New Jersey's primary is July 7, two weeks from today. I wish it I could say it looks better for the progressives taking on the corrupt machine candidates up and down the state. But it doesn't. Too many candidates thinking a campaign is basically grabbing Bernie's platform and lounging around Twitter and Facebook. No one's ever won a race that way-- ever. The New Jersey candidate I feel best about-- and the only one Blue America endorsed-- is Hector Oseguera who's up against corrupt, conservative, former Republican Albio Sires, a hawkish backbencher who never did a thing for his district. Oseguera and his team are fighting a real race and I feel confident that if he can muster enough money to get his compare and contrast message out to the voters, he'll win.His district, NJ-08 includes most of Hudson County, parts of Essex and Union counties and the cities of Hoboken, Elizabeth, Weehauken, West New York, half of Newark and parts of Jersey City, Kearny, Harrison, Belleville and Bayonne. The district is 55% Hispanic, 44% foreign-born and strongly enough Democratic that the primary is, in effect, the whole ballgame. You can help Oseguera win his seat by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.The other day, Sires, who has an "D" score from ProgressivePunch was bullshitting Jonathan Salant at NJ.com and out popped a real whopper: "I’m probably more progressive than the guy I’m running against." Not on this planet and not by any possible definition of the word "progressive."I asked Oseguera what the hell Sires is even talking about and who he thinks he's fooling. I mean his voting record is pretty standard Dem compared to when he used to be a Republican but a progressive? Not a chance. "You might say my opponent is more progressive, all you need to do is ignore his record and all our policy positions. Unlike my opponent, I am not a Johnny come lately to this movement. I have a lifetime of progressive activism under my belt, from my days at law school volunteering for Elizabeth Warren, to the Millions March NYC protesting the killings of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, to, most recently, volunteering for AOC and running on an unapologetically progressive platform. Locally, I was part of the movement that succeeded in getting Hudson County to rescind its 287(g) agreements with ICE. These are contracts that my opponent and his allies support because running inhumane concentration camps is apparently very profitable for the County government."Oseguera told me that he's "fighting to get big money out of politics, fighting for racial justice, and championing the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. My opponent is an advocate for none of those. Quite the contrary, my opponent takes tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from luxury real-estate developers and Exxonmobil, has never seen a foreign intervention he didn't like, and pals around with war criminals like Elliot Abrams. He is not a co-sponsor of Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All Bill, which I support, and refuses to even say the words "Green New Deal," until leadership gives him permission. My opponent has no platform to speak of, and has never associated himself with the progressive movement; that is until he realized he was horribly out of step with the people of this district. He is seen as a 'strong Democrat' by some, because for well over a decade he was the only game in town. I guess compared to absolutely nothing, he might call himself a progressive; but compared to a true progressive fighter like me, my opponent is revealed as the bland, Republican-lite, neoliberal he really is."In terms of confirmed cases, Hudson County was the worst hit in New Jersey-- 19,316 total and even yesterday the most new cases and the most new deaths. Essex County is the 4th worst hit county (18,582) in the state and Union the 6th worst hit (16,340 cases). Could Sires have fought harder for the people in his district? Anything would have been fighting harder since he did virtually nothing. Being better than Trump is too low a bar for as deeply blue as NJ-08. People there have the right to expect a proactive champion for working families. That would be Hector Oseguera, not Albio Sires.
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