Doug Tudor For Congress
by digby
It’s been a busy week for Blue America. On Wednesday we officially endorsed Connie Saltonstall’s primary challenge against the odious and obviously deranged Bart Stupak. Today we will be officially endorsing another stalwart progressive, Doug Tudor for the congressional seat in Florida’s 12th district.
In 2008 Doug Tudor was the Democratic nominee in an impossible race against an entrenched, powerful incumbent, multimillionaire Adam “Howdy Doody Nimrod” Putnam. An outspoken grassroots progressive, Doug ran without the backing of the DCCC and with the animus of nasty Florida powerbroker Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And yet… Doug did as well against Putnam as any of the losing Democratic candidates– other than Joe Garcia– that the DCCC and Wasserman Schultz did back. Conservative Democrat Christine Jennings got boatloads of DCCC-inspired cash and wound up with 37% of the vote. Conservative Democratic incumbent Tim Mahoney, a Rahm and Debbie special, raised over $3 million and barely managed to break 40%. And although the netroots had to force Wasserman Schultz’ hand, she eventually backed Annette Taddeo and Raul Martinez– with hundreds of thousand of dollars– and each got 42% of the vote on election day. Doug– with nothing but grassroots support– and a budget of $109,851 (against Putnam’s eye-popping $2,054,571) wound up with 43%. Imagine if he had had Democratic Party support! (As Chris Bowers reported yesterday, the DCCC spent over $14 million on Blue Dogs and other conservatives who vote against Democratic initiatives as a matter of course.)
Well, with Putnam leaving Congress in the hopes of plaguing Florida consumers on the way to a gubernatorial run in the future, the DCCC did decide to pump some money into FL-12, but instead of helping Doug, they got railroaded into backing Blue Dog Allen Boyd’s handpicked corporate shill– and fellow Blue Dog– Lori Edwards. Lori is the only non-incumbent Blue Dog that caucus has backed so far this cycle. They gave her a lot of money and introduced her to all the worst and most corrupt corporate lobbyists who buy votes from congressmembers with no ethics and then claimed they had to endorse her because she has so much money and Doug doesn’t. (She’s taken in an unimpressive $176,451 so far and has virtually no backing on the ground.)
Today Doug is being officially endorsed by Blue America and he will join us for a live blog session at Crooks and Liars at 2pm (11am, PT). Last week, after his first debate with Lori Edwards, I made a case for his candidacy here but today we get to hear directly from Doug why he deserves support from the progressive community.
Join us at 11 and meet Tudor for yourself. This is a person who is not going to be beholden to the Democratic power structure or the Big Money Boyz. He’s an independent in the best sense of the word. And after what we’ve seen this past week, it’s clear that we need people like him in congress desperately.
Donate to Doug’s campaign here
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