[I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but parts of this post are excerpted from an email I wrote to my campaign e-list yesterday. Also at Prairie State Blue.]
Hi there; my name is Daniel Biss and I'm running for State Representative in Illinois. As I diaried yesterday, our campaign is in the midst of a week-long online fundraiser. We've been planning this for awhile, and even made the following video for the occasion.
Yesterday's diary mentioned that our goal is to raise $5,000 by the end of Monday the 19th, but it didn't say why. Read on to see the answer, which turns out to have a lot to do with the role partisan politics play in the race.
Now, I don't talk about political party so often in this campaign. This is partially although I'm proud to be a Democrat, our party, which controls every piece of state government, has been, well, let's say decidedly unimpressive recently. But it's also partially because I recognize that the incumbent isn't exactly a cookie-cutter Republican, and I don't think it's fair to paint with too broad a brush.
That said, in the period between January 1 and June 30 of this year, my opponent transferred $5,000 from her campaign account to the House Republican Organization.
That's right, the same House Republicans who've worked hard to stall transit legislation. The ones who oppose a woman's right to choose.
And what do they do with their money? Well, for instance, they've used tens of thousands of dollars to elect and re-elect Aaron Schock, a Republican State Representative from Peoria who announced his candidacy for U.S. Congress by unveiling a platform of threatening to give nuclear arms to Taiwan as a way of pressuring China.
Really. You read that correctly.
What's my point with all this? I'll readily admit that my opponent doesn't agree with her party leaders on every issue. But she plays enthusiastically for their team, and she does what she can to help them. She believes that her political agenda is advanced by electing more Republicans.
She may personally support a woman's right to choose, but she works hard to empower a party that fights it tooth and nail. She may not believe in George Bush's foreign policy outlook, but she helps invest in the next generation of far-right would-be national leaders.
The Democratic party in Illinois is far from perfect, and in fact I'm proud to be a different kind of Democrat. But as important as it is that we be honest about our own flaws, we should always remember that the Republican party is fundamentally and structurally opposed to progress.
And so that's how I came up with the goal of raising $5,000 during the week-long fundraiser. We'll match my opponent's contribution to the House Republican organization and show her that our district doesn't want its representative to invest in the Republican party infrastructure.
I was excited to blog about this project here because this site has been so influential in educating the progressive advocacy community about precisely this point: that whatever their personal beliefs might be, members of today's Republican party can never be useful in advancing a progressive agenda. I figured it was an idea that folks here would instinctively get.
Here's the thing, though. The $5,000 goal is great when it comes to poetic justice, but it's also really ambitious. If you like what you see, could you help us out? Thank you!
