A progressive hero for congress @EricKingsonNY

A progressive hero for congress

by digby

A few years back I was privileged to speak on a panel with two of America’s most prestigious experts on the Social Security program, Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson. If you are grateful that the fight to save Social Security over the past decade has been successful and that Democrats are now running on the proposal to raise benefits, you have those two people largely to thank for it. Their book Social Security Works!: Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All and the advocacy group Social Security Works have been instrumental in not only battling back the decades long conservative project to destroy the program, but have actually managed to get the ball rolling on much needed expansion.

Now Eric Kingson has decided to leave the hallowed halls of academia to run for congress and Blue America has been thrilled to endorse him. He’s in a tough primary and he needs our help.

Blue America is firing up our trusty mobile billboard truck again and taking Eric Kingson’s important message to upstate New Yorkers in Syracuse, Manlius, Fulton, Oswego, Auburn, Weedsport and into the eastern suburbs of Rochester. Can you help with a little gas money?

We want the truck to ply the highways and byways– and city streets– of NY-24 right up until the June 28th primary. The picture above is a rendering of one of the two billboards on the truck. Our Independent Expenditure Committee already paid for it. We’d like to raise the $12,500 it’ll take to keep it on the road until primary day. Any contribution would be awesome; our average has been $46.75.

If you want to contribute to Eric Kingson’s campaign directly, you can do it here.

It is very difficult to persuade good people to run for office. It’s become a nasty, negative, horrible project and life is short. You cannot blame anyone for feeling their time on this earth might be better spent.

A hero like Eric Kingson is someone whose contributions already put him in the progressive hall of fame and he could easily rest on his laurels. Instead he’s putting himself out there to run for congress to try to make our government more progressive and more decent.

If you think that’s important, as I do, please consider helping us to help him get there.

Thanks.