ActBlue — 2008fund

2008fund

by Christopher Walker

22
Supporters 2,165
Raised $
Distributed among the recipients below

This page features top challengers, a Progressive incumbent who facing a primary challenge from the Right, and some progressive PACS, to help them support progressive candidates.

Mark B. McCracken

PA-05 (Map)

County Commissioner McCracken won a Democratic primary that was conducted with civility and good humor, in an open district where the other party disgraced themselves with crude shenanigans and ludicrous candidates who tried to substitute huge warchests for credentials.
Mark will face a third-tier Republican contender who won the GOP primary with only 19% of the Republican vote, and who does not have personal millions to spend. The PA-05 seat has been Red-held for a long time; this is the best shot we will have at flipping PA-05 in the foreseeable future. Can you help?

Raised on this page: 1 20
Raised across ActBlue: 26 3,338

Martin Heinrich

NM-01 (Map)

Running for the open seat being vacated by wingnut Republican Congressvarmint Heather Wilson, Councilman Heinrich is a well-established office holder in the district’s population center and is raising good money.
Key issues for Martin: bringing our troops home from Iraq as soon as possible and making sure our returning soldiers receive the quality health care and benefits they deserve;
and what he calls “an Apollo Project for energy independence, moving America toward renewable energy sources: “No accomplishment would be a more valuable legacy for our children.”

Raised on this page: 4 100
Raised across ActBlue: 3,102 529,998

Scott Kleeb

NE-Sen (Map)

Scott Kleeb, a rancher, teacher, and activist building support from the bottom up is the kind of new Democrat who can shake loose the death grip that the GOP has had on the West and Plains states. He ran for Congress last cycle in NE-03, by far the largest of Nebraska’s 3 congressional districts. NE-03 has never sent a Democrat to Congress, but Scott, a political neophyte, raised more money than the Democrats running in NE-01 and NE-02 combined, and pared the GOP down to a 10-point margin.
Nebraska as a whole is less conservative than the 3rd district, and is represented by one incumbent Democratic Senator, and an open seat… for Scott.
Scott’s populist, grass-roots campaign won a resounding victory in the May 13 primary, leading a field of 4 candidates with 69%. The winner will face a Bush cabinet officer hoping to walk into an easy Senate seat in November. Let’s give the voters a real choice, and make it a real contest.

Raised on this page: 2 45
Raised across ActBlue: 6,424 603,378

Larry Kissell

NC-08 (Map)

Grassroots favorite Larry Kissell nearly unseated the entrenched incumbent, Robin Hayes in 2006. Hayes survived a precarious recount by fewer than 300 votes.
Larry challenges Hayes again in 2008. He’s lost the advantage of surprise, so the contest will be more expensive, the time. Under new management, the DCCC has repented of their failure last cycle to recognize that Larry is the right candidate for this district, and have pledged meaningful financial help. However, just like last time grassroots support will be the key to success.
Larry was one of the best candidates we fielded, in the 2006 cycle: hard-working, honest, with solid Democratic values. His wealthy opponent’s money came from the sale of his family’s textile mills – all the American jobs they represented went overseas. Freed from any repercussions to his personal fortune, which he re-invested in oil industry stocks, the incumbent, Charles Taylor, voted for NAFTA after promising his constituents not to do so.
Update: A June poll shows Larry leading the incumbent, 45%/43% !
Do what you can, to help?

Raised on this page: 7 100
Raised across ActBlue: 2,696 188,381

Progressive Patriots Fund

Russ Feingold’s PAC disburses money to progressive candidates running for winnable House seats. It’s important to demonstrate that Senator Feingold has fund-raising clout similar to the big players in the Senate like Kerry, Clinton, and Kennedy, and that PACs that focus on liberal candidates can be an effective alternative to the DCCC.
Senator Feingold’s PAC raised significant money in the 2006 cycle for key races in Congress, and also in the successful effort to take control of the Iowa state legislature, where Republicans enjoyed a very slim margin.

Raised on this page: 7 110
Raised across ActBlue: 824 8,718

Tom Perriello

VA-05 (Map)

Flip the Virginia Delegation!<//b> This long-held reservoir of GOP strength cracked last cycle when Jim Webb won George Felix Allen’s senate seat. This cycle one of the Republicans’ most entrenched Congressmen, Tom Davis, is abandoning his seat in a fit of pique. A the top of the ticket, our unbeatable candidate for Governor, Mark Warner, will have long coat-tails. This is the year to take Virginia seats; these factors may never come together again. Periello is running against conservative Republican incumbent Virgil Goode.
Periello favors a new look at energy policy, access to health care, and he blames our security mess since 911 on the Bush Administration.
Update: The DCCC added Periello to their Red to Blue slate in June, assuring him of additional support from the national party.

Raised on this page: 1 10
Raised across ActBlue: 1,804 332,403

Andrew Rice

OK-Sen (Map)

State Senator Andrew Rice takes on GOP incumbent James Inhofe, widely regarded as one of the most conservative voices in the Senate.
Andrew won his blue-safe urban state senate seat with endorsements from the Sierra Club, Democracy for America, 21st Century Democrats, and the AFL-CIO. Cherished issues for Andrew include protecting privacy and civil rights, public education, and affordable health care. A married father of one, Andrew has a Master’s in Divinity from Harvard, and won the 2006 primary with wide support from Oklahoma City’s gay community.
I supported Andrew’s campaign in 2006 even though
I live far from his district.
He is able to run for higher office without putting his state senate seat in danger – it’s not up again until 2010.
Andrew is the type of young Democrat that I want to see rise to the forefront in the Democratic Party.
The main prop of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party, Andrew’s opponent, Senator Inhofe has been quoted as saying that global warming is “the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state.”
Update: Any fear that a young candidate in a Red state was just cannon fodder against an incumbent has been put to rest. Andrew raised $310,000 in his first fund-raising quarter. Republican pundits laughed off this challenge at first, but they’re not laughing now.

Raised on this page: 7 800
Raised across ActBlue: 7,587 301,197

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VoteVets

This group put together, fundraised, and aired some of the most pungently effective ads of the 2006 campaign. They target mealy-mouthed Republican incumbents who do a lot of public saluting, but who haven’t voted to support veterans’ benefits. And they support Democrats with military experience who run against draft-dodging GOP incumbents who vote for war without really understanding what it costs in lives and honor.
For 2008 VoteVets has taken the lead in pulverizing the incumbent Republican Senators from Maine and Kentucky, who are up this cycle. They’re highlighting Collins’s support for the war in Iraq, which is out of step with her new England constituents; and they’re helping Iraq War vet Andrew Horne gain more name recognition as he challenges Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, a major cheerleader for the President’s war, who dodged the draft himself in the Vietnam era.
They expose hypocrisy. It’s a good thing.

Raised on this page: 5 100
Raised across ActBlue: 328 7,379

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Charlie Brown

CA-04 (Map)

Charlie Brown held corrupt GOP incumbent Doolitle to 49%, a career-low margin, in the 2006 cycle. With Doolittle retiring from Congress, the seat is open and a prime target for 2008.
Charlie Brown gained name recognition from his run last cycle and will face the arch-conservative winner of an ugly Republican primary who is mioving from outside the district to run for Doolittle’s former seat.
Let’s help Charlie push to the victory line in 2008!

Raised on this page: 4 50
Raised across ActBlue: 7,209 188,958

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Jerry McNerney

CA-11 (Map)

Republican smears against this outstanding Democratic freshman began with a mass mailing on the day he took the oath of office. They will spend millions to regain this seat, and it will take millions to keep this progressive alternative-energy guru in what used to be Richard Pombo’s seat, serving on the House Science and Technology Committee, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
In some ways this was the most satisfying flip of the 2006 cycle; it would be a shame to lose it.

Raised on this page: 6 110
Raised across ActBlue: 794 32,030

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Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund

Victory Fund provides leadership workshops to openly gay candidates who want to run for local, state, or federal office, and fund-raises nationwide for them. In the 2006 cycle the Fund endorsed 88 candidates – 55 incumbents and 33 non-incumbents. 67 of them won.
They’re effective!

Raised on this page: 5 70
Raised across ActBlue: 16 1,492

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Democracy for America

They back good candidates for office and have an effective rapid-response email network.
Most recent accomplishment: herding senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) back into the Democratic caucus on a vote not to grant telecom companies retroactive immunity for their role in helping the Bush administration place warantless wiretaps. They marshalled thousands of telephone calls to persuade her not to be the only Democrat voting the wrong way on the Judidciary Commitee’s version of that bill.

Raised on this page: 2 25
Raised across ActBlue: 5,620 103,416

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Mark Udall

CO-Sen (Map)

This 5-term progressive Congressman has laid good groundwork for a bid for the Senate seat that comes open in 2008 with the retirement of low-profile GOP incumbent Wayne Allard.
Colorado began a trend to move bluer in the 2004 elections. Democrats captured control of the state legislature and flipped the other Senate seat. The Republicans have coalesced around an extremely conservative former Congressman who will start with a dedicated right-wing base of support.
The seat has to be regarded as the ripest Senate seat for a flip this cycle, but it alarming to see Democrats start take the flip for granted. Colorado is a polarized state and the retiring incumbent is a Republican. It will take money and energy and talent to win this seat, even though conditions are favorable.
The AFL-CIO midterm report on Congress’s voting record in the 2005 session shows Udall leads the Colorado delegation in support of legislation to protect working families. And, of course, for members of the Udall family, working to protect the environment is genetically hard-wired. Congressman Udall’s endorsements have included Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, and the Human Rights Campaign.

Raised on this page: 3 40
Raised across ActBlue: 1,980 110,031

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Steve Cohen

TN-09 (Map)

A social progressive with solid experience in Tennessee’s state legislature, Steve Cohen sneaked past a crowded field of conservative, moderate, and Memphis machine politicians to win the seat in 2006. Voters returned him to the ballot after a stiff, well-funded challenge from the right, in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Raised on this page: 5 100
Raised across ActBlue: 527 7,914

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Total: 00,000