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 America 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 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 THIS November
Thomas Mills
Candidate for US House
North Carolina State
8th Congressional District
Campaign website: ThomasMillsNC.com
Facebook page: Facebook.com/ThomasMillsNC
Twitter: @tmillsNC
Full Scale US Census Map of the District/State
if nobody fights back, the system will never change
Politics is dominated by a broken Congress that thrives on special interest money from multi-national corporations who pay little in taxes but get a lot in favors. Hyper-partisanship prevents Congress from passing even the most basic legislation and cynical politicians peddle the politics of division instead of the politics of unity. We won’t fix the system until we change the people running it.
The people of the Eighth Congressional District deserve a choice. I’m going to give them one.
I’m running for Congress in North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District. It’s where I’m from and a part of the state I know well. I was born and raised in Anson County, the heart of the district. My parents still live there, and when we buried my brother there in April, he joined two centuries of my relatives whose final resting places are scattered across the district.
Anson County shaped me. I entered school with the first fully integrated class in Anson County history. At eight years old, I was selling newspapers for ten cents each on the streets of downtown Wadesboro, making a nickel for each one I sold. I played Little League baseball and learned to shoot basketball on a dirt court with neighbors who are still part of my life today.
It’s also where I learned that politics is supposed to be more about public service than about power. For more than 25 years, my father served as a judge in four of the counties in the Eighth District. His brother represented Anson and Richmond Counties in the legislature in the 1960s and 1970s. A plaque in the Old Capitol Building in Raleigh lists Absalom Myers, my great-great-great grandfather on my mother’s side, as representing Anson County in the state Senate in 1840, the year that building was completed.
Over the past quarter century, much of the 8th Congressional District has been sold out by government and slapped down by the invisible hand of the free market. Unfair trade agreements sent the manufacturing jobs that sustained the district to other countries. Profits from those deals went to investors and Wall Street, not to the infrastructure needed to attract new industries. Several counties are losing population and many still suffer from high unemployment—and have since before the Great Recession. If people have lost faith in government and corporate America to help them solve their problems, who can blame them?
The Eighth District has a proud history — but much of it’s being left behind. The road to recovery is long and uncertain. Solutions will take commitment, ideas, infrastructure, and money. The district needs leaders who will honor its past and fight for its future. I’ve never backed down from a fight.
Thomas Mills is a registered user here at Daily Kos: millstone
Volunteer | Donate
Kim Weaver
Candidate for US House
Iowa State
4th Congressional District
Campaign website: www.WeaverforCongress.com
Facebook page: Facebook.com/WeaverforCongress
Twitter: @KimWeaverIA
Full Scale US Census Map of the District/State
Standing up for Iowa values and ready to kick Steve King to the curb!
From Kim’s campaign website “About Kim”:
Being a single mom in Sheldon helped me understand Democratic values. Sometimes life throws you curve balls. At times I struggled to make my house payment and wondered if I could make it to pay day. Living through those experiences helped me to understand that a responsible government is there for Iowans when they need it. My professional life also affirmed my belief in democratic ideals. I started my career at Village Northwest, which is a wonderful organization that strives to provide purpose, privacy, and dignity to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After that I spent 10 years as a DHS Medicaid case manager, helping to ensure that individuals with serious mental health concerns received appropriate care and that young children with disabilities were able to remain in their family home. I currently work for the Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman. I cover fifteen counties and 124 care providers in Northwest Iowa. Every day I work to protect the health, safety, and rights of individuals residing in long-term care facilities. I investigate complaints and give a voice to our seniors and their families. Working with Iowa’s wonderful seniors every day has inspired me to work to protect Social Security, Medicare and to an end to all forms of elder abuse.
Both my personal and private life inspired me to fight for Democratic ideals. I am a proud AFSCME member. I got involved with the politics by making phone calls to support the recall of anti-labor legislators. Once I dipped my toe in the political waters, things happened fast. I started grassroots organizing. I knocked on doors and worked the phones for Democratic candidates like Jim Mower and Christie Vilsack. I became the Democratic Chairwoman for O’Brien County and in 2012 I co-founded a group called the SOLO Democrats. Last year I was elected to the Democratic state central committee.
Democratic ideals are central to both my personal and professional life. As democrats, we want to ensure that Iowa families can have good jobs, good education, and experience the American Dream. People in the 4th District have spent too long represented by a politician with an extreme agenda. Iowans deserve a congresswoman who is more concerned with families than fights. That is why I am running for congress.
In the coming months, I will be canvassing the 4th District. I look forward to meeting you and talking with you about what we can do to move this country forward. We have a lot of work ahead, but I have faith that if we work together, we can defeat Steve King and bring Iowa values back to Congress.
I hope you will join my campaign. Please click on the links below to volunteer and to contribute.
Kim Weaver is a registered user here at Daily Kos: Kim Weaver
Volunteer | Donate
Please also see this other great story supporting Kim Weaver from Daily Kos user ZenTrainer.
Finally, your host, who is also running for office. You can see my full entry at this link
Angela Marx
Candidate for US House
Washington State
3rd Congressional District
Campaign website: www.Angie4Congress.com
Facebook page: Facebook.com/Angie4Congress
Twitter: @AngieinWAState
BELIEVE WITH ME AND TOGETHER, WE CAN DO GREAT THINGS!
Volunteer | Donate
If you have a favorite progressive candidate who should be featured here, 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.