Daily Kos’s central mission has always been electing more and better Democrats. This endorsement is all about one of those better Democrats—and boy do we ever need one here. That’s why Daily Kos is endorsing businesswoman and anti-bullying advocate Marie Newman in next year's Democratic primary in Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District, which is currently represented by Blue Dog Dan Lipinski.
There are many, many terrible things to recount in Lipinski’s long and miserable record, and we’ll get to them, I assure you. But one of the worst and possibly most disturbing came just recently—when Lipinski stuck his neck out to aid the forces of Trumpism.
Earlier this year, right outside Lipinski's district in suburban Chicago, the city of Bolingbrook held an election for mayor. Unlike your typical mayoral race in a town of 73,000, this one caught national attention, because Bolingbrook's longtime chief, Roger Claar, is an extremely vocal Trump supporter, despite the fact that 66 percent of his city voted for Hillary Clinton last year.
In fact, Claar went so far as to hold a fundraiser for Trump, over and above the wishes of his constituents. Claar’s refusal to back down inspired progressives in Bolingbrook to launch a challenge to his 31-year reign, one in which he'd grown deeply entrenched thanks to the decades worth of favors he'd doled out. (The lavish taxpayer-funded golf course where Claar hosted Trump is known as the “Rog Mahal.”) That made him a daunting obstacle, but former union organizer Jackie Traynere put up a serious fight, even earning an endorsement from Sen. Dick Durbin and features in the Washington Post and New York Times.
In the end, Claar prevailed by just 108 votes—a margin of less than 1 percent, and Claar’s closest race ever. But you know what Lipinski did? He went out of his way to help out Claar! According to Capitol Fax, a newsletter that covers Illinois politics, Lipinski sent some of his precinct workers to assist Claar’s re-election effort. Given how close the results were, that boost very well might have made all the difference.
Needless to say, we need a Democrat who will resist the Trump agenda, not enable it. And Illinois’s 3rd District deserves no less: It supported Clinton by a wide 55-40 margin, so there’s no reason it should have anything less than a solid progressive representing it.
That brings us to Newman, who's exactly the progressive we’re looking for: someone who supports women’s reproductive rights, health care for all, a livable wage, and economic development that benefits working families.
Lipinski, by contrast, is on the wrong side of almost everything:
- He’s a co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus
- He’s repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parenthood
- He voted against the Affordable Care Act
- He voted to make it all but impossible for Syrian refugees to enter this country
- And he still supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (this is incredible but true)
And to top it all off, the only reason Lipinski even got to Congress in the first place is because his father, former Rep. Bill Lipinski, retired after the Democratic primary in 2004, allowing a small group of party insiders to unanimously select the younger Lipinski as a replacement—scuzzy political nepotism at its worst.
Daily Kos doesn't usually get involved in primaries, but you can see why this one is a top priority. However, beating an incumbent like Lipinski, even one who’s so out-of-step with today’s Democratic Party, will be a difficult task. He’s fended off primary challenges in the past, and Chicago’s notorious machine still looks out for him.
So please give $3 to Marie Newman today to help her give the boot to a truly terrible Democrat.