Yesterday Tom announced his candidacy for the Illinois' Fifth District to fill Rahm Emanuel's vacant seat. With the special election primary on March 3rd, we have to move quickly. And yesterday couldn't have been a better start.
Thanks to this community and others, we received hundreds of new sign-ups and thousands of dollars in small-dollar contributions. Your energy and support were overwhelming. (If you have not already, please join us here).
And we received a lot of buzz. Among the highlights:
- We were a recommended diary on DailyKos, and got front-page coverage on MyDD, Crooked Timber, Americablog, HuffingtonPost, and Prarie State Blue. And Matthew Yglesias, in his blog, argued:
And couldn’t the House use a labor lawyer slash major intellectual? Part of what happens in times of political change is that new people get pulled into the process. People who don’t usually vote, go vote. People who wouldn’t normally run for office, run for office.
- We received news coverage from over 50 outlets, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and James Fallows of The Atlantic:
The remarkable thing is that in Geoghegan's case writing has been a sideline. Day by day for several decades he has been a lawyer in a small Chicago law firm representing steel workers, truckers, nurses, and other employees whose travails are the reality covered by abstractions like "the polarization of America" and "the disappearing middle class." Geoghegan's skills as a writer and an intellectual are assets but in themselves might not recommend him for a Congressional job. His consistent and canny record of organizing, representing, and defending people who are the natural Democratic (and American) base is the relevant point.
- Tom's Op/Ed on the unconstitutional (and undemocratic) Senate appointments was published in the New York Times. You can read it here.
All of this in one day!
Its clear that progressives—and the country—understand that this special election is a real test for the progressive movement. IL-5 is a solid blue district, and we have a real chance to send a bold, independent-thinking progressive to Washington – a Democrat that will go beyond the usual rhetoric and policy, a Democrat that will talk about real economic reform and security and how to get hard-working Americans out of crippling debt.
This is a big opportunity. And, together, we will make it happen.
~Joe Costello, Tom Geoghegan for Congress
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