Yikes, I haven't written a diary around here in ages... Eons... Choose your impressive measure of time. But anyway, just wanted to drop in again to shine a little light on an amazing candidate.
It may seem like a long way until November, but there are some interesting races out there, and the race for Wisconsin's 57th Assembly District seat just got a whole lot more interesting due to a retiring incumbent... Follow me over the fold...
As a brief disclaimer, I am not associated in any formal or informal way with Penny Bernard Schaber's 2008 campaign. I just think she rocks.
You already know Penny Bernard Schaber. If not her personally, then someone very much like her.
She's the woman in your community who everyone knows, the one who spots an issue and takes it on and doesn't let go, the one who, when something needs to be fought for, she'll do the fighting, and when you think something needs doing, you realize she's already been doing it for a while and just kind of stares at you, waiting for you to catch on and catch up.
Penny's a candidate for the Wisconsin State Assembly from the 57th District for the second time (the really curious can download a .pdf of the district map here). In 2006, she earned (and I do mean earned) 46.7% of the vote against a popular 10-term Republican incumbent.
When I say "popular," I mean like Mr. Rogers popular, like a guy whose signature issue is something as crowd-pleasing as organ donation, for crying out loud. I've met Steve Wieckert a number of times -- he's a nice guy. But he's a nice guy whose votes propped up a nastily conservative Republican legislative agenda, and a nice guy who's much more attuned to the world of corporate campuses and McMansions than the world the rest of us inhabit.
Penny, on the other hand, is a force of nature.
I did a little bit of work for Penny on her '06 campaign before I was forced to beg off due to time constraints (my silly employers prefer that I actually show up to work once in a while, and that fall was particularly insane). She'd asked me to work on coordinating the volunteers she'd already signed up, and I was thinking "Assembly campaign? Volunteers? In the 57th? No sweat - she'll have 40, 50 tops."
Turns out she had over 300. And the list grew and grew. And even though I didn't have the time for a larger role in her campaign, and even though I didn't even live in her district, I still found myself spending my Saturdays that October wallking neighborhoods in the 57th and braving obnoxious dogs and barking kids just to hand out some of her brochures. She has that effect on people.
She never really stopped after the '06 campaign -- she just went into a different gear for a little while, doing the off-season work a candidate needs to do, meeting with future constituents and community leaders and building up the experience and organization for the next contest. From what I've seen she's an even better candidate this time around, and the results of our spring municipal elections indicate that folks here in the Fox Valley are in a "throw-the-bums-out" kind of mood.
As if that weren't enough, the incumbent R, Steve Wieckert, recently announced his retirement, making this an open seat.
In short, this is Penny's time. And this is one of the seats that may make the difference if the Democrats are going to recapture the Wisconsin Assembly this year (which they have a real chance of doing). If Penny wins in the 57th, Wisconsin could be a truly Blue state -- both houses of the Legislature, the Governor, both Senators, and a current 5-3 advantage in the House delegation.
This kind of race exemplifies why the smaller, more local races matter so much -- a small push in a small district may make a huge difference for an entire state. A thousand people voting a different way will make a tremendous difference in the lives of five million of us. Wisconsin's 57th Assembly District may seem out of the way, but it's right in the middle of things.
You can dance to the same beat over at Moue.