You know, I love a reluctant candidate. Tony Ventrella, former sportscaster, is someone who wants to serve in Congress because he can see how bad things are, and yet he detests the idea of fundraising and letting money play any role in politics. It sounds like he kind of detests the whole game of politics, and that, my friends, is exactly why we should elect him.
Tony Ventrella began his unconventional campaign on April 24th with a press release that managed to get stories in every major news outlet in Puget Sound (WA). As a famous sportscaster, anything Ventrella does is news, apparently. His number one issue? Money in politics. He served as MC at the launch of the campaign for ballot initiative I-735, which asks voter to support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
So Ventrella ran a no-money campaign from the end of April to July 1st. He made no fundraising calls. He took small contributions but wouldn’t take money from PACs. This only brought in about $20K and in July, he announced that he was dropping out for “personal reasons,” and because his style of campaign was “kind of a pie-in-the-sky approach to politics, which, frankly in today’s world, does not work,” as he put it.
Well, there was only one problem. It was too late to remove his name from the ballots, which in WA are all mailed out to voters in July ahead of the Aug. 4th deadline for voting. Although Ventrella urged people NOT to vote for him, he still came in 2nd after incumbent Dave Reichert, a Republican.
So is he in or out? Ventrella says he is back in the race, because he believes Reichert shouldn’t run unopposed. If he wins, he will serve. However, his campaign website now says he will not accept any contributions. So it doesn’t sound like a very active campaign. Even Bernie Sanders, who took no SuperPAC money, spent plenty of time and energy soliciting small donations, because Bernie was in it to win it. Ventrella just wants to make a statement and give people a choice.
As a progressive, I hope they choose him. He’s against the TPP and can do a lot of good if we push him to stay on camera, on message, ‘til November.
I’ve been getting emails from the #BrandNewCongress folks saying we need candidates who are just regular citizens. People who serve their communities and might be persuaded to serve in government. We’ve got to kick out the power-hungry and the corrupt, and start electing the reluctant ones. We know if we force Tony V. into office, he’ll stand on principle, for the People. So let’s contact Team Ventrella and get this good man to make an honest bid for a seat in the House of Representatives!