I have been checking into the candidates attempting to replace Louis Gohmert as the congressional representative for the first district of Texas.
Roger Owen, website, posted his opinions on minimum wage at MyDD.com and was banned for an opinion that the moderator did not agree with. Not only did the moderator ban him, but he bastardized his username in an act that can be seen as defamatory.
I went over the numbers and determined that the TX-01 district was designed, during redistricting, to be a Democratic district but Louis Gohmert was able to get the seat due to the overwhelming support for George Bush in the General Election.
We can win this district.
See below the fold for the specifics on why I believe Roger was defamed and more on why TX-01 should be held by a Democrat.
Matt Stoller posted a diary om health care and minimum wage over at MyDD. The diary received fairly good replies to his idea.
The problem came when user "Blue Dreams" disagreed with Matt and used the comment that
"Any economist will tell you that the minimum wage does nothing to help people."
and Roger Owen, a Democrat running for the 1'St C.D. in Texas agreed with Blue Dreams. He also stated that
Matt, I respectfully have to agree with Winston on this issue. Here is the best place to consider such views.
Matt Banned a congressional candidate 5 hours after he made that comment. Somehow Roger was able to create a diary a few hours later that caused Matt, or another moderator, to rename all the posts from the Democratic Candidate "whiney Roger Brown." This was, in my opinion, defamatory to the candidate and not in keeping with the standards that should exist within the democratic party.
I have been in contact with Roger and this incident has thrown him off from the Net-Roots. I think that every candidate for any office should be treated with respect, at least until after the primary.
We need all the Candidates we can get, especially in districts like TX-01 where we have a real chance of regaining a House seat in a historically Democratic district which was redistricted in favor of the Democrat so other districts could be made more Republican.
On the issue of the Texas 01 District's viability as a swing district. I ran the numbers and the redistricting of TX-01 added two counties (Angelina and San Augustine) which went 66 and 76% for the Democratic candidate during the 2002 mid-terms. The redistricting was designed to fortify certain districts for Republicans by giving over some districts where democrats had been historically strong.
Max Sandlin had been the Representative for the first district for years and I believe the Texas Congress gave up that district to strengthen neighboring districts for Republicans. Then came the Bush re-election where he received 69% of the district's vote and Louis Gohmert rode his coat-tails for 62% of the vote. Without Bush on the ballot there is a very good chance that Gohmert can be unseated in this historically Democratic district.
This was previously posted at MyDD to give that community a chance to comment, but I believe the issue of banning a politician for disagreeing with the moderator on a popular liberal website deserves the wider audience available here at Kos' place.