Mike's Election Guide (16 page)

Her Democratic opponent is Congressman
Tom Allen
. This 12-year veteran of the House of Representatives is in tune with the independent values of the people in this border state. The League of Conservation Voters and the Defenders of the Wildlife Action Fund both gave Allen top ratings. Allen has worked to reduce prescription drug prices for seniors and supports withdrawing troops from Iraq. He has introduced a number of bills intended to make healthcare more affordable for individuals and businesses, including the Small Business Health Plans Act, the Enhanced Healthcare for All Act, and the Long-Term Quality Care and Modernization Act. As a member of the House, he authored a bill banning the export of mercury. He voted against giving U.S. spy agencies expanded eavesdropping power and opposed President Bush’s troop build-up in Iraq.

ALASKA

Mark Begich

There is no greater need to remove someone from our U.S. Senate than the Republican senator from Alaska, Sen. Ted Stevens. He’s the longest-serving Republican in Senate history. That alone should be grounds for sending him back to the North Pole. If you remember, Stevens is the senator who tried to push through the federal pork funding for his “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. He’s a rabid right-winger and so that can mean only one thing. No, he has not been arrested in an airport restroom. Rather, the FBI is investigating him for corruption charges in a scandal involving an oil company. This influence peddling case has already seen the conviction of several Alaskan businessmen and state officials.

Stevens’ Democratic challenger is the five-term mayor of Anchorage,
Mark Begich
. Not under investigation for anything, not wanting to build a bridge to Juneau, Begich is strongly opposed to Bush’s No Child Left Behind education policy—calling it a “disaster in Alaska”—and supports an education policy that brings control of schools back to local communities. Begich is also a staunch defender of his constituents’ civil liberties and promises to work to remedy the encroachments on Alaskans’ constitutional rights, citing everything from “warrantless wiretapping, to the assault on habeas corpus, to the pursuit of REAL ID cards and retroactive immunity for telecom companies that illegally helped the federal government spy on innocent Americans.”

MISSISSIPPI

Ronnie Musgrove

Woo-wee, it’s special election time in Mississippi! Thanks to Trent Lott, who resigned in 2007. (The first rat off the sinking ship is usually the one with the best hairpiece. Lott couldn’t simply wait for the election a year later to retire, he wanted out quick.)

The Republican governor of Mississippi appointed Rep. Roger Wicker to the Senate after Trent Lott cut and ran. It hasn’t taken Wicker long to establish that he puts the interests of businesses before those of American workers. Representing a state in which women make only 73 cents for every dollar earned by men (lower than the national average), Roger Wicker voted against legislation that would have clearly established the rights of employees, including women and minorities, to sue their employers for wage discrimination under existing anti-discrimination laws. Perhaps Wicker believes women should be happy that men let them work outside of the home. As a Congressman, Wicker also opposed decreasing the interest rate on student loans from 6.4 percent to 3.4 percent over a five-year period while at the same time voting against an effort to repeal 2004 tax cuts for oil companies.

Nonetheless, as Wicker has not been elected by the people, he must now stand for election in November. And he has to face no less than the popular former Democratic governor of Mississippi,
Ronnie Musgrove
. While governor, Musgrove managed to balance Mississippi’s budget and at the same time increase education funding—no easy feat in perhaps the poorest state in the nation. Every child in Mississippi can thank former Governor Musgrove for putting an Internet connection in his or her classroom. He has a proven track record of bringing jobs to Mississippi and keeping a tight rein on government spending—something Republicans say they do but don’t.

Is it possible for Mississippi to send a Democrat to the U.S. Senate? Perhaps this year anything can happen.

NORTH CAROLINA

Kay Hagan

People seem to like Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC). I prefer to think of it as pity. After all she’s got a guy who’s hooked on Viagra chasing her every night. Just as she reached an age where she could relax at night, enjoy a nice bath, a glass of wine, and a good book, she and millions of other older women in the world now have husbands with four-hour erections wanting some immediate attention. Is this fair? Haven’t they done enough—raising the kids, keeping the home together, balancing the checkbook, picking up after everybody and their friggin’ mess? Just when they reach an age when they’re trying to get a little peace and quiet—and yes, still have a roll in the hay every now and then—along comes a little pill that has Old Bob still going strong at 3am. “C’mon, Lizzie—one more time! I’m Bob Dole, dammit!”

When she isn’t beating back an out-of-control wanker, Senator Elizabeth Dole has been voting with George W. Bush 92 percent of the time! That alone should be reason enough for her removal. What’s it going to take, North Carolina?

How ’bout Democratic challenger
Kay Hagan
? As a state senator for 9 years, Kay Hagan has created innovative tools for economic development, invested in technology and infrastructure to help develop the next century’s medicine and jobs, passed some of the nation’s toughest predatory lending laws, and supported education funding at all levels. She’d be an excellent replacement for Elizabeth Dole. As a going away gift, someone should get Mrs. Dole a ten-foot pole.

OKLAHOMA

Andrew Rice

There is no delicate way to describe the insanity that lives inside the mind of the Republican incumbent from Oklahoma, James M. Inhofe. With one hand he makes a fist and loudly proclaims that global warming is not caused by humans. With the other hand he accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry. His views on marriage, sexuality, and education are equally antediluvian. He once boasted before the Senate, “I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship.” Isn’t that nice!

Inhofe’s Democratic challenger is
Andrew Rice
. Rice committed his life to public service after his brother died in the World Trade Center attacks. He has been a state senator since 2005, and during that time he voted in support of the poor and championed legislation for children and the uninsured. Rice has worked for the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit organization focused on countering the influence of the religious right on public policy decisions, and he founded the Progressive Alliance, an Oklahoma outfit dedicated to advancing “progressive, fair-minded and constitutional solutions to public policy problems.” He has also tried his hand at documentary filmmaking, creating a film focused on the AIDS pandemic in India.

KENTUCKY

Bruce Lunsford

Shortly after businessman
Bruce Lunsford
won the Democratic nomination, polling showed him only 5 points behind the Senate’s highest ranking Republican—none other than Mitch McConnell. Clearly, the Bluegrass state is seeing red about McConnell’s record.

As Minority Leader, McConnell has worked tirelessly in defense of President Bush’s Iraq War policy and the status quo, voting with Bush and the GOP approximately 95 percent of the time. And why shouldn’t he? In an interview on
Face the Nation
in 2007, Senator McConnell called himself “the strongest supporter of the president you could find in the Senate.” Yet while he supports Bush’s plan of keeping soldiers in Iraq, McConnell doesn’t seem to want to offer them much in the way of gratitude when they return home. He has voted against the 21st Century GI bill, which increases college funding for our service men and women, and he twice voted against increasing healthcare funding for veterans.

Vying for McConnell’s seat is Bruce Lunsford, a businessman and former Commerce Secretary for the state of Kentucky. Lunsford promises to work to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover
all
children (McConnell has opposed expanding the program’s coverage). He also pledges to overhaul Bush’s No Child Left Behind education policy, saying he will “oppose all attempts to privatize Social Security, fight to guarantee that corporations make good on their pension promises to workers, and push to lower prescription drug prices.”

That’s it for the United States Senate. Easy, huh? Not really. This effort is going to take each one of us. But it can be done.

Thirty House Seats We Can Win

Three long-held Republican congressional seats. Three special elections. Three stunning losses to the Democrats. That’s what’s
already happened
in 2008, and it is an omen of good things to come.

Republicans started worrying in early March, when physicist and Democrat Bill Foster beat out Republican dairyman Jim Oberweis in what was thought to have been a Republican stronghold in Illinois. The seat, vacated by former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, had been in Republican hands for 20 years. Foster, who took 53 percent of the vote, even won the majority of the votes in parts of the district that essentially never vote for a Democrat. The district re-elected Hastert in 2006 with 60 percent of the vote, and gave Bush 55 percent of the vote in 2004. The reversal is nothing short of stunning.