Hi Jane, I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but here we go.

I’m in Representative Paul Hodes’s (Hodes’?) district and there are a few folks that I like as much or more. Our Governor John Lynch, I’m very happy with him, he’s not as progressive as I’d like, but then there are very few that are. He’s pretty good and I’m happy with him.

State Senate President, Sylvia Larsen she was one of the vocal leaders for gay marriage, and as such has earned my eternal devotion. I’ve also been very happy with her views on education.

Ack! How’d it happen that I was the first comment?

Sorry about that, I like to let the more reasoned and well thought out posts show up first.

Mike Copass in Susan Davis’ district; tell him Bruce sent you. He ran in the Dem primary and was defeated by Davis who gets most of her funding from the defense industry.

why do you keep saying ‘progressive’ when you mean ‘progressive Democrat’?

the whole framing seems to imply that there is no other choice, when there are many choices, especially at more local levels.

I’ll be thinking on this living in Eshoo’s district as I do.

My other residence is in Baron Hill’s district. Finding a viable primary opponent for Hill is something I’ve spoken with to the Monroe County Democratic Central Committee many times. I tend to bring up Hill’s predecessor Lee Hamilton and contrast the two of them. I’ve spoken with progressive voters in Southern Indiana a lot over the course of the past 2 decades and not had much luck so far with identifying a candidate that could beat a machine primary candidate like Hill. Redistricting could be a hope for 2012, until then it is probably Hill or the equally excreable and odious Mike Sodrel (R) that served alternating terms with Hill this decade.

Contrasting Hill with Eshoo makes me happy to have Anna representing me. She’s been responsive to lobbying at her office in DC and her local CA office and weekly satelite outreach her staff conducts. Now it probably isn’t fair to compare Eshoo to Hill, CA-14 is PVI D+21 while IN-9 is PVI R+6. Given her constituents she should be more progressive and she in fact is more progressive.

She also showed some leadership in her town hall last night. She implied that she would fight for a public option and knew how to effectively respond to wingnuts. That counts for something in my estimation.

I also want to mention something more from her town hall: in Anna’s opening remarks she made a point to give shout outs to our state senator and assembly person, the SC county sheriff and to she works with local and county elected officials as part of a team. I got the impression that this was true before the meeting from talking with a CA democratic committee delegate from Boulder Creek that the local party is working hard on progressive issues and has a bias to look for bolstering incumbent progressives while possibly promoting primary challenges for DINO/Blue dogs. I hope to engage in further talks with my local delegate here in CA and report back to see if Blue America/Accountability Now might help on some of these 2010 primaries.

I’m in Ken Calvert’s district. Just look for actions that are the exact opposite and you’ll be in the ballpark.

Anyone know how I would go about starting a movement to target this dirtbag for the 2010 race? He’s horrifically corrupt and stupid, and it’s way past time for him to be put out to pasture, preferably the nether 40.

More on Eshoo here – specifically biosimilars. I had one question for her, it was on the topic you link above. Her response was thoughtful and made the point that 12 years of exclusivity is what Teddy Kennedy put into the HELP committee’s bill.

She agreed that biogenerics would save money, and argued that 12 years is a lot better than unending exclusivity that is current law. She also talked about keeping biotech R&D in the US. Bay area does quite a bit of biotech R&D, so she’s helping her constituents by giving them 5 more years to recoup profits from their IP.

Jay Inslee, who also voted yeah on that amendment, is in a similar position. He’s not my congressman, but he’s two districts over. My feeling about these things is that it’s OK to support the big businesses in your district, as long as you don’t do it by screwing the rest of us.

Her framing of it was well done – currently exclusivity never ends, we’ve made it so biogenerics will be possible 12 years after FDA approval rather than never. And she did acknowledge that costs are higher during those 12 years, just stated that the extra 5 years (above what Waxman wanted) are needed to keep R&D in US. She also said that’s the term Teddy Kennedy thought was best, something that may or may not be true.

I’m not so sure I’d characterize biotech as big business. Market caps of biotech firms tend to be in the $10-100M range, and i think of big business as bigger than $5B. Number of employees is 50-500 in biotech versus 10,000+ for “big business”.

Yes! I love this idea, particularly since I am PISSED right now at my congressman, the aforementioned Xavier Becerra.

I would support Eric Garcetti, long-time Los Angeles City Council member (current City Council President). It’s rumored he’s a future mayoral candidate. His district overlaps a great deal with Becerra’s. But he’s very progressive, particularly on environmental & urban planning issues, and he’s got very good name recognition. The only thing is… can’t picture him running a primary against Becerra because Garcetti’s in a pretty good career path right now as it is.

I first heard of him when I worked on some videos for the environmental group Global Green several years ago– he was one of their international award recipients, for his work supporting environmental causes on the local level.

I just read an article on Huffington Post and watched the accompanying video – 3 THOUSAND people held a PRO Health care reform rally in Seattle, Washington YESTERDAY and it was NOT COVERED BY ANY MAJOR NEWS MEDIA!!! What is going on??? Every dozen screaming teabagger in Podunkville is covered by every news station and THREE THOUSAND people are given no coverage on ANY station – not even 1 show on MSNBC gave it any mention ALL DAY TODAY. I find this to be incredibly disturbing. Has our television media also been bought by the insurance companies???

Perhaps we don’t need to look at new leaders, but good old-fashioned Dems.

Like David Bonior, who used to be the rep for MI-12 before Sander Levin. Where is Bonior now? and is he still in support of John Edward’s public option?

There’s another challenge with Bonior’s district, and that is redistricting; I don’t know yet which district(s) are likely to suffer for the massive loss of population here, could very well be MI-12 is one of several which will be gerrymandered and re-jiggered into another district. Hazel Park, which is part of MI-12, has had a devastating loss of population in sync with the fortunes of the auto industry; no idea where it all will end up.

And it could be this factor which is causing both Dale Kildee (MI-05) and Sander Levin (MI-12) to play it far too close to the cuff. Kildee’s district includes much of the city of Saginaw and Flint, which have also suffered immensely from auto industry-related population losses. Where these districts have been consistently blue in the past, the people who migrated out may well have been blue voting, blue collar workers.

Might need some feedback from AFL-CIO and SEIU folks in these districts on likely young prospects. Do NOT trust the UAW alone on this as they have been pointedly missing in action, and I suspect they’ve either been told to stand down because they were bailed out or that they’ve become too partisan in the wrong direction.

Isn’t it time to march on Washington?

In a word, yes.

For example, General Electric has a captive insurance subsidiary which participates in the larger insurance industry.

Although GE stands to make a lot of money from health care information systems under reform, it already makes one helluva lot of money staying in bed with its friends. It’s simply betting on the sure thing.

I’d like to know what it takes to run, and have any shot at winning. At least what people around here think it takes.

It takes about $100K in your campaign bank account on the day you declare your candidacy; otherwise, local press won’t take you seriously.

Naturally, local press must also see how you’re going to raise the other $250K (if you live in a rural, single media-market district), or the other $2 – 4 million (if the district is urban).

The only other approach requires a person with unquestionably thorough name recognition in the district, who also can convince local press the requisite funds are within reach.

Issues then come into play, but, in truth, for a serious campaign, especially one unseating an incumbent, the issues are very much secondary.

I’m referring to House districts…

Concur with gannonguckert at [16] (yeesh, sorry, but what a name…).

$100K is the very bottom threshold; that’s the figure state rep candidates here in MI have been told they should have on Jan. 1st of the election year. Senate seats are naturally going to take considerably more, given the size of the turf being covered.

A candidate must also be able to muster the shoe leather to do the job, both their own and that of others. Has a candidate already courted key entities and asked for their endorsement? has a candidate a built-in organization they can tap for volunteers? If not, they need to pursue these manpower resources ASAP. And they must show a commitment of their own either through past experience or current effort. In highly local races, a candidate should expect to knock on each door three times during the course of a race, and in the case of larger races, they must have a plan to have proxies help do this with them to assure name recognition.

And a viable candidate must be one who is grounded in the reality it may take two or more runs for office to develop both a solid understanding of their district and the requisite name cred to win. Especially important if they have a name which ends up below the incumbent on a ballot — seriously, sometimes if a race is that tight, even placement on a ballot makes a difference unless the candidate has made a very compelling and personal case to voters.

Lastly, a really good candidate is wired into the right resources and can tap on a really great campaign manager, online outreach and organizer folks and not flounder around for too long on their own. They’ll have the discipline necessary to get a solid website, literature, signage all in sync with their messaging and they can stay on message without having to be battered by their campaign manager to do so.

Not easy, but I can think of a truly excellent candidate right now. Just wish they lived in MI-12.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7843

Jane,

Please. Why can’t FDL get behind Single Payer now? Use the clout with Progressive Caucus? You got the troops. Single Payer is a structure that will work with monitoring and intelligence, and removal of Bush sabotage of 2003.

I was disturbed by earlier thread. Felt like FDL egos might be blocking progress and going after messengers of truth to power. I’m just sayin….

Responsibility is the “ability to respond.” We don’t have time to do the 5 stages of grief over PO. Rally for Single Payer. They — we — need you. So does Obama. He waded into lobby-loving Congressional and his own pool of corporate quicksands. And wingnuts, many have Medicare, and will criticize it anyway. WTF! Media keeps defining surreality. We need to just keep our eyes on the prize.

Public option was a brand … a trust-us idea … Medicare is a structure and sure it is in the hands of the less than trustworthy. It will bankrupt us if Obama doesn’t jettison not add Bush and corporate “protections”.

But no Pyrrhic victory with PO especially for poor Prog Caucus. Give them some meat to really defend. Single Payer. Weiner is sticking his neck out. Single payer people still working hard. Doctors Mad as Hell, and Calif. nurses and many many from all ideologies are working for this. Mike Moore has a website of where House members stand on Single Payer. Can you apply FDL support where it is needed? Where there is still a snowball’s chance?

Pelosi voicemail is never available. She can pull it off. She wants WH to tell her to. WH? We need loud pressure on him FAST!!!!

Patriarchal paradigm is about power and competition. Humanist (feminine) paradigm is about cooperation and partnership. Dems need to rally together again. We need catalytic leaders. Not hard-jawed ones. Single payer people and Public option people working together to help America against the bastards. We need each other.

FWIW.

libby

As a Graduate of Ferndale High School, 1985, and a proud member of Sandy Levin’s District for say, most of my pre-adult life, I would cheerfully like to offer up a progressive candidate by the name of Craig Covey. The openly gay mayor of Ferndale, Michigan. You can Facebook Ferndale Michigan for recent events. Or just Google him. People are very pleased with the way Ferndale has progressed.