Blue America Chat with Ann McLane Kuster
by digby
Blue America is happy to endorse Ann McLane Kuster for congress in NH 02. Here’s Howie:
Blue America prefers not to endorse in primaries unless there is a clear case of one excellent progressive Democrat running against a conservative corporate shill. That’s how we came to endorse Marcy Winograd against Jane Harman, Doug Tudor over Lori Edwards and Regina Thomas over John Barrow. But in the New Hampshire House race to replace Paul Hodes, who’s running for the Senate, had a wrinkle. There was definitely an excellent progressive– Ann McLane Kuster– and there was certainly a conservative corporate shill— Katrina Swett— but there was another grassroots-type candidate running as well. He’s now dropped out and we couldn’t wait to invite Ann to come over to Blue America for a live chat. She’ll be joining us today in the comments section below.
Annie is an example of a grassroots activist working with her neighbors on real world problems and then taking it up a notch by running for Congress. She’s the polar opposite of the spoiled and entitled insider who’s running against her, the daughter of one congressman, wife of another and, to top it off, the former campaign chair of the Joe Lieberman For President campaign. As the Concord Monitor pointed out, Annie’s money is all coming in small donations from New Hampshire; Swett’s comes in big chunks from the corporate interests salivating to get another corrupt special interests shill into the House Democratic caucus who will do their bidding for nickels on the dollar.
Ann McLane Kuster and Katrina Swett, the Democratic candidates for the 2nd District seat in Congress, have far fuller campaign accounts than their Republican counterparts. Their accounts have been filled from near and far. Respectively.
Sixty-one percent of Kuster’s reported fundraising through March came from donors in New Hampshire, with her highest-netting ZIP codes including Concord, Contoocook, Portsmouth and Hanover, according to an analysis of federal campaign filings by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. Swett, by contrast, had raised 11 percent of her money this election from in-state donors. The ZIP codes giving her the most money included Greenwich, Conn.; New York City; and the suburbs of northern New Jersey.
New Hampshire’s most respected blog, Blue Hampshire, was in the same predicament we were in– one candidate too many for an endorsement. That ended last week when they got behind Annie in no uncertain terms (and unanimously):
Nearly four years ago Blue Hampshire was born following a groundswell of political blogging that had sprung up in a successful effort to support Paul Hodes’ election to New Hampshire’s second congressional district.
Today, we believe the best person to continue the work in Congress begun by Representative Hodes is attorney and advocate Ann McLane Kuster.
As Laura Clawson pointed out on Daily Kos, Ann McLane Kuster “supports the public option, the Employee Free Choice Act, non-punitive immigration reform, and environmental regulation. Not only does she want to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she wants to repeal DOMA, and she worked to help bring marriage equality to New Hampshire.”
In addition, Kuster has been a vigorous advocate for health care access and affordability, especially and unwaveringly so for women’s reproductive health. From Ann’s website: “Ann believes a woman and her medical care provider should be making decisions about her health care, not the politicians in Washington. She is committed to ensuring that the anti-choice movement doesn’t use abortion to derail health care reform, and also that they don’t use health care reform to restrict a woman’s right to choose.”
Please consider joining the netroots supporters who have rallied to Annie’s campaign. She’s our newest endorsee on the Blue America ActBlue page.
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