Today Ann Kuster appeared at a Mayo Pete rally in Concord, New Hampshire, having just endorsed him the day before. Kuster herself has been an especially bitter disappointment for progressives since she first took her seat in Congress in 2013, quickly joining the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dems and abandoning all the progressive rhetoric she had used to defeat Republican Charlie Bass. She had been endorsed by Blue America and by other progressive organizations (DFA and the PCCC). We had, unfortunately, all managed to ignore the significance of the fact that she had been a fast-talking BigPhRMA lobbyist... and and we soon came to regret it.It didn't take Kuster long to earn an "F" from ProgressivePunch, an "F" she has maintained to this day, especially disturbing since hers has always been the bluer of the two New Hampshire congressional districts (and the redder one supported a member significantly to the left of Kuster). Blue America was the first of the groups that supported Kuster's campaign to call her out for her swift political reinvention as a corporate shill. She took her seat in January 2013 and by February was already voting with the Republicans to deny federal employees the tiny raises they were due, worshipping on the later of austerity (while trying to avoid paying her own property taxes). We saw quickly that we should never have endorsed her-- and we certainly never did again.By March I was already writing negatively about her at DWT:
Where this has cut deep and hurt badly is the case of Ann Kuster, who Blue America did endorse and did raise money for in 2010 and 2012-- even though we didn't always get the feeling that she was what we were really looking for in a candidate. We should have followed our guts. She did join the Progressive Caucus but she was one of the only members to vote against the Back To Work Budget and she's been working with Murphy and voting badly over and over on key issues, like voting to end regulations for derivatives in the Agriculture Committee the other day, a position that only a Republican or a sold-out Wall Street shill could defend... [S]he told a New Hampshire audience recently that "On social issues, I am what they call progressive. But on the rest of the issues, I’m business-oriented." So a Republican on economic justice? She mouthed Steve Israel's nonsense about none of the budgets being "bipartisan" enough and voted against the Progressive budget and even the pretty conservative Senate budget. "Unfortunately, none of the budget proposals on the table this week reflect the type of bipartisan compromise that New Hampshire families expect and deserve."...More entitlements cuts? Is that what Schrader and Kuster are angling for? You'd think she has a background as a lobbyist in a GOP-oriented shop instead of as a community activist like she sold us on when she was trolling for support. Some people blame it on an exceptionally bad staff but... she's the one voting with Boehner, not her staffers.
By May of her first term she was already helping the Republicans slash food stamps. I kept complaining about her on the blog and when I finally wrote to her to ask her about the change from her campaign promises, she was defensive, kurt and nasty and told me she does exactly what Steny Hoyer tells her to do. That's when I gave up on ther entirely.So, yeah... no one was surprised back in DC or in New Hampshire that she endorsed Mayo Pete. Same/same. Mayo, by the way, is polling 4th in New Hampshire according to the RealClearPolitics average and in the most current poll (this week), his polling has sunk down to just 7%, much closer to Tulsi's numbers than to third-place Elizabeth Warren's. Don't expect to see Kuster's limp endorsement of Mayo turn that around for him any time soon.
