for all.
Over the past three decades, we watched as economic policies have driven jobs overseas, flattened working wages and have left too many good people struggling just to get by. We need to stand up for the working men and women of this country, who for generations have been the strength and foundation of this country. They need leaders who will fight for them — bold progressive leadership that will push back against the same old tired attacks that face Democrats every election cycle. We need candidates who will defend our values as progressives & speak truth-to-power.
Whether it be kitchen-table-economics, smart investments in education, sane environmental policy or a renewed focus on rebuilding the middle-class, Iowans deserve genuine leadership who will champion these issues.
Volunteer | Donate
Joe Pakootas
Candidate for US House
Washington State
5th Congressional District
Campaign website: www.PakootasForCongress.com
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/PakootasforCongress
Twitter: @JoePakootas
Communications/Field Ops, Ryan Hand, Twitter: @HandRyan1992
Where is the District?
Full Scale GovTrack Map of the 5th District
from humble beginnings to ceo, this self-starter is ready to win!
Ever since Lewis and Clark rolled down the mighty Columbia with a presidential writ, politicians and the judges they appoint have controlled the fortunes of Joe Pakootas’ people. Executive orders confined his ancestors to the Colville Reservation, acts of Congress deprived them of gold-rich foothills, and federal judges ruled from afar about their basic rights as Americans. Now, for the first time ever, a registered tribal member is making a serious bid to represent the people of Washington state’s 5th District in Congress.
That he managed to become the man he is today — the Colville CEO who helped turn around tribal finances and helped lead a successful lawsuit against a Canadian mining firm that was polluting the Columbia River — is a testament to his character. For the first time in its history, the Colville Corp. is managed entirely by Native Americans, from Washington state and beyond.
One of seven children, his father was a shipbuilder, Joe worked in forestry as a teenager, cutting logs and manufacturing other timber products while employed by the National Youth Corps. He put off college so he could work a union job and support his young family. Later in life, Joe went back to school and earned a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Washington.
Joe is running to replace the 5-term incumbent Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R). His campaign has already acquired over 300 volunteers working to help him achieve that goal. His List of Endorsements is an impressive display of the trust he has won from many, many individuals and organizations alike. Help Joe become the first Native American/First Peoples candidate to represent the people of the State of Washington in the other Washington in 2016!
Volunteer | Donate
Angela Marx
Candidate for US House
Washington State
3rd Congressional District
Campaign website: www.Angie4Congress.com
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/Angie4Congress
Twitter: @AngieinWAState
Where is the District?
Full Scale GovTrack Map of the 3rd District
BELIEVE WITH ME AND TOGETHER, WE CAN DO GREAT THINGS!
Here in the 3rd District of Washington State, I want to see us develop a Clean Energy Hub, with manufacturing of the machinery to build wind turbines and solar arrays and geothermal residential heating and cooling. With our extremely low-cost hydropower and other advantages we can entice the manufacturers of these products to come here and employ our people at decent paying jobs, while producing the products which will help our entire nation become less dependent upon dirty coal and petroleum. This is a plan to help us maintain a good standard of living while promoting the energy sources of the future. It’s a good idea for us and our children and the healthy environment of southwest Washington, which we all cherish.
I want to become the next Representative from WA-03 because I know that I can help the rest of the people of the 3rd District rise up to meet the challenges of the coming years with a reverence for our natural resources and an eye towards sustainable, decent paying jobs for our families and well-funded educational opportunities for our children.
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If you have a favorite progressive candidate who could use some help, please leave me a name and a race (State/County/City) in a comment, so that I can feature them in a future edition of Help Progressives Win.