With the 2010 campaign season heating up, Daily Kos is getting ready to start adding candidates to our Orange to Blue fundraising page. As we've done in the past, we'd like to get your suggestions on whom we should endorse, so please suggest your favorite Democratic candidates in comments - along with explanations of why they deserve our community's support.
We're also making a couple of changes to our approach this cycle. In prior years, we've only raised money for challengers running against sitting Republicans or in GOP-held open seats. This time, we're open to backing Democrats running in primaries in blue open seats, as well as Democratic incumbents seeking re-election. Getting involved with the former gives us a chance to help elect more progressive Democrats, especially in otherwise "safe" districts. Helping the latter gives us the opportunity to bolster members of Congress who have made hard but right choices and face a challenging election environment.
To help provide a framework for the kind of candidates we're looking for, below is a brief questionnaire that we send to candidates before we consider ading them to Orange to Blue. Some of the questions are new, some we've used in the past. As Jake said a couple of years ago when we debuted our first questionnaire, "The questions won't serve as a 'litmus test,' but they will give us insight into where the candidates that seek our support stand on our issues."
1) Do you support:
a) A public health insurance option, offered by the federal government and tied to Medicare reimbursement rates plus 5% (
H.R. 3200 § 223, as introduced in the House)?
b) The Public Option Act (H.R. 4789), which would allow all citizens to buy into Medicare?
2) Do you support the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 1409/S. 560), including the provision known as "card check"?
3) Do you support a repeal of the policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (10 U.S.C. § 654)?
4) Do you agree that any immigration reform bill should:
a) Contain a meaningful path to citizenship - one that does not include overly-punitive fines or a touchback requirement - for law-abiding undocumented immigrants currently in the United States;
b) Ensure that expanded legal permanent immigration, rather than expansion of temporary worker programs, serves as the United States' primary external answer to workforce shortages; and
c) Ensure that any non-agricultural temporary worker programs maintain current caps on the total number of non-agricultural temporary worker visas issued, and also include a meaningful prevailing wage requirement keyed to the Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon Act?
5) Do you think Congress should act to suspend regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency?
6) If elected to the House, do you pledge not to join the Blue Dog Coalition?
7) If elected to the Senate, do you pledge to restore majority rule to the Senate and work/vote to end the filibuster?
To be clear, answers to these questions are not the only thing we look at when choosing candidates - far from it. We look at a whole range of factors, such as: how much attention has the race received so far, how has fundraising gone, what sort of approach does the candidate take when confronting Republicans, what kind of relationship does the campaign have with the netroots, does the candidate seem to be a good "fit" for the district or state, what is he or she like on the stump, and much, much more. We also consider public statements on other issues of importance to progressives as well, such as reproductive freedoms and civil liberties.
So without further ado, let's hear it: Who do you like this cycle, and why?