Unbelievable - Rahm supports Dan Lipinski

Written by: Sandra Verthein on Jan 17, 2008 10:13 AM EST

On November 17, 2007, just two months ago today, Rahm Emanual's "Our Common Values" PAC made a $2,500 contribution to Congressman Dan Lipinski's reelection campaign.

• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by national DFA
• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by us, Northside DFA.
• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by NARAL Pro-Choice America
• AFTER Mark Pera's endorsement by pretty much the entire progresive netroots, including Daily Kos, Open Left, Swing State Project, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, and Down with Tyranny

In other words, when we were freezing our toenails off knocking on doors trying to get rid of Lipinski and elect Mark Pera, when we were asking people to scrounge for couch change to donate to Mark Pera on our Northside DFA Act Blue Page, Rahm was writing a check to help Lipinski's re-election campaign.

And what are the "common values" that inspired Rahm to support Congressman Lipinski?

From local blogger Archpundit:

"Lipinski isn’t just a guy handed a Congressional seat, he’s a supposed Democrat with an incredibly reactionary record. His ACLU rating–one of the lowest Democrats outside of the South/border states. He has zeros from NARAL and Planned Parenthood.

So no family planning at all. Dandy. He and Costello were the only Illinois Democrats to get zeros–the rest? 100s. When the chance was there to vote for contraceptive use by those receiving money in other nations, he voted against it and he voted against funding Planned Parenthood under Title X–contraceptive funding.

From the Family Research Council–71 percent approval. To get that? He voted to remove the power of the Courts to review cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance. He voted against embryonic stem cell research. He voted to not allow those who win federal civil liberties cases related to religious cases to receive court fees. IOW, if you sued to protect your civil liberties and won in a religious liberties case, you could not be compensated for the costs incurred to enforce your rights.

He’s from a heavily Latino District–his rating from the the leading anti-immigrant group–60%. And that’s down from 71 percent and higher previously.

A big zero on the gay and lesbian measure from Progressive Punch

Drum Major Institute focusing on progressive policies for families, 50 percent.

And, of course, he voted to ignore the 4th Amendment and give one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations ever the ability to listen to domestic phone calls without a search warrant."

So, what do we do? Well, the first thing is that I would love to match Rahm's $2,500 contribution to Lipinski with an equal amount for Mark Pera on our Act Blue page. Right now we are at $1,925. Surely we can raise another $575! If you can help with that, donate here:

http://www.actblue.com/page/ndfa_picks

We will also be phonebanking for Mark Pera tonight, and will be out knocking on doors for Mark this Saturday and Sunday and every weekend through the election, and we especially need help on election day! You can see a full list of all of those upcoming events, and sign up for them, at www.dfalink.com/ndfa. Just scroll to the bottom of the page, the list of events is on the right side of the screen.

Remember this lady? I do. Her name is Christine Cegelis and many, many DFAers in Ilinois, including lots of folks in our group, knocked on doors and held coffees and donated money and made phone calls for two years trying to help her go to Congress. I remember when Rahm spent a year trying to recruit a nice, solid, conservative Dem to run against our "too liberal" candidate, and I remember the $8 million that was spent trying to get his candidate into office.

Remember John Yarmuth, Carol Shea-Porter , Jerry McNerny, and John Hall? They are four of our newest members of congress, progressives all of them, who had to make it to congress by first clawing their way past more of Rahm's conservative Dem recruits.

Remember Larry Kissel (NC-08), who came within 350 votes of beating Republican Robin Hayes? Rahm wanted pro-life veteran Tim Dunn to be the candidate, but when a progressive and unabashedly populist social studies teacher got the nomination, they took a pass. That is, until the week before the election when they suddenly jumped on board -- but aw shucks, it was too late. Remember Victoria Wulsin (OH-02), who almost won against Republican Jean "Jack Murtha is a traitor" Schmidt with 49%? Remember Eric Massa (NY-29), who almost beat Republican Randy Kuhl with 48%? Remember Charlie Brown (CA-04), who nearly beat Republican John "I Heart Abramoff" Doolittle with 46% against the incumbent's 49%? The netroots was on board early with these strong progressive candidates, yet for some reason Rahm and the DCCC completely ignored them until the last week of the election.

And the list goes on -- the might-have-beens that *could* be changing the direction of our party ... or not.

Rahm has decided what kind of party he wants. The question is, what kind of Democratic party do we want?

If you are not in our area, you can find out how to volunteer for Mark Pera by contacting the campaign TODAY. Or donate to Mark Pera at our Northside DFA Act Blue Page

And to sign up one of our upcoming Northside DFA volunteer activites for Mark, go to our dfalink page at www.dfalink.com/ndfa.

Peace,
Sandra Verthein
Northside DFA

P.S. Another one of our candidates, Dan Seals, is being featured in the DFA Grassroots All-Stars contest. This would be a great win for Dan, so please go vote for him at: http://democracyforamerica.com/gras

P.P.S. Check out this total smackdown of Dan Lipkinski in the Sun Times by Carol Marin.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/742349,CST-EDT-carol16.article

It includes this dead-on quote:

"But more important may be Pera's willingness to buck accepted Chicago political practices. It is he who has most aggressively raised the ethical questions that Dan Lipinski has long needed to answer but apparently just can't.

Questions like how in the world can he justify having had his father, now a lobbyist for the transportation industry, on his payroll as a consultant?

How can he comfortably take campaign contributions from the airline and rail companies that also pay his dad's salary?

And how the heck can he allow his dad's so-called charity, the All American Eagle Fund, which does precious little charity except for needy politicians, pay for work done by Dan's congressional chief of staff?

In Chicago, we expect so little of our politicians. And ethical questions are treated often with disdain. As though it's almost naive to demand the separation of church and state, or in this case, the separation of special interests from government business."

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Location: Chicago, IL 60640