Cross Posted at MyDD
I want to tell you about some friends of mine who are fighting to take back Florida's 5th Congressional District.
A few months back when I was still living in Florida (I move a lot) and maintaining a blog dedicated to Florida politics (I was hoping not to move for a while), I was contacted by the campaign manager for Congressional hopeful Rick Penberthy. I was in between projects at the time (a hazard of working on campaigns) and ended up chatting with him for hours about the race.
Since then, I've been keeping tabs on their progress and I am happy to report that they are still fighting the good fight there, working hard to win the district.
The 5th district was represented by Karen Thurman, the current chair of the Florida Democratic Party from 1992 - 2000. Since 2000, after some creative redistricting by the Republicans in control of Florida's legislature it has increasingly trended Republican - and it's time to put an end to that.
Rick Penberthy is running for Congress in the 5th District and he has an uphill battle, but he doesn't seem to mind.
Sick and tired of watching Republican Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite claim to represent the interests of the district, while doing nothing of the sort, Rick has emerged as one of the Fighting Democrats, ready to take back our country.
Rick isn't a professional politician, but he has a long career of public service. He's a family man who served his country during Vietnam as a member of the United States Army and later went on to join the Navy Reserve. He teaches public school during the day and community college at night. He lives on a farm and talks passionately about how he wants to change our country and how he believes in a better America.
Rick began his quest for Congress with a single staffer and the determination to make his way onto the ballot by going out into the community and collecting petitions. With the help of his family and friends and a group of dedicated volunteers they collected thousands of signatures and were able to announce last week that he had been added to the ballot.
Now his campaign enters into Phase II and it is getting harder. He has to raise the money needed to compete in such a large district. He's gotten some help, recently adding a full-time finance director as well as teaming up with Paul Hackett's former finance director to build the bank to match the support he's gotten from the grassroots.
It's not hard to write this race off. This is by no means an easy district to win, but it's possible. Everytime I talk with him or his staffers, I can't help but get drawn into the fray. When Howard Dean talked about being in every district, this is what he meant.
We aren't going to take our country back, one "winnable" district at a time, it's going to happen by working for change all the time, everywhere. It's going to happen because people like Rick Penberthy decide that they have the power to take it back and stand up to do it. It's going to happen because we are fighting together, in every district, in every state.