In 2012 Henry Waxman had served nearly 4 decades in the House. A Republican billionaire, Bill Bloomfield, rebranded himself as an independent and ran a slash and burn campaign against Waxman, spending $7,567,080 of his own money (and another $400,000 from his wealthy friends) to pulverize the iconic progressive congressman.
When Digby, John and I were first getting to know Ted Lieu, back when he was still a state Senator, we asked him why he was willing to leave the young family he's so devoted to in L.A. and spend so much time in Washington, D.C. He told us it actually had a lot to do with his two sons-- a compulsion to help turn Congress towards solving the accelerating problems around Climate Change. And, sure enough, last month when Ted was named the freshmen Democrats MVP, his unrelenting work-- with members on both sides of the aisle-- for climate change was first and foremost in everyone's mind.
It isn't difficult to do a post mortem on Mary Landrieu's idiotically-doomed Senate race. Saturday's runoff saw the 3-term Louisiana Senator struggle to reach beyond 40%. In 2008 she beat Republican John Kennedy 988,298 (52%) to 867,177 (46%), the same percentage she got in her 2002 reelection. Saturday's results were Cassidy 712,330 (55.94%), Landieu 561,099 (44.06%). She won 15 of the state's 64 parishes.She never had a chance.
CentrismLast week, a professional L.A.-based Beltway centrist, Matt Miller, wrote a self-pitying retrospective of his unmemorable vanity campaign for Congress. Obviously, for the Beltway publication virtually no one in L.A. reads or has even heard of, Politico.
For our final push, Blue America ran independent expenditures in 4 races, two for Senate seats and two in House races. When Adelson and his slimy allies jumped into the CA-33 race with a million dollars worth of racist smear against Ted Lieu, we decided to reach likely voters with a full page ad in the L.A. Times, which we think has worked very well. Early vote returns from Democrats started spiking very sharply as soon as the ad ran.
This is the full page ad Blue America is running today in The Times, a response to over half a million dollars of garbage ads Sheldon Adelson and his family and cronies have thrown into CA-33 against Ted Lieu and on behalf of a random Republican they're running.If you'd like to help Ted's Get Out The Vote efforts, you can do that here. If you'd like to help Blue America re-run the ad on Monday... you can do that here. More important than either action-- vote next Tuesday...
Saturday night I had dinner with Matt Stoller and Ted Lieu. Matt, a former organizer and blogger works on Capitol Hill now as a senior policy advisor. Ted, California's most accomplished state senator, is running for the congressional seat being vacated by Henry Waxman (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Venice, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, West L.A.) Matt wanted to know why Ted wanted to work in Washington.
We extended the Fleetwood Mac/Ted Lieu contest we're doing for 24 hours at the request of Alan Grayson. He has something to say about why he's backing Ted Lieu for Congress and why the two of them will be campaigning for Ted in CA-33 on September 19 and 20. So the contest is over today at 12 noon (PT). Here's where you go to be part of it. And below is the message Congressman Grayson sent out to his supporters last night. "Pray the Gay Away"? he asked. And he answered: "No."
As you probably know by now, Blue America is giving away an opportunity to own a rare and collectible RIAA-certified Fleetwood Mac quadruple platinum award. Anyone who contributes to Ted Lieu's campaign on this page, before Wednesday at noon, will be among those who have a chance to be chosen, randomly, to get this thank you gift from Blue America.
