It's been a tough couple of weeks to be a reform Democrat. With the double-whammy of bad Democrats and too many Republicans have shown, it's clear that getting anything substantive done in Congress is next-to-impossible.
That's why it's important in the coming cycles to look beyond just targeting Republicans, to sending a message to bad Democrats. The benefits are obvious -- you either defeat the bad incumbent, you scare that person into better representing his or her district (like Ellen Tauscher and Jane Harman), or, worst case, they give you the finger and you lather, rinse, and repeat (like Joe Lieberman and Henry Cuellar).
Thus far, this cycle, we have two primary challenges in our Blue Majority stable -- Mark Pera in IL-03 and the incredible Donna Edwards in MD-04, who today got the Democracy for America endorsement.
Earlier today the political organization founded by Howard Dean, Democracy for America, endorsed Donna Edwards for Maryland’s 4th Congressional district.
Donna Edwards ran against Rep. Al Wynn in the 2006 Democratic Primary, where she came within 3,000 votes of unseating the conservative Democrat. This year is shaping up to be just as contentious for the two candidates. With Democracy for America getting involved in the race, it appears that this year’s Primary is garnering national attention.
“This is not the first time the organization has involved itself in Democratic Primary contests. Democracy for America is supporting the more consistently progressive candidate in this election,” said Jim Dean, brother of Howard Dean, and currently the Chair of Democracy for America.
“Donna Edwards is a true progressive. Al Wynn has been trying to turn around his pro-war position ever since his near-loss in 2006. But Democracy for America members are not looking for Donna Edwards ‘lite’; they support the real Donna Edwards,” Dean said.
Donna Edwards enjoys the enthusiastic support of activists from Democracy for Maryland and received the endorsement of the local group Democracy for Montgomery County. Both are local groups modeled after the national organization. Edwards’ strong support among local grassroots activists along with her consistent progressive stance on issues such as the Iraq War attracted the attention of the national DFA organization.
Meanwhile, while Donna is getting endorsements, Al Wynn is trying to rewrite his terrible record as Stoller just caught him doing:
Aside from beating up Donna Edwards volunteers, spreading nasty rumors, and playing around with voting machines, one of Al Wynn's consistent models of operating last cycle was to simply lie about endorsements and rely on the low information environment by the local press. I think it's happening again. There was a story in Roll call about Al Wynn complaining that the League of Conservation voters is endorsing his opponent, Donna Edwards. The accusation is that Donna was involved in the foundation world, and LCV was a grantee of the foundation she ran. But the real story seems hidden in plain sight. Here's Wynn:
"As you know, in this Congress I was elected Chair of the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, and based on the 96 rating I received from the League of Conservation Voters during the prior Congress and my strong record on environmental matters, I feel that I deserve to receive an endorsement from the League," he wrote.
I checked out Progressive Punch, and there are a whole lot of bad votes on the environment from Wynn, the most prominent one being the Bush Energy Bill. Obviously he's taken money from the nuclear industry and everyone else in the energy world. So then I checked out the LCV scorecard from 2006 [PDF], and Wynn scored a 77. Am I missing something? Or did Wynn just out and out lie about his score to Roll Call reporter John McArdle?
Stoller emailed the LCV for confirmation, and got this in return:
Matt, Rep. Wynn continues to get the facts wrong. He has an 85 lifetime, 77 in the 109th Congress which includes support for the 2005 energy bill, one of the most anti-environmental pieces of legislation to pass the House in the last 20 years and a 92 in 2006, none of which are 96 as you correctly point out. More to the point, in all his years in Congress he as not been an environmental leader, while Donna has been a citizen leader on the environment for the past 30 plus years.
I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks, like "being an able representative for your district" and "not lying about your record". This is the reason that Al Wynn almost lost in 2006 despite a short 3-4 month campaign by Edwards, and it's why she's still gathering steam a year later.
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This week is the end of the quarter, thus we're running the obligatory fundraiser. We're aiming for 500 contributions by the end of the week. We started the effort yesterday at 1,832. We're at 1,969, so we're looking for 363 more.
On the web:
Donna Edwards for Congress
Blue Majority ActBlue Page
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