Blue America Chat With Ed Potosnak At 11 AM
by digby
Howie explains why Blue America is endorsing Ed Potosnak:
This year there are several Democrats running for Congress who are openly gay and Blue America has had several inquiries about why we haven’t endorsed them. A couple of gay organizations have done so and I think the DCCC is getting behind one or two as well. But Blue America isn’t a gay organization that endorses based on someone’s gender preference and we’re certainly not the DCCC. We’re looking for smart, honest progressive leaders and we don’t care what color they are or what gender they are or how they look or who they sleep with. When we decided to endorse Ed Potosnak in New Jersey this week, the young high school science teacher running against Wall Street shill Leonard Lance, it was because of his stands on the issues important to working families and because of the strength of his character, not because he’s an openly gay man. But he is…
Ed will be joining us this afternoon in the comments forum for a wide-ranging blogger session, not especially about his sexual orientation. In fact, it was his hammering on the importance of education policy that first got our PAC interested in his candidacy. That said, we had several long conversations about what it means for a member of the LGBT community to run for Congress. Remember, out of 435 congressmembers and 100 senators, we only have three openly gay Members of Congress– all Democrats– plus a dozen or so closeted Republicans. Ed made it clear that he’s grateful that the trail was blazed for him by Tammy Baldwin, Barney Frank and Jared Polis.
Please consider helping Ed get his message out by contributing what you can at the Blue America ActBlue page. The first 10 people who contribute at least $25 to Ed’s campaign will get autographed copies of Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets.
Join us at Crooks and Liars at 2pm edt and 11am pdt.