by jstupec, posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2014 at 8:25 pm
To unseat what essentially is a ghost incumbent in the 14th district of northern Illinois, Democrat Dennis Anderson has decided to take his message to the people of the district by holding 20-25 town hall meetings. In St. Charles on Tuesday, Anderson said the only thing that will prevent more meetings is securing venues to hold them.
This is Anderson’s
second run for this office and he feels he learned a lot from the previous loss to make him a much stronger candidate. Anderson, who is now retired, said he is not looking for a career in politics. He vowed to do his best to address the issues of the day and if the voters of the district liked his accomplishments they would return him to office. With approximately fifty voters in attendance, Anderson limited his opening comments to a brief history of his past. After that he began taking questions regarding his views on every possible issue facing the nation today.
Here’s a synopsis of issues raised and his view regarding them:
by sharsand, posted on Sunday, November 10th, 2013 at 11:53 am
Join us this coming week for a free event with Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and the StampStampede.org, Ben’s is on a national tour to overturn Citizens United and get big money out of politics. None of us can any longer afford to sit around and watch the top one percent take away all our rights, remove our Social Security, Medicare, pensions and other programs, contaminate our food, water, air, and products. The event is Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 2:00 p.m. (doors open at 1:30) at the Chicago Temple, 70 W. Washington, Chicago, across from the Daley Center. Ben is providing free ice cream The event is sponsored by the Coalition to Overturn Citizens United. rsvp sharsand@aol.com.
The Human Race may very well die out – and no one is talking about it. The fact that we’ve now gone through three Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates – and not once has global climate change been brought up – should be, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, an “Alarm bell in the night” for all of us. Especially because this last September was the hottest September ever recorded in the civilized history of the human race. Not only that – this last September produced the smallest amount of Arctic ice ever recorded in the civilized history of the human race.
Our planet is rapidly changing – scientists across the world are freaking out – farmers are getting hysterical and, in many countries, committing suicide in mass numbers – and yet our two Presidential candidates are fighting about who’s going to pump more carbon pollution into the atmosphere: That would have been the perfect time for Candy Crowley to chime in an say – “Hey, guys what about the climate change crisis that’s being worsened by all of this drilling?” But she didn’t – and then Romney bashed the President over not approving the Keystone XL pipeline…Actually the President DID approve the Keystone pipeline – at least a large portion of it – and he’ll likely approve the rest if he wins a second term.
by Ellen McClennan, posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2012 at 8:05 am
Dogged. Indefatigable. Diligent. Determined. Steadfast. And oh my gosh, just plain heroic. The four-dozen or so Kane County residents who circulated petitions to stop special interest money from buying favors from our politicians are my heroes. They were headed by Kaye Gamble, and were part of the national Move to Amend effort.
For days on end, they endured 90 to 100 degree heat. They asked the same question, “Are you a Kane County registered voter?” hundreds and hundreds of times. And when people were willing to stop and talk with them, they explained the same thing over and over and over again. With enthusiasm and patience. They listened and they responded with accurate information.
When people stopped to hear what the petition was about, most people signed it. But sometimes it was difficult to get peoples’ attention. Some passers- by believed the group was trying to register voters or take an opinion survey and didn’t want to get involved. But when people did stop to hear the issue, just about everybody signed the petitions, Gamble said. Some were so enthusiastic they brought their spouses, friends, and voting age children over to sign. All were thankful of the group’s efforts.
by Ellen McClennan, posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2012 at 8:00 am
“We’ve never seen this many petitions!” Suzanne Fahnestock, Kane County Director of Elections said with a broad smile as she accepted the tall pile of petitions presented by Kaye Gamble, coordinator of the Kane County Move to Amend effort.
The group of about fifty Kane County citizens spent untold hours standing in record-breaking summer heat collecting signatures in a petition drive to place an advisory question on the ballot this November. Nearly fifteen thousand citizens signed those petitions.
The petition requests this question be placed on the Kane County November ballot– “Should the United States constitution be amended to limit the use of corporate, special interest, and private money in any political activity, including influencing the election of any candidate for public office?”
Gamble’s group is part of the national Move to Amend effort to amend the constitution in order to nullify the 2010 Supreme Court ruling of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This ruling created Super PACs and Hybrid Super PACs, overturning decades of limits to political contributions and opening up unlimited floods of undisclosed corporate, private, special interest and foreign money into politicians’ election campaigns.
by Ellen McClennan, posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 7:00 am
Representative Randy Hultgren (R IL-14) showed typical Republican spin at his Oswego Town Hall meeting recently. When asked direct questions regarding taxes, healthcare, social security, and Citizens United, he was long on spin, wrong on facts, and empty of solutions.
One frustrated attendant who tried to get a direct answer on healthcare, commented after the meeting that Hultgren “…seemed detached and unfeeling. His voice was just so syrupy and sweet he appeared unbelievable and unconcerned.”
His comments on Social Security were a surprise but shouldn’t have been, given the Republican Party’s relationship to corporate money and financial companies wanting to gamble with social security investment money.
“I’m not planning on Social Security,” Hultgren said. “Most people my age aren’t planning on Social Security.”
by n0madic, posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 6:00 am
In Red to Blue: Congressman Chris Van Hollen and Grassroots Politics, author Sanford Gottlieb tells the story of Chris Van Hollen’s successful grassroots campaign for Congress in 2002, and the lessons Van Hollen, and others, took away from that campaign in subsequent election cycles.
Van Hollen’s district
is MD-08, located in Washington DC’s Maryland suburbs. In the primary he beat frontrunner Mark Shriver, a Kennedy cousin with a lot of money to spend and a consultant by the name of David Axelrod on his team. He then went on to unseat longtime incumbent Connie Morella in the general election that fall. Morella was a well-liked, liberal Republican who had been long thought to be unbeatable, having enjoyed more than a little bit of support from local Democrats through the years on election day. And Van Hollen pulled this off in a Republican year. This was the first congressional election to be held after 9/11. The Republicans won back control of the Senate in 2002 and added to their majority in the House. Only two Democrats unseated incumbent Republicans that year. Chris Van Hollen was one of them.
Van Hollen has brought this experience to bear in his subsequent work at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). And he was not the only one to go to school on that 2002 campaign. As Gottlieb puts it:
David Axelrod told Van Hollen in 2008 that he had learned some lessons from being on the other side of the 2002 primary. It was a really good grassroots campaign, Axelrod said, with the passion on Van Hollen’s side. Van Hollen carried the lessons learned in 2002 into the successful effort to build a House Democratic majority in 2006. Axelrod and David Plouffe may have applied those lessons in the 2008 50-state race for the White House. (Gottlieb, Red to Blue, 32)
Last week Van Hollen appeared with Gottlieb at a book event in Washington, DC and talked about his attempt to apply those lessons learned to his work with the DCCC. Van Hollen’s introductory remarks, plus the question and answer session that followed, are presented below.